A Level Educational Playing Field: Unexpected Complications

by David Safier

I’m back in town and haven’t had time to catch up on local Ed news, so here’s a national item while I get back up to speed.

Everyone wants a level educational playing field where all children learn to their full potential, right? Maybe not — at least not if it means less opportunity for your own children.

I wrote a few months ago that Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, along with other high quality, high priced universities have pledged to give students from families with lower and middle class incomes nearly free tuition, room and board. It’s a great idea. It allows the best and the brightest to get the finest educations our country can offer, regardless of their ability to pay. That’s obviously good for the country, since it means the talent pool will be broadened. Our finest young minds will be given the education to help move this country forward. How can there be a downside?

The answer is, now that more young people from the lower and middle classes are being admitted to the finest universities, fewer students from the most exclusive prep schools are getting in, and their rich parents aren’t happy about it.

The math is simple. When more students can dream of going to top universities without fear of incurring debt they’ll spend the rest of their life paying off, more qualified students will apply. That means the prep school students have more competition from the “great unwashed,” many of whom are brighter and more hard working than the privileged applicants. Bingo! A poor kid form Osh Kosh, Wisconsin, and another from East L.A. take up two slots that otherwise would have gone to graduates from the prestigious east coast prep schools.

Will the ultra-rich figure out a way to pressure the top universities into some twisted version of affirmative action, where a few slots will be reserved for students from each of the rich kids’ schools? We’ll have to wait and see. My suspicion is, the top universities will make concessions to their most powerful alumni, and the concept of “legacy,” that long standing but rarely criticized affirmative action program for the rich ([cough] George Bush [cough]), will be expanded so we Leave No Rich Child Behind.

This raises a larger, very important question.

Everyone gives lip service to the idea of quality education for every child. But if our educational system were a pure meritocracy, and if intelligence and drive are qualities more-or-less equally distributed in all racial, ethnic and economic groups, all these groups would be represented at the finest universities based on their percentage of the population. Theoretically, that could mean the children of the wealthiest and most powerful 10% of our society would only represent 10% of the population of Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Princeton.

It would also mean that the most capable members of our society would rise to the top in all fields, and those with less ability would slide down the social and economic ladder, no matter their parentage. Our society might benefit from a resurgence of intellect and creativity and economic growth, but would the rich and powerful let that happen? Will they really allow their children to compete with the rest of society on a level playing field?