Four years ago, my high school pal earned acceptance at all eight Ivy League institutions, but decided to stay at home and commute to the State University at Buffalo's Honors program. Four years later, through scholarship he has made a profit off his education, and rests just shy of a 4.0 GPA. An engineering major with side interests in law, politics and music; he anticipates a spring graduation that leaves him without a job.
On the treadmill over Winter break, my friend and I were able to identify the root of his dilemma. Going to State U., no matter what the record of achievement, fails to bring the same opportunities enjoyed by the lucky few at America's elite universities. Over-achieving peers, elite faculty, corporate recruiting and alumni contacts produce avenues of access not available at less prestigious universities. I have an almost insurmountable competitive advantage over my friend, and it starts with the name Dartmouth.
Social scientists have been working at illuminating my treadmill notion. In an editorial in the January 5, 1996 edition of "The Chronicle of Higher Education," Phillip Cook, a professor of public policy at Duke, and Robert H. Frank, a professor of economics at Cornell, explain that an increasingly small number of universities are becoming "gateways" to America's highest paying jobs.
More than ever before, ability and achievement buy a ticket to the top universities. Growth in income has allowed middle class families to afford elite tuition. Travel costs have become lower, attracting faraway students. The top institutions have concentrated recruitment in nontraditional areas of the student market.
Barriers have been removed, the playing field leveled, and what Cook and Frank shy away from pronouncing is that a relative meritocracy now exists. Top students attend the very top universities, and graduate to attain high status jobs. In the process, the success of the top universities breeds further success. The prestige gap between Ivy League University and State U. increases.
Top students have access to the most intelligent faculty, and to each other. They network to obtain society's top jobs. Because of the meritocracy of admission to the elite university, top jobs are increasingly filled by the best and the brightest.
Good for us, right? Stop to consider the societal costs. As Cook and Frank explain, students who come from disadvantaged educational environments or those that do not bloom intellectually until college, find themselves increasingly behind Ivy League graduates in the race for the best jobs. Even top students like my friend at the University at Buffalo, who discount the promise of future reward offered by an Ivy League school for the immediate tuition benefit of State U., suffer from lack of access to the network of merit amassed at an elite university. Thus from the Ivy League emerges an "overclass" of the best and brightest -- an aristocracy of intellect.
Now throw into the equation a variable that Cook and Frank do not consider. What if the elite universities of America, like the California state university system, were to eliminate admission preferences based on race and ethnicity? Such a development is difficult to imagine, but still possible. The degree of meritocracy, based on test scores and high school achievement ,would increase while societal cost would escalate. Disproportionate numbers of historically underachieving racial and ethnic groups would be denied access to the "overclass."
The above are sobering thoughts. Meritocracy forces society to face certain realities. One is that the difference between elite university and State U. widens at an alarming rate. Another is that affirmative action programs are often masking agents, or symptom mitigators. In the case of college admissions, they hide the delinquency of an American educational system, society, and culture that does not provide an equitable education for young people from specific geographic, economic and racial groups.
