That American higher education is not a pure meritocracy is, of course, hardly news. But Golden’s book has a level of detail about the degree to which he says some colleges favor the privileged that will embarrass many an admissions officer. Golden names names of students — and includes details about their academic records before college and once there that raise questions about the admissions decisions being made. For good measure, he attacks Title IX (saying that the women’s teams colleges create favor wealthy, white applicants), preferences for faculty children (ditto, although substitute middle class for wealthy), and accuses colleges of making Asian applicants the “new Jews” and holding them to much higher standards than other students.
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Comments:
The issue for me is diversity. None of the non-merit-based selection criteria mentioned here bother me, because they in fact promote diversity. But to complete the circle, universities should also engage in affirmative action, bringing minority students to campus who would otherwise not qualify. I would be interested in knowing whether, in the lawsuits that arose concerning affirmative action, lawyers for the defendant schools presented evidence regarding all of the ways in which criteria other than "merit" factor into admissions decisions. I suspect they trod pretty carefully.
