Reply to What would a meritocracy in higher ed look like?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.

[b]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.[/b]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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