Affirmative action is over. What was, for so many of us, a staple of the admissions process has been relegated to the dustbin of history. Make no mistake: this is not merely a minor policy change or insignificant legal handwringing.
No, last week we saw the Supreme Court reaffirm the central tenet of America herself: meritocracy. But it’s not enough.
A faux egalitarian society
A supposedly egalitarian democracy only works when everyone has the same opportunity to climb the social ladder. Why, after all, should the ostensible peasant consent to his governance by the elite? In the old days of aristocracy, the answer was simple: don’t give the peasant the chance to consent.
Today though, we live in—or at least pretend we live in—a representative democracy. We have no blood right monarchs or landed gentry; rather, the promise of America is that all are set loose on a level playing field and the very best rise to the top. The elite are justified by the merit of their excellence, not the genetic lottery.
But the current system is a fraud. America is no more a meritocracy than Imperial Russia. Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than college admissions.
Just like medieval Europe, the children of aristocrats enjoy innumerable privileges. A lineage of Ivy League graduates will immediately place you in front of the line for admission to the best schools on the planet– a one-way ticket to success in our culture. How is this possible? Legacy admissions. For the unacquainted, colleges give preference to children of their alumni to create a “legacy” of students.
There are many good reasons to support legacy admissions. Creating intergenerational loyalty to an institution is a wonderful thing – that Cornell can be passed down from grandfather to grandson is beautiful. One place, even if only for four years, can profoundly link a family together.
The downside is the potential entrenchment of a permanent elite. Those of us who break in from outside this demesne are vanishingly rare. Even more so are those who break in without the aid of programs like affirmative action.
RELATED: Is Cornell abandoning the idea of liberal education? Yes.
Race discrimination in higher education, plus legacy consideration, leave vanishingly few seats left for ‘other’ applicants. There are many factors working against the poor Appalachian kids with no connections, no socioeconomic privilege, and no federal program looking out for them.
America isn’t a nation in the traditional sense. We are linked by a shared culture and shared connection to a set of ideas. One of those ideas, one of the foundational ideas, is meritocracy. How can we continue asking people to commit themselves to a nation founded on a fraudulent promise?
The system breaks down without the promise that, no matter who you are or where you’re from, you can ‘make it’ in this country. The scales, finally, evened out ever so slightly today. After decades of well-intentioned discrimination, someone has finally said “enough.”
Make no mistake, I am no opponent of legacy admissions. The benefits of cultivating intergenerational loyalty to an institution are a model for our entire society. Additionally, legacy admissions can—however infrequently—assist geographically or socioeconomically diverse applicants.
Cornell, unlike Harvard, sells itself as the common man’s Ivy. While one could argue that Harvard especially has a history of aristocracy, this is not the case with all colleges. Cornell rather quickly ditched the fascinations of the elite—Latin, Greek, the Classics—in favor of ‘practical’ fields and ventures. Applying intellectual rigor to agriculture and engineering was Cornell’s foremost innovation.
The corollary to this is that Cornell has become obsessed with ‘practical’ fields. At the expense of the liberal arts, pre-professional studies and organizations have become the darling of the average Cornell student. Concerns with post-graduation income predominate among the student body, which once again begs the question of whether socioeconomic status should be considered in admissions.
What kind of Cornell do we want?
So many opponents of affirmative action implore universities to ignore any factor beyond the numbers. I suppose they would have us take everyone with an SAT score of 1600 and jettison the rest. That’s wrong, too.
Proponents of affirmative action do not err when they desire that colleges take a diverse crop of applicants; rather, they err in the categories they value. I’m sure many benefits would follow from a new student class filled with those of varying socioeconomic status, regional origin, interests, and desires for what comes after Cornell.
None of these forms of diversity necessarily follow from racial preferences or quotas.
If every Cornell recruit hails from prep schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Westchester County, New York, it doesn’t matter how racially diverse the class is– they will all come from the same background.
The—revolutionary—solution is simple: judge people as individuals.
The success of a new class should not be measured by racial composition. Inherent in Cornell’s ingenious design, each new class must be diverse. Cornell is not just a liberal arts college or polytechnic institute. It’s both of those things, but also a hotel school, agricultural powerhouse, leader in medical, veterinary, and scientific innovation, et cetera.
In accepting a class fit for all of these fields, Cornell will already have a far more intellectually diverse student body than almost any other school on the planet. Best of all, race is not required!
Consideration of individual circumstance is lawful and desirable
In the past week, usage of the phrase “I’m in favor of socioeconomic affirmative action” has increased one-thousandfold. Commentators who support this policy mean to say that we should play the same grievance game with class as we did with race: use college admissions to account for social inequality. There’s really only one problem: utopian social engineering does not work.
We should not use the blunt instrument of college admissions to repair previous harms– real or imagined. Rather, the best way forward is judging the circumstances of every individual. Instead of assuming that an applicant is oppressed because of his skin color, Cornell should read his essay, peruse his recommendations, and digest his transcripts.
The aforementioned poor kids from Appalachia do not have access to the same resources (be they test prep, extracurricular activities, etc.) that many coastal elites do. The affirmative action solution to this problem would be to note the student’s place of origin and automatically assume that he needs extra compensation. I propose something different: note the student’s origins and ask the difficult but all-important question of did he do the best he could with what he had?
The promise of Cornell is the promise of America. Anyone, if he is smart, hardworking, and tenacious enough, can rise to the top. For many decades, foolhardy ambitions of taking revenge for an unjust past thwarted that project. Now, we must resist the urge to stack the deck for another group of people.
RELATED: Now that affirmative action is gone, what’s next for Cornell?
The Court has told us what the law is. President Pollack has promised that Cornell will comply, but universities around the country are already searching for ways to continue racial preference in admissions, exploiting gaps in the ruling. Or in the words of Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson, “The Supreme Court gave universities a narrow opening, and Harvard just announced it’s going to drive an affirmative action truck right through it.”
Cornell, and indeed America at large, are still not meritocracies. We’re much closer now than we were last week, but we cannot allow shadowy bureaucracies in the depths of Day Hall to resurrect racial preference. Sunlight in the admissions process, open dialogue about the values we consider, and due deference to the spirit of the Court’s decision might just lead us to a future where we can say: “any person, any study, any skin color.”
