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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.
Because it is a prize. This is an objective, undeniable fact. It confers a great deal of status on the person who receives it. Basing admissions on academic achievement rather than the subjective whims of the admissions officers is at least an attempt at making it "fair".
Unless you just think that upward social mobility itself is not something that society should be optimizing for. But then that's a separate discussion entirely.
Right, so how do we decide who gets this status? Is it the person who benefits the most, or is it the person who got a 1600 on their SAT? It's not clear that these are the same people. They might be, I don't think I've ever seen an anti-AA person clearly connecting the dots.
Most anti-AA people also take a libertarian-ish view of economics and they think that wealth should be distributed based on merit. The person who works the hardest gets paid the most. The person who works the hardest should be given the most status. Not the person who "needs" it the most. I don't see what dots they're not connecting; they're being internally consistent, at any rate.
Even on utilitarianism, meritocracy is useful. The erosion of meritocratic norms and increasing resentment may cause more harm in the long run than it benefits a few black Harvard students.
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