I saw this post by Moldbug, “Harvard to the Finland Station.”
The author sees Trump’s ultimatum to Harvard as a segue or opportunity to reform the institution. I see zero possibly of this happening, sorry to say. He writes:
As a longstanding critic of that ancient institution, I want to critique the Trump administration’s letter to Harvard. I want to like the letter. I feel it is almost good. Almost does not necessarily cut it in this kind of a historical situation, however.
Towards the end, he calls for a total reform of admissions:
The most frustrating thing about this situation is that the administration, though it does not have the power to crush Harvard under its tank treads and sell the trademark on the blockchain, may well have the power to strike effective blows which satisfy the fundamental criterion of action: an action is effective if it makes further action easier. But these strikes have to be targeted, decisive, and realistic.
It is impossible for the Department of Education to effectively order Harvard to stop filtering its “holistic” admissions for ideological alliances—the political meaning of all “diversity” programs is just that they produce reliable political clients. It is quite possible, however, for the Department of Education to find that “holistic admissions” is as unsalvageable, and as pretextual, as “separate but equal” schools in the South.
How is the Department of Education ‘supposed’ to do something when Trump wants to dissolve it? The problem with these critiques, and others like it, is they miss several points:
Harvard and other Ivy League schools have never been pure meritocracies. They never were even 50 years ago. If anything, they are more objective now compared to in the ’30s when JFK got in despite his application essay being at a 6th-grade level, which at the time was good enough to get in (his essay filled the allotted space on the application, so applicants were not expected to write longer essays). Nepotism and favoritism was way worse in the pre-War period compared to after. Instead of affirmative action, it was sub-par whites who got in.
Harvard’s mission or purpose is not admit the smartest or most-accomplished applicants, but rather those who will maximize donations and prestige to the institution, or who otherwise embody its ethos, whatever that is. This is correlated with merit, true, but not entirely. MIT is a better example of a pure meritocracy, which has no legacy program. Like West Point, Harvard seeks to mold future leaders–but for business, academia, media, or politics–instead of war.
Harvard admits too few applicants overall, and this is true of other elite schools, too. Much like a swanky night club that turns away people for not being ‘cool enough’, this is what makes them elite in the first place–the fact they are so arbitrary in regard to who gets in, compared to low-ranking schools that will admit anyone.
But Harvard admittees–despite some favoritism or legacies–are still well-above average, so it’s not as if Harvard has done away with merit altogether. Yet there is still going to be a large degree of randomness in the admissions process, even under a merit-based system. This means applicants who are well-qualified on paper sometimes being denied, which is hardly unique to Harvard, nor a new development. This happens a ton with MIT, too.
Now to address the first part, that being Trump’s ultimatum. A lot of people on the ‘right’ are misreading this as a broader indictment on the edifice or institution of higher-ed by Trump. It’s not. This is only isolated to alleged anti-Israel sentiment on campus–and Harvard and Yale’s part in not doing enough to police it. That is all. If not for the Israel issue, Trump and other Republicans would not care.
Despite complaints of DEI, Republicans do not care about wokeness in universities, credentialism, or too much student debt–only that Israel is not criticized too much. Only then are they compelled to take action. Republicans have done nothing as universities have pushed an increasingly left-wing agenda for the past century. Why is this? Only recently, in 2023, has SCOTUS challenged affirmative action, after that too went ignored for a very long time.
I posit Republicans like credentialism, even if it means more wokeness and student loan debt, because it makes hiring more efficient and easier. Credentialism is treated as an extension of the ‘free market at work’, even if said colleges are subsidized. Although credentialism is often framed as a negative in the context of online debate, credentialism is not necessarily a net-negative if it increases productivity by making it easier for companies to hire better workers and thus improves efficiency in the economy.
It may also improve consumer satisfaction. Smarter people are better at their jobs, which the data also supports. It does not have to be just white collar jobs. For example, a waitress with a degree is likely smarter and thus more likely to get your order right.
Imagine it’s 1960 and a company has 20 slots open and 100 applicants, and only 10 of those applicants have a college degree. If those 10 applicants are prioritized for an interview, what about the remaining 90? It’s not like it’s possible to interview all of them, especially if we’re talking thousands of applicants. Yet turning them all away would leave the slots unfilled and potentially deny qualified applicants who don’t have degrees, as college was much less common back then.
Moreover, having a degree even from a top school wasn’t necessarily a signifier of outlier competence, due to the lack of uniform standards or accreditation. Cheating was not only rampant back then (way worse than today or with GPT-4), but colleges had the discretion to set their own curriculum and standards, before the rise of accreditation. So having a degree pre-1980 or so, didn’t really mean that much. But nowadays, there is a much more noticeable cliff or differential of competence between college grads and non-grads. It’s so stark, it even explains post-War cultural trends in America as described by the likes of David Brooks and Charles Murray. People with degrees are really different from everyone else, and not just superficially.
In spite of wokeness, higher-ed has generally resisted the trend of dumbing-down observed elsewhere in education like high school, as evidenced by the stubbornly high dropout/attrition rate of college, at around 50% despite political correctness. So from the perspective of employers, this still makes a college degree a useful signifier or filter of baseline competence. From the post, “Online Obituaries Explain the College Wage Premium“:
Medical forums/communities are full of typos too. “I have lose bowls.” It shows how despite a high literacy rate in America and a near 90% high school graduation rate, that basic writing proficiency, which many of us may take for granted, is still difficult for many. Unlike communities which may self-select for education or IQ, everyone gets sick, so you see the full tapestry or range of ability. It can also explain why the college wage premium is so wide and persistent, as the skills gap between college grads and non-grads is so stark (secondary-school grade inflation obviously does not help either); the so-called ‘college cliff’ describes the abrupt drop-off in employer-reported competence between college grads and high school grads.
Back in the pre-1980s, the “lose bowl” people were more common in corporate America, as there was no way to easily filter those people out, and productivity hence was not as high as it could be (even though productivity was higher overall back then, due was due to low-hanging fruit having not been picked and diminishing returns to scale). Productivity and earnings would have possibly been even higher if employers had better ways to filter for talent.