More equity nonsense. This time for college admissions.

A report from the national association of college admissions and financial aid officers urgently specifies an alternative to academic qualifications and selectivity in admissions, in the name of greater goals, namely fairness and equity.

Start with realizing that this is a reversal of the primary mission of universities, with the reversal based on ignorance or simple rejection of the traditional goal and purpose of a university. The purpose was once to transmit and generate knowledge for the purpose of advancing society, based on the long-revered idea that academic development is a progression and a responsibility, not a right. To reject this purpose and these goals in the name of a non-credible new goal or purpose for the sake of a concept of fairness or equity that is both conceptually and practically impossible to achieve. As to this last point, who defines fairness? How do we measure equity? Once equity were to be achieved, how can it be maintained?

As this pertains to colleges, this new proposal also implies problematic equity in terms of the outcomes from the college experience, while also ignoring the need for equity among secondary school graduates. That is, unless grades become meaningless and the distinction between majors and degrees are also meaningless, how can equity be achieved at any output level of education, from elementary school through middle school, high school, and associate, baccalaureate and graduate degrees.

The appropriate way to consider equity seriously requires conceptualizing justice and fairness at the input, throughput and outcome levels. Natural rights suggest equal opportunity and due process (including an absence of sexual harassment and abuse by members of the organization, see below) to eliminate bias or injustice and to increase fairness while also directly creating a diverse array of possible outcomes for any process. In brief, 'get' the first two natural rights correct and the outcomes can never be equal. Martin Luther King had it right by focusing on those first two levels; the woke lobby has rejected King's ideas outright. Then again, King was a Republican and, by woke dogma, his ideas are implicitly racist and biased, and based on traditional, western, white supremacist philosophy.

Here are some additional thoughts, taken from an email exchange with colleagues, where we exchanged ideas on the article and report.

Absurd on the very surface, only it appears to be the new mission of colleges -- DIE -- which means that this seems to be something the colleges are willing to die for.

Why are colleges the place to institute DIE? And if colleges use it for admissions, should they use it for grading? for assigning students to majors? to deciding what school they should attend?

Let's face it. College should not be social engineering experiments to satisfy political correctness.A school that signs on to such a system is commiting suicide.

The basic idea that the admissions office can recruit a class with these policies is laughable. Who would want to attend a school that has no academic selectivity standards others than those who have no money and no qualifications? And how are schools going to be able to pay for all this need while also spending hundreds of millions on non-value-added administrators in the areas of DIE, sustainability, mental health and legal/gender/sexual misconduct issues?

Throw in the separate $100 million commitment from the Jesuits to pay reparations for their slavery practices by asking donors to fund those promises, asking others to pay for their mistakes.

The WSJ featured another half billion-dollar payment, this time by U of Michigan, for sexual abuse scandals, adding to the list of billions in such settlements where again, they are forcing the innocent to pay for the sins of university leaders.

The article on the report, from Inside Higher Education can be found in the following PDF, with some excerpts from that article following below the link to the PDF. The original report, cited in the article, can be found here and embedded in the PDF.

Report urges a new approach to admissions and aid.pdf

Download PDF • 448KB

Here is the introduction:

The admissions system should be totally overhauled to make it more fair, especially for students of color, said a report (http://www.nacacnet.org/about/toward-a-more-equitable-future-for-postsecondary-access/) issued Wednesday by the National Association for College Admission Counseling and the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

A major reason that colleges developed the current system, with its tests, essays, grades and recommendation letters, said the report, is to promote selectivity. The report adds, “Selectivity exerts a fundamentally inequitable inFuence on the path to postsecondary education. It does so not because the system is designed on a complete deHnition of ‘merit,’ which remains elusive and ill-deHned, but because in many cases it is designed to exclude even highly qualiHed students and because its current conHguration relies upon an inequitable system of inputs.”

In addition, colleges should “rethink the financial aid application process into one that is less burdensome for students and families, and no longer requires them to continue to ‘prove they are poor,’” said the new report.

And here is the rationale:

To advance Black students, the report said, the admissions system must be rethought to focus on what really matters. The report particularly criticizes parts of the admissions process that promote selectivity, rather than the value of Hnding a place for everyone who wants to go to college.

“The ‘reputational model’ of higher education is based on a fundamental preoccupation with exclusivity,” the report said. “The roots of selective college admission are deep and extend to the very origins of the modern institution. For many institutions that were transforming in the early 20th century, ‘selective admissions would present the discovery of the best material from among all applicants and the university would prepare them for positions of responsibility.’ This viewpoint was rooted in a time when eugenics and racism were openly accepted as facts of life. Since that time, our understanding of human abilities, social inFuences—most importantly for this project: racism, systemic inequities, and education—has progressed to a point where these old assumptions about ‘the best material’ no longer apply.”

The report added that “institutions make a choice to be exclusive,” and “by adhering to a selective process that favors variables only some students can attain, these highly selective institutions validate an admission model that is designed to admit students who are able to access these extracurricular variables and exclude those who can’t. Regardless of intention, the design of this type of system prioritizes students with access over those without.”

What to do about these problems? “Rethink the meaning of selectivity in the institutional context,” the report said. “Examine whether the purposes of selective admission policies can be equally well-served by methods of student selection that minimize the ways in which racial bias enters the process of selecting qualiHed students for enrollment.” While that may sound easier said than done, some experiments have already started (more about that later).

Further, colleges should rethink the application. “One thing became clear: The current application process evokes anxiety and hardship, particularly for students of color.”

To alleviate some of that anxiety, the report suggests a more “student-centric” application system, in which a student could simply select the colleges to which they want to apply and their records would be shared digitally between high school and college, with no additional action from the student.