What would a meritocracy in higher ed look like?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would look exactly like it does now, with students being chosen on the merits of criteria selected by the choosers.

Pretty much the way everything is decided.

Exactly.

And in a country where Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr can be the heads of government functions and make decisions impacting millions, I don't want to hear sh*t about meritocracy.

Joe, Kamala, Mayor Pete…some real heavyweights.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would look exactly like it does now, with students being chosen on the merits of criteria selected by the choosers.

Pretty much the way everything is decided.

Exactly.

And in a country where Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr can be the heads of government functions and make decisions impacting millions, I don't want to hear sh*t about meritocracy.

Joe, Kamala, Mayor Pete…some real heavyweights.

Joe and Kamala are career politicians with a long history of public service, so...yeah?
Mayor Pete, meh, skip, but he's young and "can have a beer with him" which is what Americans care about more than any understanding of government structure, for whatever reason. He's highly decorated academically, but I don't think that makes a great politician; evidence: almost every Yale law grad currently in a position of authority.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would look exactly like it does now, with students being chosen on the merits of criteria selected by the choosers.

Pretty much the way everything is decided.

Exactly.

And in a country where Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr can be the heads of government functions and make decisions impacting millions, I don't want to hear sh*t about meritocracy.

Joe, Kamala, Mayor Pete…some real heavyweights.

Joe and Kamala are career politicians with a long history of public service, so...yeah?
Mayor Pete, meh, skip, but he's young and "can have a beer with him" which is what Americans care about more than any understanding of government structure, for whatever reason. He's highly decorated academically, but I don't think that makes a great politician; evidence: almost every Yale law grad currently in a position of authority.

Typical gullible Democrat thinks holding an office is the same as actually doing something. Joe, Kamala, Hillary, & Mayor Pete have sat in a lot of offices & had lots of opportunities, but make a list of their achievements and you will see my point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not to split hairs...but if you look at which D3 schools have won the most titles in different sports, most are not high-academic D3s.

The exceptions are Middlebury for Hockey and Kenyon for swimming and diving.

JHU is D1 for LAX, so that puts them into a very different category for that sport.

This just isn’t true. If you the directors cup standings you will find a common set of schools at the top year after year. Top D3 athletics is dominated by top academic schools. UAA, NESCAC, along with a few others. This is the land where most of the real ‘all-around’ unicorns exist along with the Ivies.

Go do a search of all the sports by which schools have won the most championships.

Union college for football, Marietta for baseball, Messiah College for women’s soccer, Salisbury and Hobart for men’s LAX, North Park for men’s basketball, etc.

If you just look at 2024-2025 champions it’s around 60% non-selective D3s.

The UAA and NESCAC do not participate in football post season. Looking at D3 sports overall they dominate. You can find examples here and there but for across the board excellence it is the UAA for universities and the NESCAC for SLACs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would have to start by defining what constitutes merit. Is it being well rounded and playing sports and being student body president and taking a uniform distribution of APs? Does it involve being musical? Strong writing? Where to math geniuses who are dyslexic and will never be strong in humanities and foreign language savants who have zero clue where they will ever use calculus— because they won’t? Does personality matter, or is it a paper and pen thing? How do you account for the the fact girls tend to be a year plus ahead of boys.

The thing with merit is that we all define merit based on what we ourselves do at and what our kids excel at. And I think things work best when kids are allowed to do those things they are really great at, rather than using someone else’s measuring stick.

I think recruited athlete preference is silly in college. If you are pre-professional or a professional athlete, join a team and go to a facility to support that. You don’t need a full college. I think legacy admission perpetuates privilege over merit— and my kids are double legacy at a T25. Get rid of them, then let colleges decide what they think constitutes merit.

A great deal of the “merit” griping is parents who feel like their kid has more merit than another kid for a certain college and get their nose out joint when the college disagrees. Or parents who try to put their square peg kids in round holes because only an Ivy will do and are unhappy it backfires.

If your kid truly has merit in a given area, there is absolutely more than one college out there that will accept them and give them the ability to as far as their interest and hard work will take them.

In 2025, I’m much more concerned about college cost. We pay our last tuition bill this year. Thank goodness. It feels like I should just keep fund the accounts so someday any grandkid I have has the $2M college will cost.

If you “get rid of them” you aren’t letting the college decide what they believe to be merit. You just imposed your beliefs on merit upon them. Athletes with correspondingly high academic abilities are the real unicorns and carry the most merit. But in your view this doesn’t matter because…….? I’m waiting to hear a cogent response other than “schools shouldn’t value athletics”. Private schools hundreds of years old can and should value what they want to value, not what you want to value.

I don't know anyone who genuinely considers where your parents went to college to be a form of merit

The discussion was athletics dillweed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would have to start by defining what constitutes merit. Is it being well rounded and playing sports and being student body president and taking a uniform distribution of APs? Does it involve being musical? Strong writing? Where to math geniuses who are dyslexic and will never be strong in humanities and foreign language savants who have zero clue where they will ever use calculus— because they won’t? Does personality matter, or is it a paper and pen thing? How do you account for the the fact girls tend to be a year plus ahead of boys.

The thing with merit is that we all define merit based on what we ourselves do at and what our kids excel at. And I think things work best when kids are allowed to do those things they are really great at, rather than using someone else’s measuring stick.

I think recruited athlete preference is silly in college. If you are pre-professional or a professional athlete, join a team and go to a facility to support that. You don’t need a full college. I think legacy admission perpetuates privilege over merit— and my kids are double legacy at a T25. Get rid of them, then let colleges decide what they think constitutes merit.

A great deal of the “merit” griping is parents who feel like their kid has more merit than another kid for a certain college and get their nose out joint when the college disagrees. Or parents who try to put their square peg kids in round holes because only an Ivy will do and are unhappy it backfires.

If your kid truly has merit in a given area, there is absolutely more than one college out there that will accept them and give them the ability to as far as their interest and hard work will take them.

In 2025, I’m much more concerned about college cost. We pay our last tuition bill this year. Thank goodness. It feels like I should just keep fund the accounts so someday any grandkid I have has the $2M college will cost.

If you “get rid of them” you aren’t letting the college decide what they believe to be merit. You just imposed your beliefs on merit upon them. Athletes with correspondingly high academic abilities are the real unicorns and carry the most merit. But in your view this doesn’t matter because…….? I’m waiting to hear a cogent response other than “schools shouldn’t value athletics”. Private schools hundreds of years old can and should value what they want to value, not what you want to value.

Those unicorns would get in because of their correspondingly high academics. No one is saying they shouldn't.

Many on this board feel that they shouldn’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also regarding sports recruiting and academic standards, I'm specifically referring to elite schools where the recruiting sports lose the school money and don't really contribute to its prestige. If you think sports teams are a necessary part of these institutions, fine, but so are the orchestras, moot courts, model un, and many other groups within these universities, none of whose potential participants get an extra special route to admissions.

Had not thought of this. High performance indicator that can’t be gamed. Interesting…






Gimme a break. At least the recruited athletes are usually evaluated multiple times by college coaches to ensure they are at the caliber needed for their sport.
So their athletic skill is real, as opposed to many of the non-athletes who have their not-for-profits set up and run by mommy and daddy in the name of the kid, or the coveted summer internship or job that was negotiated by daddy at the country club with his golfing partner. Or the kids whose parents send them to attend pricey math and science prep classes since age 4 to get a leg up on the “olympiads”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would look exactly like it does now, with students being chosen on the merits of criteria selected by the choosers.

Pretty much the way everything is decided.

Exactly.

And in a country where Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr can be the heads of government functions and make decisions impacting millions, I don't want to hear sh*t about meritocracy.

Joe, Kamala, Mayor Pete…some real heavyweights.

Joe and Kamala are career politicians with a long history of public service, so...yeah?
Mayor Pete, meh, skip, but he's young and "can have a beer with him" which is what Americans care about more than any understanding of government structure, for whatever reason. He's highly decorated academically, but I don't think that makes a great politician; evidence: almost every Yale law grad currently in a position of authority.

Typical gullible Democrat thinks holding an office is the same as actually doing something. Joe, Kamala, Hillary, & Mayor Pete have sat in a lot of offices & had lots of opportunities, but make a list of their achievements and you will see my point.

The bar is pretty low. If they didn’t actively work to dismantle a functioning government then they were miles ahead of the MAGA turds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would look exactly like it does now, with students being chosen on the merits of criteria selected by the choosers.

Pretty much the way everything is decided.

Exactly.

And in a country where Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr can be the heads of government functions and make decisions impacting millions, I don't want to hear sh*t about meritocracy.

Joe, Kamala, Mayor Pete…some real heavyweights.

Joe and Kamala are career politicians with a long history of public service, so...yeah?
Mayor Pete, meh, skip, but he's young and "can have a beer with him" which is what Americans care about more than any understanding of government structure, for whatever reason. He's highly decorated academically, but I don't think that makes a great politician; evidence: almost every Yale law grad currently in a position of authority.

Typical gullible Democrat thinks holding an office is the same as actually doing something. Joe, Kamala, Hillary, & Mayor Pete have sat in a lot of offices & had lots of opportunities, but make a list of their achievements and you will see my point.

Biden achieved a ton actually…IRA, CHiPs act and a ton of other legislation. Kind of defeats your argument if you can’t be honest with factual achievements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not to split hairs...but if you look at which D3 schools have won the most titles in different sports, most are not high-academic D3s.

The exceptions are Middlebury for Hockey and Kenyon for swimming and diving.

JHU is D1 for LAX, so that puts them into a very different category for that sport.

This just isn’t true. If you the directors cup standings you will find a common set of schools at the top year after year. Top D3 athletics is dominated by top academic schools. UAA, NESCAC, along with a few others. This is the land where most of the real ‘all-around’ unicorns exist along with the Ivies.

Go do a search of all the sports by which schools have won the most championships.

Union college for football, Marietta for baseball, Messiah College for women’s soccer, Salisbury and Hobart for men’s LAX, North Park for men’s basketball, etc.

If you just look at 2024-2025 champions it’s around 60% non-selective D3s.

The UAA and NESCAC do not participate in football post season. Looking at D3 sports overall they dominate. You can find examples here and there but for across the board excellence it is the UAA for universities and the NESCAC for SLACs.

Well…I just found 60% of all D3 sports just for this past 2024/25 season.

I guess the Directors Cup awards points for how schools finish in every sport so it’s a ranking of the average place of all D3 colleges.

Just making the point that in each individual sport it’s usually a non-academic D3 that wins the championship…and I assume that doesn’t happen by accident.

BTW my kid is playing for a UAA team and while they are a strong player…I honestly can’t say they are an “all around” unicorn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would look exactly like it does now, with students being chosen on the merits of criteria selected by the choosers.

Pretty much the way everything is decided.

Exactly.

And in a country where Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr can be the heads of government functions and make decisions impacting millions, I don't want to hear sh*t about meritocracy.

Joe, Kamala, Mayor Pete…some real heavyweights.

Joe and Kamala are career politicians with a long history of public service, so...yeah?
Mayor Pete, meh, skip, but he's young and "can have a beer with him" which is what Americans care about more than any understanding of government structure, for whatever reason. He's highly decorated academically, but I don't think that makes a great politician; evidence: almost every Yale law grad currently in a position of authority.

Typical gullible Democrat thinks holding an office is the same as actually doing something. Joe, Kamala, Hillary, & Mayor Pete have sat in a lot of offices & had lots of opportunities, but make a list of their achievements and you will see my point.

I’ll believe you when republicans actually bring someone in who has public service experience and doesn’t try to hang them (Mike pence, if you can remember)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would look exactly like it does now, with students being chosen on the merits of criteria selected by the choosers.

Pretty much the way everything is decided.

Exactly.

And in a country where Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr can be the heads of government functions and make decisions impacting millions, I don't want to hear sh*t about meritocracy.

Joe, Kamala, Mayor Pete…some real heavyweights.

This is a joke, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be like Stuyvesant, which yes is completely meritocratic, but soft skills matter in the work place too.

That's what interviews should be for, rather than just alumni engagement.

Soft skills are important, but judging soft skills based on a 30 minute interview often boils down to "Is this person like me?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not to split hairs...but if you look at which D3 schools have won the most titles in different sports, most are not high-academic D3s.

The exceptions are Middlebury for Hockey and Kenyon for swimming and diving.

JHU is D1 for LAX, so that puts them into a very different category for that sport.

This just isn’t true. If you the directors cup standings you will find a common set of schools at the top year after year. Top D3 athletics is dominated by top academic schools. UAA, NESCAC, along with a few others. This is the land where most of the real ‘all-around’ unicorns exist along with the Ivies.

Go do a search of all the sports by which schools have won the most championships.

Union college for football, Marietta for baseball, Messiah College for women’s soccer, Salisbury and Hobart for men’s LAX, North Park for men’s basketball, etc.

If you just look at 2024-2025 champions it’s around 60% non-selective D3s.

The UAA and NESCAC do not participate in football post season. Looking at D3 sports overall they dominate. You can find examples here and there but for across the board excellence it is the UAA for universities and the NESCAC for SLACs.

Well…I just found 60% of all D3 sports just for this past 2024/25 season.

I guess the Directors Cup awards points for how schools finish in every sport so it’s a ranking of the average place of all D3 colleges.

Just making the point that in each individual sport it’s usually a non-academic D3 that wins the championship…and I assume that doesn’t happen by accident.

BTW my kid is playing for a UAA team and while they are a strong player…I honestly can’t say they are an “all around” unicorn.

If your kid got into a UAA school and plays on a UAA caliber team they are pretty special. You should be proud of them.

There are non-academic teams that win championships, they have a much wider recruiting pool but the UAA and NESCAC are very serious about sports and are loaded with kids that excel at both academics and athletics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also regarding sports recruiting and academic standards, I'm specifically referring to elite schools where the recruiting sports lose the school money and don't really contribute to its prestige. If you think sports teams are a necessary part of these institutions, fine, but so are the orchestras, moot courts, model un, and many other groups within these universities, none of whose potential participants get an extra special route to admissions.

Gimme a break. At least the recruited athletes are usually evaluated multiple times by college coaches to ensure they are at the caliber needed for their sport.
So their athletic skill is real, as opposed to many of the non-athletes who have their not-for-profits set up and run by mommy and daddy in the name of the kid, or the coveted summer internship or job that was negotiated by daddy at the country club with his golfing partner. Or the kids whose parents send them to attend pricey math and science prep classes since age 4 to get a leg up on the “olympiads”.

Real athletic skill is often earned by pricey sports clubs and training since age four. So how can you say their skill is real? Could it be that skill elite development can be expensive? But why do you only accept that for athletics but not academics? The truth is that elite academic performance is far more accessible than elite athletic performance. The former can require just a single used textbook while the latter often requires five figures in club fees, training, equipment, showcase camps, training camps, gym fees, food (lots of meat!), protein powder, supplements, etc.

Why do only certain athletes get the privilege of having there performance checked? 10k runners do, but marathon runners don't. Football players do, but rugby players don't. Wrestlers do, but Judokas don't. It's completely arbitrary - there's no reason to believe the former are somehow athletically better than the latter, so why privilege them with with a special admissions process over the latter?

+1 Also for top athletes genetics can play a role. See volleyball where a skilled player may be passed over for less skilled player who has height on their side.