Why YSK: because what seems like equal situation from surface isn’t always equal opportunity for all. And even when equal measure of help is provided, it might not be equally useful.
The toughness of the conditions aren’t the point of merit-based entry. The point is matching where someone is now, to where the school can take them.
How do you decide what majors people should be allowed to take? If money was no object, there would be many many more liberal arts type majors that don’t directly contribute monetarily to society nearly as much as other professions.
Doing what’s good for you and others is often very different from doing what’s good monetarily.
In my country university is free, some have a test you have to pass because there are so many people that want to go, but those are law and medicine. And most people drop out in the first year.
Otherwise it’s not really an issue.
Agreed.
And we should give extra points to people who grew up in disadvantaged situations but still had decent grades. A ‘C’ in AP History by someone working a job in high school, is just as good as someone who got an ‘A’ And didn’t have to work.
Merit isn’t just a good GPA. It takes into account all of the things that made it some more difficult for a person. Getting a decent score on an SAT exam when you went to a shit school, should be able to get you into a good college. But the reality is someone who lived in a zip code with better schools is more likely to get into that college purely by where they grew up. And you tend to grow up in a good neighborhood if you’re parents were well off or had a degree themselves.
Purely looking at grades and scores is bad. Unfortunately, people of color tend (not always) be from worse neighborhoods. They tend to have a lot of disadvantages when it comes to getting good grades and good scores. Affirmative action is/was supposed to break the cycle. It’s supposed to help give a little more merit to the situations surrounding grades Ultimately, it’s supposed to diversify the nicer neighborhoods.
An issue is that lower income areas often have less focus on things like test taking skills, so genuine ability is really hard to distinguish from test taking practice.
Also, schools in lower income areas often aren’t nearly as good, forcing a cycle of poverty since they can’t get into college very easily at all.
You know what ISN’T merit? …simply being born part of some special group that gets preferential treatment based on the most meaningless of things.
Merit could be anything from HS grades to SAT scores or placement in various scholarly competitions. Income level should be mixed in there as well.
Do we want to live in an equitable world? Then stop dividing people over stupid shit.