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College Admission by Lottery is Interesting but Foolish
The lottery is an interesting concept. Inherently it’s a luck based system designed around selling many people the chance to win one of the few rewards you have to offer and then selecting winners at random.
The selecting winners at random part is where Harvard and Yale might have gotten off track. It turns out that elite universities were allowing elite families to pay their way into the side door right through the admission gates.
While none of us “regular people” are surprised by this shameful “revelation”- it did seem to come as quite a shock to the media and upper middle class. Now, there are cries from all directions demanding that “something be done!”
I am 100% on board for change and I think lotteries are interesting as a solution to a whole range of issues from tax compliance to recycling. But, I draw the line at academia. That cost is too great to waste on a fun experiment. Before we alter the course of an entire generation’s future, let us consider the practical implications of a college admission lottery-based system.
The Good
I’ve heard some good arguments for college admission by lottery. Most people have been citing that this is the “fairest” system, to which I reply “yes because the first lesson we want to teach our young…
