When I grew up in South Africa admission to college depended on, and only on, the grades you got in high school (assuming of course that you were white). No essays, no sports, no nothing
This economically rational behavior is hard to acknowledge openly, however, without imperiling the (enormous) tax advantages universities enjoy as non-profit corporations (as well as the status they enjoy as disinterested sponsors of scholarship and learning.)
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Yes, I kind of give up. I cannot see any solution except a societal change. Again, when I was in undergrad: an English degree was s route to a high school teacher; sociology to a social worker; math to PhD rarely, or to math teacher. Etc. college wasn’t a route to status per se
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I would maintain, again, that at the heart of the whole business is simply money. Is higher education a public good, like the interstate highway system? Or is it a luxury? For the past forty years, state and federal budgets have implicitly defined higher education as a luxury.
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After all, non-profit corporations get tax breaks because they plausibly claim to serve a public good. But the more universities come to resemble other less noble, straightforwardly profit-maximizing economic actors, the less viable appears their claim to special dispensations.
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