Admissions to achieve equity? Not mathematically possible

November 5, 2021. Persona non grata at Yale, as MIT Cancels What Most Call Common Sense (excerpt follows):

I am a professor at the University of Chicago. I was recently invited to give an honorary lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The lecture was canceled because I have openly advocated moral and philosophical views that are unpopular on university campuses.

Here are those views:

I believe that every human being should be treated as an individual worthy of dignity and respect. In an academic context, that means evaluating people for positions based on their individual qualities, not on membership in favored or disfavored groups. It also means allowing them to present their ideas and perspectives freely, even when we disagree with them.

I care for all of my students equally. None of them are overrepresented or underrepresented to me: They represent themselves. Their grades are based on a process that I define at the beginning of the quarter. That process treats each student fairly and equally. I hold office hours for students who would like extra help so that everyone has the opportunity to improve his or her grade through hard work and discipline.

In a following Letter to the Editor, I found:

Mr. Abbot makes it appear as though improving K-12 education is a simple thing. This is obviously not true, nor is it clear that equity in K-12 education—the ideal solution—will be achieved in Mr. Abbot’s lifetime or mine. Problem solvers must therefore move on to other solutions rather than cling to the unattainable ideal or wait for its realization. One logical solution is to introduce a correcting bias at later stages, especially in college admissions or hiring, to attain the ultimate goal of fair selection processes.

Eve Ahlers

Manhattan Beach, Calif.

And my response:

Peter Lorenzi

5 November 2021

Per Ms Ahlers, "correcting bias at later stages, especially in college admissions or hiring, to attain the ultimate goal of fair selection processes," is the equity argument, placing the thumb on the scale in the selection process. Yet the solution is not at all what she claims. To admit an unprepared student to college is unfair to both the ill-prepared student and to the not accepted, prepared student denied admissions in this same process. The unprepared student is more likely to be laden with loans, to choose an unemployable major, and to drop out before degree completion, exacerbating the wealth gap between the two rather than reducing it. The solution is to improve preparation and not with expensive college remedial classes; instead the aspiring, unprepared student needs to consider community college, repeating high school courses, or pray that the high school sets some clear standards for graduation. A high school degree is often not a high school education.