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Notes -
affirmative action is officially unconstitutional.
the decision leaves open the ability for universities to consider how an applicant's race affected their life "concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university".
I've honestly never really understood the obsession with "merit" and college admissions. Like what exactly are you solving for if you think that you should just accept the most meritorious students? The discussion really seems to be wrapped up in some notion of rewarding hard work or talent. But why should we reward that as opposed to something else? Why treating Harvard admissions like a prize the right thing to do?
As a society the people we should be sending to Harvard are those who will get the largest Harvard marginal treatment effect. I guess it could be the case that the kid with the highest high school GPA will get the largest treatment effect, but it's not really obvious to me that this is true. Maybe it's the legacy white kid who will be able to build out his connections; maybe it's the black kid who had to endure a shitty high school and by a gritty miracle ground out a 1300 SAT score; maybe the 1600 SAT score asian kid is going to do great no matter where he ends up.
People need to do a bit more work in connecting the dots here IMO.
I disagree. There's room for organizations like that, but I wouldn't want Harvard to fill that role, and I doubt Harvard itself wants that either. Elite institutions like Harvard are places where I want - and I believe the institutions themselves want too - people to get educations that allow them to contribute the most to society. And I'd want the people we send to Harvard to be people who are most able to take advantage of the education to get to a state where they can make such contributions. I'd rather send A+ students to Harvard in a way that turns them into people who contribute amazing world-changing things, than sending C- students to Harvard in a way that turns them into upper-middle class middle management, even if the latter would mean larger Harvard marginal treatment effect.
Of course, some of this hinges on what one means by the "effect" in "marginal treatment effect." If the "effect" here is referring to something like "ability to meaningfully contribute to society," then it seems clear to me that the people who do enjoy the largest marginal treatment effect will overwhelmingly be people who have already demonstrated a combination of hard work and talent. Pushing people who are at the top of those things even further will almost definitely create greater, more significant contributions to society than pushing people who are at the middle or at the bottom up to the top or middle.
Really what I'm asking for is some evidence for the assertion that sending A+ students to Harvard is the way to maximize the number of people who contribute amazing world-changing things, and that the C- student who got affirmative actioned into Harvard isn't doing that.
I doubt that any specific evidence of that sort exists. I think it's a pretty good guess, though, based on how we know things like intelligence and drive interact with academic performance and overall life achievement. Given the limited number of seats at elite institutions and the observation that achieving amazing world-changing things tends to be easier if one is highly intelligent and driven, it seems to me that filling those seats with people who have a track record that indicates high intelligence and drive is likely to result in more amazing world-changing results than filling those seats with people whose track record indicates mediocre levels in either or both.
If there were somehow evidence that pointed in the direction that taking a bunch of mediocre people and uplifting them to become slightly above average is more conducive to great innovation and prosperity in society than taking a bunch of extremely capable people and uplifting them to be elite even by those standards, then changing the attempted-meritrocratic system seems reasonable. I don't think that is the case, though. I think it's the same reason why MLB teams tend to draft people who already have a track record of good baseball performance - someone who already has that good track record is likely to be a better player than someone whose track record is mediocre, even after subjecting both of them to the same sort of training from the team and farm system.
I sort of have the view that Harvard/Stanford/Whatever is good at churning out elite but not exciting folks like programmers and doctors and bankers and lawyers, but for truly world-changing things to the extent that there's any correlation there it's all selection rather than treatment. If Harvard is good at doing the former and not the latter, I think it kind of makes sense to "uplift" a bunch of people into those positions that don't require true genius to do well, and not really worry whether the next Einstein goes to Harvard or Ohio State for undergrad. Anyway, as you said, it would be hard to identify this in the data anyway, but I just don't think it's the open and shut case that a lot of people here make it out to be.
Who are the lots of people making it out to be an open and shut case?
That's a huge "if," though.
And there's the big issue that there's no particular reason why Ohio State couldn't just as well as Harvard "uplift" a bunch of people into those same positions that don't require true genius to do well. And Ohio State (representing any generic state school) has a lot more seats and lower tuition. Why would we want an elite institution like Harvard to do that work when cheaper, more plentiful tools exist? Unless you mean Harvard and other elite colleges just shouldn't be elite and all colleges should have the same status? That seems untenable given the natural status-chasing inclination of people who run organizations. And given how network effects work, it seems valuable to me to have colleges that are specialized for bringing the best of the best at certain things together, potentially far more valuable than having those people dispersed.
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