If we want the selection process of future leaders to be government regulated under formal education, then we should have a discussion on how such system should look like. The current system is a bit like the old fraternal groups, with the admission system being relocated to the university admission board. There should be better way to select future leaders.

There is no universal definition of what the goal of a university should be.

At the very top of Harvard's mission page it says, "Our mission to educate future leaders is woven throughout the Harvard College experience, inspiring every member of our community to strive toward a more just, fair, and promising world."

There is NOWHERE where they say anything even remotely like, "Our goal is to reward students who do well in high school coursework and testing." Nor do they say anything like, "The mission of Harvard is to teach as much academic material to students as possible."

In contrast Caltech says, "The mission of the California Institute of Technology is to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education. We investigate the most challenging, fundamental problems in science and technology in a singularly collegial, interdisciplinary atmosphere, while educating outstanding students to become creative members of society."

It's much more focused on solving science and tech problems and a focus on educating outstanding students. There is very little here about leadership.

And so you tend to see that CalTech has some of the top scientists and professors in the world. At the same time, even in tech/science companies, they occupy a small percentage of CEOs. Those aren't the people they are intending to nurture.

There's room for different types of education with different goals and metrics, including admissions metrics.

And anyone can create a university and say,"We look at grades and test score. We don't ask for recs or essays. Don't care about what your goals are. We stack rank based on GPASATAPs and then select the top N." That's a perfectly valid approach. I wouldn't want to go to that school, but it sounds like there are some students who would, and I wouldn't object to it.

So if I would attempt with a universal definition of what the goal of a university, it would start by being an institution that complies with the standards set by the Higher Education Act and is accredited by the U.S department of education. As part of the formal education system, the goal of the regulations and laws will be enforced onto those classified under it.

Which returns me to my original question. What benefit is there to be classified as formal education if they don't share the intention (and goals) of the formal education system?

College is no more a reward for school academic achievement as a basketball scholarship is for HS basketball achievement. They’re correlated but a lot more go into both.

Now if you said that admissions has favored African American students in the Affirmative Action era over Asian students then I'd agree. But Affirmative Action is also over per last year's Supreme Court decision.

And how do you know they continue to use race? You have access to data that the rest of us don't? Again, if you have data to support your claims then post a link.

Compare the numbers for MIT who is somewhat complying vs the Ivy leagues who are mostly not complying.

I agree my original claim is likely not true. I should have said >95% of Asian's SAT scores are higher than the median Black SAT score.

What people need isn't leaders, but the capacity for decentralised self-organisation.

Their decision to make education into finding or creating leaders is, I think, a terrible mistake and socially dangerous, and in a way exclusionary. If they are truly successful and are able to notice natural leaders and bring them into their institutions that might well channel the capacity of ordinary people away from decentralised self-organisation and into a pure elite society.

You can try, but I think it'll be hellish.

As so many people who hate the Ivies tell me, you can get just a good of an education at your local CC and state college. That option is available and they don't have the emphasis on leaders and they also tend to accept most people who are qualified.

The reasons people want to go to Harvard aren't simply because of the academics to be ordinary engineers.

I'm a Swede. I don't care about Harvard myself. But here in Sweden we some historically excellent universities, and some places that were a little second rate as we viewed it.

But the Germans don't care. If they get to be called professor they're happy, so they come, and they become professors at these once second rate universities, and then they put out research that is as good as any, and they have PhD students and everything, and the end result is that it's basically transformed our old second rate institutions into places actually producing good research; and apparently this is the way it is Germany. All their universities produce good research.

I think the future here, in the long run, is it should be that it won't matter where you go, only what you do, and I think that's something which should be, not just embraced universally, but pushed for deliberately, in all countries. If Harvard is really successful in finding potential leaders, then they are dangerous to society.

Furthermore, most of Harvard's graduates will be ordinary engineers, or ordinary physicians or ordinary practitioners of some field, whether it's what they studied.

And yea, most of Harvards grads will be ordinary. And they could’ve just have easily gone to UMass. But a higher percentage will be leaders. And that’s the reason they admit who they do.

Because they don't dismiss the places that I had dismissed, they transformed them.