alagold
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 3,732
- Location
- Huntsville,Al
My first point was that colleges have never just stuck to the merit system. There has always been some "play" in the system as you put it. Otherwise you wouldn't have the the quality of athletes you have at some schools, some other schools would be 75% female and some other schools would be 90% Asian. The "play" in the system used to just be about whose parents gave the most money. Now that play in many schools is handled in a more egalitarian way.
My second point was that the question ultimately isn't about letting undeserving students into the system. That just isn't going to happen as a rule. The question for several decades is really more about how to weed out all the deserving students who want to get in since you cannot admit them all. If you have room for a class of 1500 entering students but you have 30,000 apply who are all deserving of being there you better try to balance the class as best as you can to give as many people as possible as fair a shot at a quality education as possible.
a kind of interesting factoid--the U of Ala has more out-of-state students than in-state--can you think "out of state tuition" revenue--probably at the detriment of some in-state students