What would a meritocracy in higher ed look like?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For medical schools, there are weed-out classes.

For elite colleges, why can't we have the same? For example, students are required to take Advanced Literature/writing in humanities, and Advanced Calculus in stem.

Top 20 colleges would require A or A+ in both the pass muster. Top 50 B+, top 100 B, so on and so forth.

We have that…it’s called AP tests. Colleges could require you have a 5 in AP BC, though I guess everyone would have to track to taking by junior year or they could have contingent acceptances like UK schools.

This is literally what at least University of Toronto requires for US kids applying for certain STEM programs.

They could take this approach but don’t. Again, if nearly all colleges are public and essentially nationally controlled you can implement something like this.

States can do this, but so far they haven't. Maybe because the only state with such a selective flagship for this to make sense is California.

Also, requiring AP scores would be an accessibility issue and a huge enhancement of the monopoly CB already has.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For medical schools, there are weed-out classes.

For elite colleges, why can't we have the same? For example, students are required to take Advanced Literature/writing in humanities, and Advanced Calculus in stem.

Top 20 colleges would require A or A+ in both the pass muster. Top 50 B+, top 100 B, so on and so forth.

We have that…it’s called AP tests. Colleges could require you have a 5 in AP BC, though I guess everyone would have to track to taking by junior year or they could have contingent acceptances like UK schools.

This is literally what at least University of Toronto requires for US kids applying for certain STEM programs.

They could take this approach but don’t. Again, if nearly all colleges are public and essentially nationally controlled you can implement something like this.

States can do this, but so far they haven't. Maybe because the only state with such a selective flagship for this to make sense is California.

Also, requiring AP scores would be an accessibility issue and a huge enhancement of the monopoly CB already has.

It's an accessibility issue, but colleges aren't in the business of equity. This puts pressure on school districts to offer a more comprehensive curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the meritocracy crowd, how do you envision a transition purely to stats. From my understanding, this would reasonably involve the elimination of legacy admissions, complete elimination of applicant background and school disadvantage information from applications, rigorous reforms to the SAT or at least required AP/IB courses with test scores for consideration of admission, etc.

Any red state university is already this so are religious based colleges
Any state that chooses vouchers for public schools

LMAO. If you believe this I have a bridge to sell.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Something closer to the European university model?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Foreign countries have far fewer colleges, they are all public and they are all either large or very large schools.

The US would have to nationalize and merge its colleges…perhaps adopt the model of some countries where you have top technical colleges, top humanities colleges, etc.

You can’t create this nirvana without fundamentally changing our system of higher ed.

Another note…Canadian colleges take the approach of easier to get in but harder to stay. The acceptance rates of their top schools aren’t that low and a school like Toronto is 80,000 students. Their approach is let lots of kids in and then see who makes it…I bet some with just OK stats end up doing well and high stats kids can’t handle it and drop out.

Sorta what UC is doing. One issue with that model is it works relatively well when the tuition is lower, like in-state tuition.

Most US top colleges are private institutions, their tuitions are already non-affordable. If you adopt Canadian model, it results in huge waste for middle class, benefiting the rich.

Except the UC schools would be required to have like 20%+ acceptance rates…similar to at least Oxbridge.

The Canadian model is closer to the rest of the world…sounds like you think the US system is fine the way it is.

The US system is fine as it is. It is your choice on how you approach college and I have zero sympathy for the tender feelings of those crying unfair but simultaneously considering a huge number of excellent schools beneath them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with more focus on standardized tests, but combined with adjustment for background. We're not rich or especially connected, but still among my kids parents and grandparents, we have 7 grad degrees and 3 Ivy degrees. If they had an 1500+ SAT score, that is way less impressive than a 1300 from a child of high school dropouts. And grades matter, but that 1300 kid might be at a school where straight As just mean you can read and write and show up to class, so admissions officers can't get much information from grades alone.

The interesting thing about this is that the research shows that SAT scores predict college performance pretty much independently of background. I.e. a poor kid with a 1300 performs on average the same as a rich kid that got a 1300.

I would love to see that research. Can you link it?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For the meritocracy crowd, how do you envision a transition purely to stats. From my understanding, this would reasonably involve the elimination of legacy admissions, complete elimination of applicant background and school disadvantage information from applications, rigorous reforms to the SAT or at least required AP/IB courses with test scores for consideration of admission, etc.

Why would anyone want this? Stats do not tell the story at all. At best they are a guide.

[Anonymous]

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.