What would a meritocracy in higher ed look like?
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Anonymous
| It would look like it does in countries where a test score is your only way to success: rampant cheating and bribing. |
Anonymous
| Why don't universities do interviews with faculty members? Surely faculty would like to curate the kind of student at their institution; see Oxbridge, for example. |
Anonymous
Then just have JS set up JSU to collect those, a pipeline better than Bucknell. |
Anonymous
Palantir already has gotten started by giving internships to students committed to not going to college. It'd honestly be amazing for everyone if these kinds of people skipped out on education. |
Anonymous
That’s not 100% true. They give one year internships (that also includes humanities readings/classes taught by professors they hire) that usually always turn into FT jobs, but 1/2 the kids say they still plan to go to college (but maybe they don’t) and Palantir is fine with that. |
Anonymous
What do they have internships in? What are "these kinds of people" - palantir=exceptional? |
Anonymous
These are kids that already have 5+ years of skills that they learned on their own. Hate to make the reference…but they are the DOGE types of kids. |
Anonymous
Here's a source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/palantir-launches-recruiting-campaign-saying-skip-college/490002. PP wasn't 100% correct, but their preference, at least Alex Karp's, would clearly be that students avoid college entirely. |
Anonymous
They belong there. |
Anonymous
They don't want it. They'd be best trained in private industry, doing the challenging problems that peak their interests, rather than boring problem sets and getting an education that they don't care for. |
Anonymous
Disagree. Just because it may be partly subjective (like most human endeavors, such as face to face job interviews) doesn't mean admissions is random as throwing darts. The parallel to hiring is actually pretty good. A lot of the screens in US hiring are pretty vibes-based. Especially for jobs where it's more difficult to ask for technical demos of skill. I have heard that getting a white collar job in Europe can involve more of a process beyond just talking to a few people once or twice. I think the problem in the US is too many similar candidates fighting for too few seats. In that sense, the outcomes seem random but it's maybe just small things that give a candidate an edge over another. Kind of like in resume reviews. 1 year more experience or speaks a foreign language might get someone on the short list. I trust admissions officers to have some intuition about students and their fit to an institution. They do have a bias towards interesting candidates. That is kind of a natural human tendency. And it's hard to be a "generic candidate" trying to get out of that box. High-quality writing, maturity, authenticity, and humor are a differentiator for kids that have somewhat generic profiles. But that's also kind of realistic. Those skills are indicative of maturity, communication skills, etc. Things that get kids and job seekers ahead in real life. It's just unfortunately really agonizing to go through these processes. It feels like a referendum on your personal worth. More LORs will disadvantage lower income kids. I'm a parent with a kid at a better than average public high school in a flyover state. I read LORs as part of a PTA scholarship committee. There are only 2 teachers in the high school who could sell a kid they loved into an Ivy. The rest of them write very generic, uninspired prose cribbed mainly from the brag sheets. Most of them are "Thank U, Next" material. Every once in a while I get an employer letter that's highly credible. Other than that, only the AP English teachers write recs worth reading. It helps me to understand why public school kids might have a lesser shot at top schools. Unless they are "once in a career" type kids. |
Anonymous
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Meritocracy is the wrong word. That implies that accepted students are better or more deserving.
Better at what? More capable of performing college level work? More creative? More innovative or entrepreneurial? More likely to contribute to the culture of the institution and social experience of other students? More deserving? How? What will it look like? It will look like a student body at elite school made up of kids with families who have the knowledge, privilege, and ability to invest heavily in their kids and rich kids whose families outsourced that type of coaching and steering. It will be a less diverse and less interesting student body that will result in less innovation and a stagnant economy. |
Anonymous
Agree. They are not good match with ivies. |
Anonymous
| Jeff you can lock this. It has been argued to death. High stats moms want more tests. Test optional moms begin to challenge the concept of meritocracy. Same old same old. |
Anonymous
| It would look very much like the California state university system. Look at the demographics of each school. |