Do College Admissions by Lottery. Colleges would set admission criteria that applied to everyone, then all applications that met criteria would get put in the hat. Excellent.
As Barry Schwartz says in the article, this would help to curb the insane anxiety and competition that surrounds selective college admissions. And it might help students appreciate how much success in life is due to luck: “Sure, you deserve your success, but lots of other people also deserved success and didn’t have it.”
More thoughts:
- Legacy admissions and sports scholarships would be the two areas that schools would be least willing to give up in order to make this system a reality.
- A great virtue of the system comes to my mind: it would by its nature solve the “Diversity and Inclusion” battles that roil academia. Authentic diversity and inclusion is built in.
- There’s even hope for cutting back some of the hypertrophied administration that is choking our academies. Some of the money saved might even go to paying decent wages to salaried faculty instead of relegating teaching to adjuncts.
(H/T @fiona)