Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
1–10 of 307 posts
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#2Yes. This is a fantastic idea that would reduce stress for thousands of students, elegantly address questions of unfairness, and take wind out of the sails of people who think their admission to $PoshUni proves them to be a better calibre of person.
For all these reasons, I cannot possibly imagine the ruling class would allow this to happen.
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#3College should be a meritocracy, it's just that we want people to be able to be able to afford it and not be shit out of luck if they can't go to it. This would also reduce stress as you don't have to worry about not getting into a college if you know your life is going to turn out fine either way.
Why has this goal been malformed and twisted around to the point where people are coming up with any solution that doesn't involve tackling the cost and the career issue?
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#4There is discussion of these partial lotteries in academia as a way to improve the procedure of getting grant money.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#5They already pretty much do
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#6lol, why would they do that?
Then they will be found out since the differentiator between the top pool of 'good enough' undergraduate programs is merely being able to play king maker to students who were going to go far in life anyway. And in return, the top students help brand the university as being top.
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#7College should be a meritocracy, it's just that we want people to be able to be able to afford it and not be shit out of luck if they can't go to it. This would also reduce stress as you don't have to worry about not getting into a college if you know your life is going to turn out fine either way. Why has this goal been malformed and twisted around to the point where people are coming up with any solution that doesn…
I think your argument is engaging in “what aboutism” and detracts from the issue this article is trying to address.
The problem they are trying to address is that true meritocracy only exists in a perfect system, that is to say that you can not fairly compare individuals across different environments. More concretely one of the problems it is trying to account for the situations where wealth or post code privilege gives students an advantage over other students.
There are often situations where students just performed better on a standardized test because they could afford a couch or had better teachers and not because they are “smarter” or more capable.
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#8There is discussion of these partial lotteries in academia as a way to improve the procedure of getting grant money. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
Malcom Gladwell touched upon this in a recent episode of his podcast http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/44-the-powerball-revo...
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#9Or do something like https://www.npr.org/transcripts/793488868?t=1598260732452 which allocates a pool of spots each for lottery, pay-to-win, volunteer-to-win, and meritocracy-to-win. I think this way, everyone is happy.
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#10[flagged]