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A comment on Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh end use of legacy status in admissions. Parent comment

Re:Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh end use of lega... by tivert on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @05:04PM (#36793359)
> How many times have I heard from people that the USA is about "equality of opportunity" and not "equality of outcome"? Legacy admissions is directly contrary to equality of opportunity, and undermines the idea of meritocracy in university admissions...

Understanding "equality of opportunity" to be literal and absolute is nonsense, because to do so would require hobbling people with natural talent (for instance), since not all people have the opportunities created by those talents (there's a famous sci-fi short story about that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron).

IIRC, rejecting "equality of outcome" in favor of "equality of opportunity", means rejecting explicit policies to pick winners and losers.

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Re:Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh end use of lega... by enragedcacti on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @08:02PM (#36795250)
I don't think you do remember correctly, and equating the ideal of equality of opportunity to Harrison Bergeron is silly. Feel free to peruse any one of this to get an idea of the common usage the term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/equal-opportunity

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Re:Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh end use of lega... by sidlls on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @08:17PM (#36795378)
I think you have it backwards: targeting "equality of outcome" necessitates policies to pick winners and losers. Specifically, it requires policies that aim to minimize both.

Equality of opportunity doesn't mean hobbling talented people or enforcing that everyone be given identical opportunities. It simply means that people regardless of talent (in a given ability) ought not be restricted from an attempting to take an advantage of an opportunity should they happen to have it.

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Re:Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh end use of lega... by Retric on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @09:44PM (#36795947)
All admissions policies pick winners and losers, that’s the point. A collage which sifts the relative importance of SAT scores vs GPA is picking winners and losers, it’s hardly an argument in favor of any specific policy.

AA increases how much innate talent matters vs some peoples social position. It’s the same outcome as removing legacy admissions, just with a slightly different set of beneficiaries.

Collages have many leavers to get these kinds of outcomes. Favor elite prep schools and suddenly you have a surplus of high income families etc.

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Re:Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh end use of lega... by whimsicalism on Thursday July 20, 2023 @11:55AM (#36802381)
Legacy admission preference is obviously contrary to equality of opportunity but I guess people will argue about everything.

I say this as a legacy admit

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