No, not here. 100% of MIT admissions should go to pupils who are the most capable of succeeding and who are already the best prepared to succeed before they arrive. Utopia aside, as a society we require elite science and engineering ability. If we don't have it we lose out to another society that doesn't do this incessant navel gazing, simple as that. To whatever extent "starting point" is a problem it should be remediated entirely upstream from admission into the world's most prestigious technical university.
If someone has "elite science and engineering" ability and came from a background where they were raised by a family with a household wealth of $5, and someone has a slightly more "elite science and engineering" ability and was raised by a family with a household wealth of $1,000,000, I am not confident that long term the second person will be the greater innovator.
I've never seen somebody who opposes meritocracy actual suggest taking starting points into consideration - instead, they demand that easily observable, intrinsic physical characteristics be used as a proxy for "starting point".
But there are a number of studies demonstrating how race & class impact things (when controlled for other factors) like teacher perception, grading, letters of recommendation, not to mention just the fact that if you are growing up in a black (or white) household that has $5 in wealth, you'll have less access to educational opportunity than the white (or black, albeit far more rarely) household with $200,000 in wealth.
xanaxagoras|3 years ago
MiroF|3 years ago
commandlinefan|3 years ago
MiroF|3 years ago
We shouldn't seek to control for these factors?