The Case for Admissions Selectivity. Let’s remind colleges what they’re supposed to care about.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | February 8, 2023 | Mark Bauerlein

[karpov]

For how many years have elite colleges been playing a double game of inclusivity/selectivity? Some years back, Yale President Peter Salovey had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal affirming the high regard the school placed on inclusion and the opening of Yale to voices of all responsible kinds. A variant of the beloved word appeared seven times in the short discussion. None of it was true, of course; too much inclusion means a loss of prestige. For all the egalitarian talk on campus, the happy photos of smiling diverse faces in marketing materials, and the pledges of sensitivity and tolerance, Yale and every other Tier-One institution want their selectivity rates to hit the single digits, the lower the better. Talk the talk of inclusion, walk the walk of hyper-competition: a few winners and lots of losers.

As an individual matter, this is the way of the liberal high-achiever. Work hard, rise to the top, success, success … but display a little guilt for your superiority, do a little “giving back” to the poor souls who couldn’t keep up, and broadcast your awareness of the inequities that favored you and disfavored them. It doesn’t matter that your professions are mostly symbolic. You vote Democrat, read the Times, buy organics, and loathe Trump. You are a good person. And your ascent in a super-selective system doesn’t undermine your social sympathies—it reinforces them, for this is what smart people believe. Liberalism is the intelligent person’s politics.

And they’re right, in a way. It takes a great deal of mental twisting for a white or Asian liberal to espouse Affirmative Action and demand more diversity at Top-10 U while never even considering having her own child give up admission to that sacred space. Such bad faith is a way of keeping selectivity around.

[chajin]

The top-level admissions offices must know that if they went for total double-blind selective admissions based on merit, their ethnic component would be radically altered: up to 50% east Asian, 30% Euro-American, 10% other international students, and 10% combined American Latino and Black.

Over a generation those percentages would change as more non-Asian students rise to the Asian level, but they would not be getting the neo-Marxist DEI that is a sacramental necessity in their minds today.

[neverevergiveup]

Most in the hierarchy of academic administrations (particularly the ‘elite’ universities) wouldn’t know an ethic if it bit them.

[alexander_busek]

As an individual matter, this is the way of the liberal high-achiever. Work hard, rise to the top, success, success … but display a little guilt for your superiority, do a little “giving back” to the poor souls who couldn’t keep up, and broadcast your awareness of the inequities that favored you and disfavored them.

Author has left out: "... and impose draconic DIE standards on the non-elite."

Regards,