Comment by porphyra
6 days ago
Merit-based admission sounds good to me. Harvard is vigorously defending its "right" to continue to deny admissions to highly qualified Asian applicants out of nothing but pure racism, and somehow they are the good guys?
Merit is not easily definable.
Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology, class rankings are not comparable across school districts. Someone who was president of every club at school may be less able than a kid who had to flip burgers in the evenings to help make rent.
Merit to a university may mean "someone whose charisma and social connections will bring great repute to the institution" more than "a child prodigy who will burn out at 27 and end up fixing typewriters in his parent's garage because they actually had an undiagnosed mental illness growing up".
Merit may mean "a middling student smart enough to pass who will stick around working as a post-doc temporarily forever because they have no ambition beyond performing slave wage labor in exchange for the cold comfort of the known and familiar".
Any definition of merit is going to be irredeemably faulty. Like recruiting sporting talent based solely on stats without considering if the talent is an asshole who will destroy the atmosphere in the clubhouse and immediately get arrested for DUI after being signed.
I thought we wanted to let the market decide?
The government funding aspect is irrelevant. Nearly every business in the country receives some form of government funding either direct or indirect and they hire based on a wide variety of criteria. I was once hired to a position I would need time to be a productive in because I am a ham radio guy and my boss wanted someone to talk radios with.
Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly.
Here in Sweden, if you do well enough on the entrance exam, we simply let you in, even to the best universities. This means that people other than hoop-jumpers have a chance.
Academic success isn’t what Harvard cares about. They want leaders, not kids who are great at “school”.
Put it this way they’d much rather have Roberts or Obama as alumni than your typical 1600 SAT quant.
Whats the best metric to find the people they are looking to educate?
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> Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly.
So do home addresses. And skin colour. And parent's money. There are issues with all of those for different reasons. People saying IQ is problematic don't mean there's no correlation at all. Just that they can be culture / approach / etc. specific and we shouldn't treat them as an objective measure.
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If you think that Ivy League cares about academic success, you're out of touch of how US universities work.
Y'all have a lot of inner city neighborhoods that have been systematically destroyed over decades due to redlining, Jim Crow laws, lynching their inhabitants or just outright burning them to the ground, or is “but we do it in Europe” maybe frequently as stupid a comment as “but we do it in America” and is best kept to one’s self, if one doesn’t actually understand how it might be applicable?
Also, bullshit on IQ tests. They do reliably predict a number of socioeconomic factors, so I suppose they’re a great way to keep the poors out. How very “enlightened” of you.
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I fail to see how the lack of a perfect quantifiable metric of merit logically flows down to "stop admitting Asians because we have too many"? Whatever the university's method of determining merit is, it should be applied to everyone equally, and racially discriminating because one group historically performs well is indefensible imo
It’s also not what they’re doing. Seems like you’re arguing against a strawman.
Both standardized tests and IQ highly correlate with success in higher education and career over a lifetime. Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies, and the market is indeed responding, slowly but surely. You are making things up and conjuring nonsensical hypotheticals to deny the evidence that's right in front of our eyes.
> Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies
Do you have data to back this up?
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> Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies
[Citation needed]
Yeah, it's like how when they wanted to put in a Jewish quota at the university it was struck down and then they found that the same percentage of Jewish applicants were well-rounded coincidentally so they just stuck to determining if they were well-rounded. Today's folk may call it anti-semitism but really it was just that Jews Were Square.
Sounds fine, test for those things and admit the best. Or do a random lottery.
Just dont pick and choose students to disqualify based on race.
> I thought we wanted to let the market decide?
That sounds like an excellent reason to remove government funds.
"Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology"
Asians don't believe this because our society is much more homogeneous than western societies. Correlation is often causation.
“Merit definitions can be faulty, so completely abandon any attempt to measure merit and admit people based on vibes.”
This is why Harvard students now need remedial algebra classes.
When the "other side" is pretty much evil, yeah, you are the good guys. Like, by default. I would even go so far to say Harvard could do much, much worse and they would still be the good guys.
On a closely related note, you are legitimately out of touch with reality if you believe any part of this is done with the intention of "merit". This is done to strengthen allegiance to MAGA and conservative ideology.
Does that sound a bit scary and fascist-like? You decide. But it's explicitly stated as the goal of this constriction on higher education in Project 2025. So, take it up with them, not me.
Merit as defined by an administration whose cabinet is composed of Fox News personalities, DUI hires, and some of the least qualified people for the jobs they were given.
This administration has ZERO credibility to define what "merit" is.
> Merit as defined by an administration whose cabinet is composed of Fox News personalities, DUI hires, and some of the least qualified people for the jobs they were given.
Are you referring to the defense secretary Pete Hegseth? He also attended Harvard so clearly there's some intersection in how both Harvard and the Trump administration evaluate candidates.
Merit is what allowed women and non whites to attend university.
I don't believe for one second that conservatives care much for it.
because the answer for the racism against admissions from asians is deny admission and deport everyone that isn't us-american
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Or maybe there are better applicants than your highly qualified asian applicants. But sure, an Asian canadian came over here, helped kill AA, and nothing's changed. Well done Asian community. You fucked over a tiny fucking minority for nothing.
Do you seriously believe MAGA has any interest in fair access to education? Or are you just saying that as a disingenuous talking point?
If the Trump admin could directly control admission, I truly believe future classes would consist of close to 100% far right leaning ("anti-woke") WASP types.
It really isn't. Harvard used to be a special cultural institution now it's just another research institute. Whoopee, nothing can be special, everything has to all be the same gray sludge cause otherwise it isn't """fair"""