I’m already sick of reading about the fraud-in-admissions scandal, but figure that solutions are useful. There are a few things to note about colleges.
Foremost, it’s ridiculous that something as basic as education gets turned into a brand and prestige commodity. It’s basically a celebration of ignorance to prefer someone who learned the same material at a pricey school over someone who learned it elsewhere. If the educational standards at Megabucks U are really that superior, they should be adopted by other institutions. If not, we should stop pretending that the Latin motto matters.
Second, qualifications only matter to a point. If you have two otherwise-identical students and you’re down to weighing the choice of their musical instrument (“E plays harmonica, but e plays the mandolin. Which of those is more of the Megabucks sound?”), fuck off. And the broader situation holds, as well. Qualifications should be about whether someone has the educational background necessary to succeed, and not about chest medals.
With those two things in mind, the way that college admissions (and other things like hiring choices) ought to work is simple:
- Select out the qualified candidates.
- Randomize that list.
Simple. Unbiased. No-nonsense.
That includes legacy, wing-donors, whatever. It includes minority-preference, scholarship, whatever. Pick them at random. Unless you have very small class sizes or very bad luck, you’ll get a diverse selection that includes the offspring of megadonors as well as underprivileged applicants.
One of the big problems for Megabucks U is that the big donors actually reduce school competition and the spread of education. Rather than franchising or otherwise spreading curricula to others, in hopes of raising more money for the institution, Megabucks will spend more effort protecting its stupid name-brand. The same problem exists in politics, where overreliance on megadonors limits the political oxygen available for a party or a politician to make reasonable choices.
If a Republican megadonor doesn’t like the idea of wind power because e thinks it will mess up eir hairdo, suddenly the Republicans have to oppose wind power, even if their constituents favor it. That sucks. It’s anti-democratic. It can go screw.