Attention Economy


Wednesday, July 5, 2023

The Case for Active Meritocracy in Education

A Potent Replacement for Affirmative Action
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/05/colleges-shouldn-t-circumvent-the-affirmative-action-ban-try-meritocracy/53354ae6-1aeb-11ee-be41-a036f4b098ec_story.html
Adrian Wooldridge notes:
There is a much better solution to America’s educational problems for the taking: active meritocracy. Meritocracy means judging students by their individual academic potential rather than by extraneous factors; and active meritocracy is searching for ability wherever it might be in the population and paying particular attention to hard-to-reach corners.
And it’s not just searching. The most serious problem with affirmative action (and one that the court ignored) is that it is too little too late. The best way to address inequality of opportunity is at the high school level and earlier, rather than at college when most of the damage has already been done. Elite America needs to shift its focus to fixing the supply chain of talent.

The moral bankruptcy of Ivy League America
https://www.ft.com/content/955ab1bb-f3d6-48a6-bba4-3c59fa5e47bd

Hey, Harvard Admissions, America Isn’t Just Black and White
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/opinion/affirmative-action-harvard-unc.html
The voluminous record in the cases brought against Harvard and U.N.C. suggest that in order to maintain a vaguely defined notion of “diversity,” the schools’ admissions officials bumped up the chances primarily of Black and Hispanic applicants by undermining opportunities of another historically disadvantaged racial group — Asian Americans.

 
Related:
https://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2023/07/why-affirmative-action-does-not-matter.html
https://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2023/06/race-and-college-admissions.html