Imagine being able to goof off while studying, earning only a minimal GPA, and then make it into an Ivy League University on the basis of winning a lottery. It would be a dream come true for millions of high school and college universities who prefer partying to working hard and studying, and it may actually come true if Harvard education professor Natasha Warikoo has her way.
Decrying “meritocracy” that enables students who work hard and earn high test scores to earn a spot in one of the country’s prestigious universities, Professor Warikoo calls for a lottery system to include anyone who earns a minimal GPA. The idea behind the system is, naturally, to ensure a “diverse” campus while avoiding pesky lawsuits such as the one filed by Asian American students who were rejected from Harvard on the basis of their ethnicity.
Warikoo isn’t the only one who thinks that a lottery-based system would be best for all involved. A number of liberal journalists have embraced her theories. Many are proclaiming that the system currently used at universities isn’t really “merit-based” because so many other factors are taken into consideration.
Wealth, for instance, seems to play a large role in who gets into an ivy-league college. Rich people with connections seem to have better chances of getting their offspring into an ivy-league educational institution, as evidenced by the fact that children of the 1% wealthiest people in the country are 77 times more likely to attend a prestigious university than the child of someone in bottom 20%. What is more, many universities already use a complex system to decide who gets in and this system includes not just test scores, academic accomplishments and personal accomplishments but also race and arbitrary factors such as one’s personality and likeability.
Even so, the fact that merit alone won’t get someone into a top-tier educational institution should not be seen as grounds for making the system even more unfair. Those who promote a lottery-based system state that it would benefit those who don’t get into their dream school by helping them learn life lessons about disappointment and the need for resilience. It goes without saying that those who think these are good lessons for privileged kids to learn don’t seem to think that underprivileged kids need to learn them. In fact, they go on to state that those who don’t get into the school of their choice could at least blame it on the system rather than their poor test scores, laziness or apathetic approach to improving their own lives.
Instead of teaching humility, resilience and how to handle disappointment, a lottery system would in fact teach young people that hard work is not really all that valuable. It would ingrain in their minds that “diversity” and “fairness” is more important than learning self-discipline. It is also worth mentioning the fact that, if a lottery system were to take hold, businesses would likely value a university degree a lot less than they do now. While many companies are coming to realize that a Bachelors, Masters or Ph.D. is not as valuable as it once was, there are still many prestigious companies who put weight on a degree from a prestigious educational institution. This would likely no longer be the case if those who enter and graduate from such institutions simply got in due to “luck” rather than hard work and self-discipline.
On the other hand, perhaps moving to a lottery-based university admission system is in fact a good thing. Many educational institutions have gone from providing important skills to young people to becoming liberal indoctrination centers focusing on unimportant study courses such as gender studies and liberal arts. The quality of education being provided at many colleges and universities today is a disgrace, and even those who want to learn something valuable are often hampered by professors who care more about “micro-aggressions” and making everyone happy.
A lottery-based system may in fact make clear what many educational experts and conservative activists have been saying all along; that is, colleges and universities are failing young people by catering to their feelings rather than offering the best possible educational services.
~ Conservative Zone
After seeing the Idiocy that has come out of Harvard the last few decades… The two candidates for a job for me… Harvard on one, somewhere else on the other. I would most likely the applicant from Somewhere Else University.
Why are we so upset about liberals yet again proving us right about their double standards and hypocrisy when they are the very epitome of what they accuse conservative’s of?!
The liberal lowering of standards hurts all and everything, poor service in all industries, healthcare etc!
Asians have always valued education and sacrifice much free time to study and achieve. It is totally unfair to punish them for this when other races are not motivated to achieve to this degree?
Kudos, Susan. Apt and to the point.
Now that the current crop of graduates are firmly indoctrinated LEFT, they can start on the deplorables that elected Trump and ruined their plans for a dictatorship.
Of all the criteria that universities use for admissions, MERIT is by far the most important and the most logical. Merit WORKS. Merit-based admissions AND MERIT-BASED SCHOLARSHIPS help to assure that after college graduation, the new professionals will be COMPETENT. This is of UNIVERSAL VALUE TO THE ENTIRE POPULACE. THINK about this whenever you need surgery or dental work. Think about the quality and safety of engineered products you buy. COMPETENCE of the doctors, dentists and engineers coming out of our universities is our best assurance. Now, go ahead and MOCK me as a “meritocrat”. I won’t be offended, but rather FLATTERED. Merit WORKS. When we are forced to live by rules that forbid doing what WORKS, it becomes logically and morally obligatory to DISOBEY such rules EN MASSE.
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Richard William Faith
central Florida
If they decide to change their entrance policies to this, then they will only allow liberal and progressive students in, as they attempt now, but merit forces them to allow conservatives and Christians too, albeit not very many, and it will assure their relatives and friends an entry to their colleges and universities, similar to when politicians hire their relatives and friends for government jobs.
R/T THE IDEA OF “NON MERIT” COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY STUDENT ENTRY….GIVE US ALL A BREAK!!! AS IF WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH OF A SUPPLY OF OUR STUDENTS “BEING GRADUATED” HAVING LEARNED LITTLE.
THIS HAS TO BE ANOTHER LEFTIST PLOY PLOTTING TO ADMIT CROPS OF IGNORAMUSES LIKE OCASIO-CORTEZ, WHOSE MINDS THEY CAN EASILY FILL WITH THEIR SOCIALIST AGENDA TO FURTHER RUIN OUR COUNTRY.
ANOTHER FACET IS TO DESTROY OUR INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING, CHURCHES, FAMILIES, ETC., THAT’LL FURTHER BREAK DOWN OUR SOCIETY.
ADDITIONALLY, SUCH COLLEGE PROFESSORS WHO ADVOCATE THIS IDIOCY WON’T HAVE TO BE WORRIED ABOUT THEIR STUDENTS KNOWING MORE THAN THEY DO ABOUT WHAT THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE TEACHING. THEY PROBABLY COULDN’T PASS THEIR OWN EXAMS WITHOUT A CHEAT SHEET.
ANYONE WHO WOULD APPROVE OF, AND AGREE TO BE INVOLVED IN A FARCE LIKE THIS, HAS TO BE A POT HEAD BY NIGHT AND AN LSD DAY TRIPPER WHEN THE SUN RISES.
THEN WE WONDER WHY FOREIGN STUDENTS OUT-WORK, OUT-CLASS, OUT-PERFORM OUR OWN. THE CHINESE ARE A HUGE THREAT AND HERE WE ARE PUTTING UP WITH THE SCOURGE OF THE FUNGAL LEFTISTS.
Probably the best way to solve this problem is to have a lottery for the professors. At the end of the year, do a twofold process. First, have a lottery drawing for tenure. Have 10% of the professors available for the lottery, the ones who successfully win their tenure are safe for that year, the second part is, the ones who don’t win the lottery are evaluated and the bottom 10% are fired and a new group of people can apply for professorship. After a few years the possibility of the professors actually teaching what should be the thickheaded unaccountable professors might actually start teaching their subjects trying to get their students educated.
You have to look at this from the leftist indoctrination perspective. They want to indoctrinate generations of leftists to wrest power and control from any semblance of conservatism. How are they doing this these days? By taking kids who may not be prepared or don’t possess the ability to succeed in the rigors of college level coursework, and lying to them. It is evident in admissions standards being very different for people of color versus the white and Asian contingents. You lower admission standards for people of color, you take points away from whites and Asians, you add UNEARNED points to college aptitude test scores all while lowering the GPA requirements for people of color to much lower levels. Here’s the insidious part. You now have students who have been set up to fail or at least struggle, and you are also saddling them with a huge debtload. Then when they either drop out or graduate with a rather useless degree, use Social Justice as a prime example. Then they get out into the real world where you must earn enough to provide for yourself, and your family while managing untenable student loan debt. So you just created a lifelong government dependent with few skill to offer on a long term basis, Companies may balk at hiring them or start them off low and hope they can teach them enough skills to become an asset worth the long term investment by said companies. It’s all set up to create ever more governmental dependence, aka Democratic voters. The TRUE bottom line here.
While silly on its face, this policy deep down will work against the very people it is designed to help. We have already seen what happens when you admit students that are not adequately prepared for the university. Not too long ago many universities implemented quotas to assure diversity. Assuming you keep the graduation requirements the same, admitting people who are not properly prepared only serves to increase the dropout rate. At the same time, those people might have done well at a different university where their qualifications met the requirements of the university.
These misfits waste both human and physical resources. While at the university they take up classroom space that could have beed devoted to people that could succeed and help further society. At the same time they become a failure and likely will never achieve as much in life as they would had they been a success at a school where they were qualified.
As one who has personally experienced this problem, I can assure you that it takes an immense amount of perseverance, and mental stability to overcome this sort of failure then manage to find a way to succeed in life. It is mental hell when your first three grading periods in at the university receive a grade of 0.9, 1.0, and 0.9 on a 4 point scale. To add to the defeat you must then tell your parents who paid for your failure that you have been kicked out of school.
All the people I knew, save one, gave up. They went home to work in a trade after this happened. What a waste of human potential. It is unfortunate that younger people can not seem to understand this problem. If they did they would not even casually propose admitting people to a university that are not fully prepare to complete the course of study. It is a bad deal for the individual. It is a bad deal for the university, and it is a bad deal for society.
If “Ivy League” colleges/universities start using “lottery system” for entry requirement in place of “merit” will the student still be required to “pass” each course? If they can’t excel in high school how are they going to make it in an “ivy league” school? Will they be perpetual freshman because they can’t pass the required courses and would need to retake the courses until they can pass them or will the grading system also be lowered to allow “everyone” to pass? Sounds to me that the “ivy league” schools will be equal to community colleges and no longer be classified as “ivy league”! Why would you be willing to ruin your current reputation of being an “ivy league” school just to be able to accommodate slackers and change your reputation to “community college”? The achievers will find another merit based university and yours will be full of slackers! Good luck with that! Talk about “dummying them down”!
Ms. Natasha Warikoo,
WE might as well choose the faculty by lottery, For instance, we can take away your tenured position at Harvard and give it to someone more deserving, perhaps an illegal alien minority criminal, to give Harvard more diversity.
Sounds fair!!!
I rather like the idea of implementing this plan with the faculty and administration first. That way they can see the “merit” of this application of diversity.
This nonsense rates right up there with the ones that decided a few years back that they should just get a diploma for attending even if they failed every class.
What makes a country great, is invention , innovation, and actual ability to think for themselves not just be a cog in some political machinery.
Lately universities have not wanted people who can invent, innovate, and especially none that think for themselves.
They have instead about trying to create mindless cogs that do whatever they are told by those with the same political agenda as the “school” that indoctrinated them instead of educating them.
This became blatantly obvious when these universities used the flimsiest excuses to avoid “controversy” by allowing dissenting opinions to censored and those having them harassed for daring to reject the indoctrination and actually find out the real facts on subjects instead of just mindlessly accepting the propaganda most of these “schools” spout as if they are fact.
I doubt if this will ever come to fruition. Harvard is prestigious, and isn’t going to give up any of that money by allowing someone in who can’t pay. Also, if they start “giving away” admissions, then it lessens the degree for those who worked their butts off to get in there. They’ll become just another liberal university that means nothing in the real world. But if they do decide to ‘go for it’ then start taking away tenure from professors and let them complete with those who “win the lottery.” Perhaps they should start with the moron who wrote this article.
Solution – get rid of Professor!
Harvard forgot all about Merit when they admitted B. Obama into the University. They can’t fight this statement because B. Obama had his records sealed.
the next step is surely to remove grades so everyone passes – imbeciles
Do these people even consider the future of society? Can they even think beyond their nose or strategize at all? What is wrong with them? Well ok then….Good bye Harvard….do what you want….most of the Harvard graduates for the past few decades are idiots anyway.
The Lottery! Benefits without Effort! FREE EVERYTHING! Free Healthcare For ALL ( Forget who is paying for this! We supposedly have a Magician somewhere who will take care of it) Free Schooling? Who pays for it ?? DON’T WORRYA ABOUT IT! Someone Somewhere ‘Should be paying for it”
NOW THIS IS WHAT I AGREE ON AND THERE ARE MANY WHO AGREE WITH ME! WHAT ARE THE STUDENTS IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES LEARNING FROM THEIR “PROFESSORS “ NOTHING BUT THE “DEMOCRATIC” WAY!’ WASTED TIME & MONEY!
STOP SUPPORTING ALL COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES WITH OUR TAX DOLLARS!!
OUR TAX DOLLARS ARE MISMANAGED! THE OUTRAGE WAGES, ABSOLUTELY UNDESERVED!!
How to create a snowflakes? The liberal lowering of standards to pacify certain people and things> Beware the unpatriotic democrats, rhinos and liberals and especially their tool the bought out biased medias propaganda LIES!
This sounds like a GHREAT IDEA!!!
BUT FIRST lets start with the professors. DE-Tenure all the existing positions and open up the positions to any professor in the country who would like to work for Harvard and hire the replacements by Random selection.
Once this is complete you won’t have to worry about student selection as Harvard will not be so great.
How does this sound Natasha Warikoo
Good grief. This article itself is total BS.
First, the Harvard “professor” is not a professor. She has the rank of Associate Professor.
Second…contrary to the (unbelievably stupid) statement and premise that you can goof off, just pass, and get into Harvard (or Yale, Brown, Stanford, etc.) is not at all what she said. Her premise was to take all the students who HAVE THE MERIT to get in, put them in a lottery pool and make your class of these people. That is her way of eliminating possible bias and complaints that some groups are discriminated against. She also pointed out, in her Dec 17 2017 article, that there are just too many well qualified students to be accommodated by these prestigious schools.
As for Harvard…a long time ago when I went there, we were told that Admissions could have filed the entire class with just high school valedictorians. Now they can do that twice.
Much learning at these schools is by conversing (and arguing at 2 AM) with your classmates. Harvard admits a “diverse,” but fully qualified, class, and, as noted, has plenty of potential “admittees” to choose from. Why admit a full 2000 person class of all Asians, or of all male prep school white males? As for diversity, Harvard’s current admitted class is only 48% white…versus over 80% whites in America. As for Asians…Harvard’s admitted class has 19%…versus only 6% in America…so…would those suing Asians think it fine to kick out the overage, so Harvard is only 6% Asian?
Harvard could admit a full class of students who scored 2400…it admits plenty, so that even the 75th percentile of incoming students scored 2400. But there are qualities considered in evaluating the entire person…and the Asians don’t like that.
This is just another example of “political correctness” run amok! “Lottery based” admissions is the worst idea for potential students, but, a great idea for liberal teachers and so-called “professors”. Students that don’t work hard to “earn” admission into college are probably a good reason for these teachers and professors not to have to work hard to challenge young minds that WANT to be challenged, rather than “skate thru” school with mediocrity. Students that don’t want to work hard allows teachers to not have to work hard. Is it any wonder teachers and professors that don’t want to work hard would rather have less challenging students to teach??!!
EVIDENTLY SHE’S BEEN SMOKING WEED AND HER BRAIN HAS BEEN ALTERED SOMEWHAT! EVERYONE IS NOT THE SAME INTELLECTUALLY AND THERE’S NO REASON NOT TO HAVE GRADES FOR ACHIEVEMENT.
IF YOU WANT EVERYONE TO BE THE SAME THERE WOULD BE NO DIVERSITY AND WE WOULD END LIKE THE USSR WAS FOR MANY YEARS.
I believe all Universities/colleges should be re-testing their professors on the subjects they are supposed to be teaching on a yearly bases. Some of these teachers have gone off of what they are supposed to be teaching to just became a liberal activist.
I bet you they can’t pass a test of the subjects they profess teaching.
Maybe they won’t come up with these crazy ideas in the first place.
Here’s the deal you input into any system garbage, you will get out garbage. If the benighted “professor” had a brain in her head, she would know that if you allow nothing but slugs and neer-do-wells into your precious “prestige” universities, they won’t be prestigious very long. They are prestigious and hard to get into because they have STANDARDS!!
I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1968. I’m not sure when the Corps started accepting draftees, but it was a horrible decision. They never “shaped up” and in my humble opinion, a discredit to the Corps. I’m sure there were a few that turned out, but that can be attributed to randomness in the universe. I will point out that I am not stupid, as many might think because I was enlisted I was released from active duty as a Captain F-4J pilot.
Harvard’ been turning out Garbage for Years OBAMA graduated from there in 1991 so all they have become is a
Diploma Mill like most of the Colleges in this Country over the past few Decades. Colleges Lower their own Standards
When they HIRE Teachers like this that preform Indoctrination instead of Education. Even the Wizard of OZ can hand a
Scarecrow a Diploma and Declare he had a Brain. When I joined up and took my Military Aptitude Test I beat out 15 College Students with a score of 95 they went to basic I went to Officer’s Candidate School.
While in the Army I saw the effects of the liberal doctrine of “you are awesome because you exist.” For a lot of those soldiers, it was initially difficult for them to understand their actions had real world consequences.
The standard Bell Curve grading system in law schools is now a method to rid the schools of those they discriminate against, the older students, and conservative students. It also a method to create a racial quota. School elitist professors see older students not capable of their self believed greatness, since not having decades to practice before death. Conservative students are a threat, there is no room for political freedom unless, It is liberal ideology driven.
Eliminate grades and base admissions on a lottery? Fits perfectly. There is a video of Obama talking to black college students about to graduate. He said hard work and perseverance don’t count – success is just luck.
Too old fashioned I guess, but if I was looking to fill a position for a systems engineer, I would not spend time on a person who had no grades and an ‘attendance diploma.’