I think universities have a sort of impossible position.
One direction, heavily pushed by industry and government, is that they should be a sorting mechanism, identifying the best and most capable students so they can be discovered by industry.
Another direction, pushed by government, is that they should be centers of learning and scholarship, capable of producing high quality research and researchers.
These two goals are not mutually exclusive, but they are not particularly compatible, either. Exams are essentially a giant distraction and stressor on the whole learning process, but they are also essential for the first objective. Deep, foundational course material is basically mandatory for the second objective, but the first objective prefers material closer to vocational training.
For the first objective, parents and students know that the best institution is the most prestigious one. For the second one, the best institution is the one with the best researchers and teachers.
For the first objective, it's better (if you can afford it) if the course is incredibly expensive. The biggest predictor of success is the wealth of your parents, so when your peers all have wealthy parents, you are likely to be connected to a large number of successful people.
For the second objective, it's best if school is free, so the truly interested and talented are not excluded.
For me, the position of the university as a societal institution is threefold:
1) Foster deep, foundational learning in an interested and talented portion of the populous.
2) Fund basic research, give academia a home, and further scientific progress.
3) Act as a filtration mechanism.
But I think these goals are different, and are now becoming so clearly differentiated they must be split apart. The university as an institution is probably best suited to fund research and science. Filtration mechanisms can be established with independent standardized testing and learning programs like Lambda School and OpenClassrooms etc. Deep, foundational learning is possible online, and parts of this learning could be delegated to colleges specialized in specific fields (medicine, technology, etc.).
I would also expect things like community colleges to spring up for associates-degree level education and vocational training.
which begs the question - why must university be a filtration system such that others (like employers) get to have a free-ride off of it?
Presumably it's just an unintended consequence of university study and qualification - that employers don't want the expense of sorting out candidates, and that someone capable of graduating with a degree must have some level of competency.
So, what if the gov't make university degree something that employers cannot discriminate with - like race or religion. If they want to ensure their candidate is capable, they can administer a test (or pay a central examination service provider for such a test). A candidate looking for jobs do not require a university degree, but do require taking this test (or have taken a prior test and show the results).
This way, university can remain "pure", rather than a gateway which people pay as an entry-fee for employment.
Employers don't want the liability of sorting. They are outsourcing the legal status of being non-discriminatory.
If a large company were to give an IQ test to every applicant, they would get sued and asked to prove it does not discriminate against a protected class. If a large company hires only from Harvard, they just say that Harvard is non-discriminatory, so that policy is as well
> If a large company were to give an IQ test to every applicant, they would get sued and asked to prove it does not discriminate against a protected class. If a large company hires only from Harvard, they just say that Harvard is non-discriminatory, so that policy is as well
It is just as easy to prove that a pro-elite-university hiring practice has a differential impact on a variety of protected classes as one that uses an IQ test, and there's probably better evidence for lots of jobs that performance is predicted by IQ test results, to overcome the presumption of disparate impact discrimination from the differential impact.
IQ tests, however, have a greater cultural awareness of the potential for illegality, which probably translates to a greater risk of an employee talking to an attorney and thus a suit being filed in the first place.
Hiring from elite universities exclusively is a safer way to discriminate because there's less chance that the victims will seek redress, not because it outsources responsibility.
> It is just as easy to prove that a pro-elite-university hiring practice has a differential impact on a variety of protected classes as one that uses an IQ test, and there's probably better evidence for lots of jobs that performance is predicted by IQ test results, to overcome the presumption of disparate impact discrimination from the differential impact.
If this is true, then why haven't elite universities been successfully sued for discriminatory admissions (recently that is)?
> If this is true, then why haven't elite universities been successfully sued for discriminatory admissions (recently that is)?
Employment and educational discrimination are covered by different laws, so it's not the same question, and,
Even if the standards applied were the same, whether admissions are illegally discriminatory and whether hiring by graduation is would be very different questions.
tho it doesn't have to be an IQ test. It could be the same sort of examination a university would administer for their degrees for their field. Except the result of the test is independent from the degree, and you can take the test without having paid for a degree (you just pay for the test - or the bill is picked up by employer, or whatever arrangement the market settles on).
Normal universities in France do this (no filtering), it comes with a bunch of issues as well, notably that special schools / programs do filter and they end up being seen as more prestigious.
> But I think these goals are different, and are now becoming so clearly differentiated they must be split apart.
I disagree, I think a demonstrable strength of the Anglo-Saxon university system is the integration of teaching and research. Look at countries especially in Europe that don't integrate and see how their universities suffer.
In my experience in an American school, most of the professors are only interested in their research and not the teaching. The ones that were only teaching because they liked it and not doing any research were much better at it.
But the relatively weak performance of for example French universities (split between teaching and research) compared to British, American or Swiss universities (unified) suggests that the outcome is not as you think.
One direction, heavily pushed by industry and government, is that they should be a sorting mechanism, identifying the best and most capable students so they can be discovered by industry.
Another direction, pushed by government, is that they should be centers of learning and scholarship, capable of producing high quality research and researchers.
These two goals are not mutually exclusive, but they are not particularly compatible, either. Exams are essentially a giant distraction and stressor on the whole learning process, but they are also essential for the first objective. Deep, foundational course material is basically mandatory for the second objective, but the first objective prefers material closer to vocational training.
For the first objective, parents and students know that the best institution is the most prestigious one. For the second one, the best institution is the one with the best researchers and teachers.
For the first objective, it's better (if you can afford it) if the course is incredibly expensive. The biggest predictor of success is the wealth of your parents, so when your peers all have wealthy parents, you are likely to be connected to a large number of successful people.
For the second objective, it's best if school is free, so the truly interested and talented are not excluded.