Please consider writing more on this. The angle about how different sub-cultures in our society approach the idea of meritocracy, I think it's a key one. When brought up, the discussion often quickly moves into heated specifics about affirmative action, race and quotas. I think there is something so key in the grander big picture of how different cultural groups approach and have approached assimilating into American society. For me, it's really one of the big stories about America.

since strict meritocracy doesn't seem to me to actually be a particularly worthy social ideal.

Part of it is that we don't have a very fine model for determining merit. It's easy to distinguish between those who are accepted to Yale and those who have to go to Harvard, for example, but it's much harder to draw substantive distictions of merit between members of the top 10% of students at Yale. What does it mean to be more meritorious (usually some value of future expectations) and how good are our models for predicting it, etc.

Meritocracy is one of the lingering nineties ideals that is uncritically accepted by both major political parties, yet at heart it is philosophically bankrupt, at least to the extent that it is proscribed.

I don't even know what a "meritocracy" is.  Is Bush the product of a meritocracy?  Is the guy I grew up with, who was certainly smarter than me (and Bush), but ended up on drugs and eventually a murder victim, simply one of life's losers because he didn't merit better than his fate?  The word is a joke, used by people who refuse to acknowledge all the benefits that give them a head start in a competitive society.  

"Well I earned my way, I didn't ask for any handouts," I've heard people say.  No, but they got them by virtue of birth -- a stable home life with expectations of a certain level of achievement, the knowledge that they will fit in to society and never suffer from discrimination because they look different or have a different set of values from the norm.  "Meritocracy" is a word people use to fool themselves into thinking they are better than they would have been had they not gotten lucky by birth.  Very, very few people earn what they achieve largely as a result of their own merits.  

I'll have to temporarily beg off, since the data's in the book and the book's not with me in the office. Suffice it to say that the DOJ's civil rights division launched an inquiry into whether Harvard's admissions office was illegally discriminating against Asian-American applicants in the late 1980s. Harvard's defense was that there was no quota in place (that would be illegal) but that the factors I cited just all happen to tilt against Asian applicants. The DOJ accepted that as a legal defense. Nevertheless, the proportion of Asian-American students started going up during the years of the controversy. Then in the mid-1990s, with attention off the issue the proportion started dropping again back down to where it was before the investigation began.

Matt

What do you mean by informal caps?  When my parents were at Penn Stassen ended the quota system there.  Do you mean there weren't rigid numbers or that the caps were not written down?

Why is meritocracy unworthwhile?  It is not the only worthwhile social goal and it must be balanced against other goals, but everyone benefits when productive resources are most efficiently allocated.  That means that I want medical schools to be biased towards people with the best ability and willingness to practice medicine rather than just towards people with the correct race and/or family income.  If doctors earn unfairly much income, then that should be corrected through other means.  However, incompetant people shouldn't be admitted into the best schools simply because they are of the correct race.  However, we can also try to balance inequities in society by creating other educational opportunities that benefit people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.  Admission criteria do not need to be watered down, but the price of education can be lowered for the disadvantaged to encourage them to seek more education and redress past wrongs.  Meritocracy is not bad, it just isn't the only priority.

It is somewhat of a big deal that elite colleges are arranging things to keep out asian-americans. Emphasis on extracurricular activities in particular seems really suspect to me.

Here's a WaPo column that gives some background on the Asian-American quota issue.  Let me just say that, as an Asian-American UMich Law student who attended during the height of the affirmative action litigation, and as Berkeley student during the Prop 209 affirmative action debate, I've participated in numerous debates on affirmative action, especially as it relates to Asian American students.

It's a complicated issue, made more complex by the fact that the "Asian" rubric is comprised of various ethnic groups, ranging from the mostly underprivileged, low-income Filipinos and Hmong, to the largely affluent children of Chinese and Korean immigrants from the 80s, to the Nissei eighth or ninth generation Americans who had grandparents put in internment camps.  Some schools have admissions policies that treat all of these groups equally; while others have more nuanced policies.  One of the reasons why UMich Law's policies were deemed constitutional was because it was nuanced and resisted formula. 

Back to the Matt's main topic.  It's no secret to people following admissions policies that Ivy Leagues and honorary Ivy Leagues have weighed extracurriculars, especially sports participation, more heavily than past years.  Various articles on this topic will have a blind quote from an insider that admits that they want to keep a certain demographic "balance."  But at what cost? 

As a supporter of diversity, I personally would sacrifice some degree of merit-based criteria for diversity reasons.[1]  But the strongest moral reason for affirmative action is that it's a blunt remedy for past discrimination and a way to adjust for present discrimination.  Wanting your classroom to look like a Bennetton ad just doesn't have the same moral force. 

 
But here's the thing: in the most elite schools, Asian-American students bear the brunt of affirmative action programs.  And if past and present discrimination are the most persuasive reasons to keep affirmative actions going, shouldn't white students (some of whose ancestors were the perpetrators of past discriminations and who are now the beneficiaries of present (mostly unconscious race discrimination)[2] bear the cost?  What's happening is that, like Jewish students in the past, Asian students are being punished for being their group being too successful, while at the same time, they don't reap the marginal but tangible benefits that comes from being white. 

So Asians are being squeezed at both ends -- by both progressive and regressive policies.  And really, there's no justification for it.  If you read the Bakke or Bollinger opinions, the court values student diversity for (1) rigorous exchange of ideas in the classroom; and (2) promote leaders for underrepresented communities.  That cuts in favor of increasing underrepresented minority groups, but those rationales in no way cut in favor of decreasing overrepresented minority groups.

In other words, schools can practice "benign discrimination" that aim for at least some non-trivial number of Latino, Black and other underrepresented groups in the incoming class.  But what's the rationale for keeping some kind of White-to-Asian student ratio at 60-30?  Certainly there's nothing articulate by the courts or the schools that can truly justify discrimination aimed at keeping overrepresented minorities down and whites up.     

It's true that private schools aren't bound by these court decisions.  But it's interesting that policies that hinder Asian admissions aren't justified by any kind of approach.  The only rationale that can possibly exist for present Ivy League policies is simply: "we don't want too many Asians in our school".  That echoes anti-Semitic policies in the past and really should have no place in our higher institutions.   

[1] What's with the number of comments attacking "meritocracy"? Are you guys suggesting that colleges should not use merit-based approaches at all, or totally de-emphasize merit?  I'm sorry, but that's just not workable.  Admissions policies are based primarily on "predictability and reliability" -- LSAT floors for example strongly predict a minimal aptitude for law school success (meaning that there's strong correlation between students who score lower than a certain floor number and poor performance).  Merit-based policies also give students some idea of what they need to do.  If you'd rather every student come up with some fantastic life narrative, you're bound to get (1) lies; (2) radical subjectivity; (3) students who may not be prepared for the rigors of that school.   

[2] This kind of racial discimination I'm talking about involves mostly the tendency for groups to hire and reward people of the same group/background.   There's no racial hostility per se, and other racial groups do the same. But whites benefit presently because the people who do the hiring are mostly white.    

"I don't even know what a "meritocracy" is.  Is Bush the product of a meritocracy?  Is the guy I grew up with, who was certainly smarter than me (and Bush), but ended up on drugs and eventually a murder victim, simply one of life's losers because he didn't merit better than his fate?  The word is a joke, used by people who refuse to acknowledge all the benefits that give them a head start in a competitive society. "

One of the biggest problems with analyzing 'meritocracy' and 'people who refuse to acknowledge all the benefits' is that we don't like to admit that lots of things in life are really about luck.  The smart guy who ended up on drugs may have been unlucky enough to hit a few bad years (maybe two or three deaths of people close to him) with nature' unfortunate lotto giving him a brain chemistry which made him both especially prone to depression and especially prone to addiction. 

A meritocracy tries to minimize certain aspects of luck--usually in the form of blatant nepotism. 

p.s. just a side comment I missed throwing in there: the idea of a C.E.O. of a major company being someone to look up to and aspire to become has really crashed and burned over the last decade, hasn't it? :-)

Asians are statistically overrepresented among those who do well in high school and in college entrance exams. Thus, they would be best served by a system that focused solely or mostly on those measures. Deviations from those measures-- whether because of affirmative action, athletic scholarships, legacy preferences, preferences to big donors, or any number of other practices, are going to hurt Asians.

What makes this so objectionable, of course, is that Asians are themselves a disadvantaged group. Before Proposition 209, UC Berkeley did all sorts of things to limit the number of Asians in their admission pool, while loudly speaking of the necessity of Affirmative Action to combat the effects of past discrimination. Apparently nobody told them about the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Land law, or the Japanese internment. Indeed, in California's history, there's probably been as much or more invidious official discrimination against Asians than there has been against any other minority group.

One can, of course, attack the entire idea of "meritocracy", though I doubt anyone seriously believes that top colleges should not try to attract the most accomplished students. Or one can make the move Pigs does, and say that all of the burden of affirmative action programs should fall on whites. How can one do that, however, short of an official racial quota? After all, any effort to deemphasize grades and test scores (the other method of increasing minority admissions) is going to, by its very nature, reduce the number of Asians in the entering class. (I should mention that as "diversity" has replaced "past discrimination" as the rationale for affirmative action policies, many admissions offices have become more explicit in trying to cap the number of Asians in the entering class. This has transformed affirmative action from its original purpose as a remedy for victims of discrimination into a much more explicit racial quota system, to each according to his or her race rather than accomplishments. This is not a positive development.)

The truth is that we can live in a society where the college applicants who are the most "qualified" as measured by the conventional methods get into school, or we can live in a society where we let in people for other reasons-- including good reasons-- and some historically and even currently disadvantaged people (don't forget whites who grow up in poverty and get no admissions preference) are among the losers. Pick your poison.

What exactly is keeping Asian-American kids from participating in extra-curricular activities?

They're too busy studying? Actually, Asian-Americans supposedly join band and orchestra a lot. But extra-curricular activities are often sports teams and Asian Americans don't do that as much.

It is reasonalble for colleges to wants students who have diverse interests

So, what, you don't consider getting an A+ in English, physics, and history class a sign of diverse interests?

and that have shown some leadership ability outside the classroom in addition to academic prowess.

Could somebody please explain to me how joining the football or soccer team or being a cheerleader is an indication of "leadership ability?" Now if somebody were a part of student government then sure that shows leadership ability, but there are only a limited number of extra-curricular activities which do that. In my high school many of the extra-curricuar groups were made up of uppity rich kids who hung out together(like, say, the yearbook group). Joining them was less an indication of leadership ability and more an indication of a herd mentality.

I've read that joining a beauty pageant even counts as an extra-curricular activity. Now that's leadership ability!

Selective colleges and universities want students who participated in extracurricular activities in high school. At the most elite schools, *all* the realistic applicants have great grades and test scores. At the top of the heap, 0.2 on a GPA, 60 points on the SAT, or a couple of spots on the class rank list doesn't mean that much. Extracurricular activites show the ability to work with others, to manage time, to serve the community, and so forth. Athletic participation shows competition, physical vigor, ect. When choosing from a pool of great students, things like that matter.

GPA, class rank, and test scores get you in the door so that college admissions will consider you seriously. Beyond that, if all you do is study, you are at a disadvantage. High schools might need to do a better job of communicating this to parents. Elite colleges are pretty savvy about screening out fluff activites from meaningful ones, so students who don't join a million clubs aren't penalized. If a student doesn't like the range of clubs or sports at their school, they can get involved in community activities. Volunteer. Something.

The bottom line is that there are diminishing returns to putting time into studies in high school. There are other valuable life lessons that high school kids can learn, and colleges value that in the selections process. Marginally improving your grades isn't that important. An A+ isn't worth more than an A if it comes at the expense of living a little.

There is no easy answer to "Who deserves to go to Harvard or Berkeley?".  Elite colleges actually do try to answer that question and IMO do a reasonable job, better than I could do.  One thing I know, we don't want to overemphacize any one type of talent -- thus "diversity" of personalities (and of social groups?).  My point is, college board scores are way OVERemphacized because they are nice and neat and "objective."

'The bottom line is that there are diminishing returns to putting time into studies in high school.'

Based on the posts here, the Indians and Chinese are going to eat our lunch.  And when the jobs have moved to Mumbai and we're cleaning the bathrooms for tourists from Beijing, maybe we'll wonder whether taking some time off from the Play Station might have been worth it after all.  It's pretty simple:  you can study calculus now, or you can study Chinese later.

Don't worry Dilan Esper,  the insane "merit" = "SAT scores" equation is here to stay.  Admissions officer's job is to maximize the benefit to their school.  One aspect is to get as interesting and vibrant an incoming class as possible -- that will improve everybody's college experience.  But ...

But Colleges are ranked on student-body SAT scores.  If average SAT goes down, the admissions officer loses their job.  They are stuck with over-valuing this one narrow measure of achievement.