The recent Supreme Court decision overturning the legality of affirmation action in Harvard admissions has been met with all kinds of reactions. There is hand-wringing and rejoicing. There is disdainful headshaking and disdainful crowing. A lot of that is about affirmative action. But there are some additional observations we can make about the reactions to the decision.
The strong feelings attached to this case aren’t just about affirmative action, they are another example of how passionately we believe in the “elite” schools. It really almost doesn’t matter how good other schools can be, or how much more other schools can sometimes lead to success, we believe in a handful of brand names when it comes to colleges. It’s Ivy League or bust for far too many people.
Our overconfidence in places like Harvard can be a threat to our overconfidence in ourselves. Almost 2,000 students applied for the Harvard class of 2027, and less than 4% got admitted. There simply aren’t enough slots for all of the excellent students that exist. For many of them, it’s impossible to believe that anyone else was more qualified or a better fit than they were. That’s not to say that admissions policies are perfect as is (or as were), but there is actually no way that all seemingly qualified candidates could be admitted. It’s an impossibility. If we only believe in the brand names, we might have to believe a little less in ourselves when reality hits or we might believe that there is malice afoot or, hopefully we can believe something better than those first two options. (It’s worth noting, admissions doesn’t tell you why you got in or why you didn’t. We are forced to speculate.)
It’s not just Harvard or bust for the applicants. The fact that so many people are angry that Harvard—a private university—has used affirmative action in their admissions is kind of curious. Why do we care? We’re not paying for it. Most of us are not Harvard alums or have children who would like to be. We clearly care, in part, because we believe that Harvard is a “kingmaker” and that it turns out our future leaders. Many of us are basically acknowledging that we think Harvard fills some kind of public role in determining the future of our polity. It’s kind of strange considering that we could simply put more resources into our public universities or at least bring in initiatives to help their graduates hit the ground running. But we don’t.
We envy these places, but we would never dream to emulate them. We’ve been cutting off resources from public universities and limiting the kinds of majors our public university students can have. This, of course, only increases the power of the private, elite university. We want public universities to train people to be workers, not necessarily thinkers. Meanwhile Princeton grads get to study classics and “irrelevant” things like that and still go on to be successful. Yale is committed to the liberal arts. We are upset when elite colleges deny admission to a larger number of students, but we decline to offer the kind of education they do to the numerous public university students, when we can. Why?
Some of this obsession with admissions is a way of admitting that we do believe in higher education and elites and that they are far from over. Some of the people who oppose affirmative action claim to dislike higher education altogether because they believe it is liberal. Some of the people who oppose affirmative action are against the people that they call “coastal elites”—who certainly go to schools like Harvard. So, why do we want so badly to be admitted to these universities? If they are corrupt and corrupting, we shouldn’t care so much about getting in. We should want fewer smart people to get in. We should actually prefer that they have preferences that leave some elite students to other universities.
Obviously, plenty of people have had more serious reactions to the Supreme Court decision for more serious reasons. Not everything is about elite universities or self-image. This case won’t only affect Harvard. Admissions policies are everywhere. Yet the strong feelings surrounding the case and the sense of importance so many Americans seem to attach to a handful of private schools suggest the need for more imagination in and about higher education.