In today’s Crimson, Dylan Matthews has a provocative column arguing that Harvard ought to randomize its admissions process. Dylan claims that Harvard’s current admissions system entrenches existing inequalities—including inequalities of talent. Talent, Dylan thinks, is pretty much beyond our control. Channeling John Rawls, Dylan assumes that success in life shouldn’t be “contingent” on “arbitrary factors” like genetic gifts, parental vigilance, and the like. He thinks an admissions lottery would be a “good place to start” in mitigating the influence of morally arbitrary factors.

Now, I don’t think Rawls, on whom Dylan is clearly drawing, would be committed to this position on elite college admissions, and I think the reason is instructive. Rawls’s principle was not “eliminate the consequences of all moral arbitrariness.” He would permit inequalities in the distribution of goods if those inequalities benefited the least-well-off members of society. He thought that, if this condition were met, the more fortunate “could expect the willing cooperation of others when some workable scheme is a necessary condition of the welfare of all” (Theory of Justice, 13-14). And that was his ultimate goal—just such a workable scheme.

Anyway, back to where we were. It seems to me that, at least in theory, a non-randomized admissions process could satisfy Rawlsian principles. An assumption that underlies Dylan’s argument is that an elite education is a “good” the unequal distribution of which we should care about. I agree with that. But the key question for Rawls (and for us too, I would say) is: What is being done with this particular good? Is it being put to the use of society, or, on Rawls’s more strict terms, the least-well-off? Right now, given what we know about Harvard graduates and their employment decisions, the answer is probably “no.”

But the answer might still be “no” even if we implemented a lottery admissions system. Moreover, the results of this lottery would (of course!) be morally arbitrary, too. In order for this to be tolerable under Dylan’s apparent moral system, which scorns moral arbitrariness, there must be some further stipulation: for instance, the stipulation that the arbitrarily bestowed good of a Harvard education is put to the use of society or the least-well-off, and not merely to one’s own personal use.

So I’m skeptical about Dylan’s focus on the particular issue of admissions. The more morally relevant concern (by Rawls’s and my own lights) is what Harvard graduates are doing with their educations, no matter how the class of Harvard students is selected. I realize it can be hard to write about that issue without sounding like a scornful jerk who doesn’t like his classmates and their life choices. (I’ve read lots of pieces in the genre and have never been satisfied.) But hey, that just means it’s hard to write about. It doesn’t change the fact that that’s the most important issue we’re faced with, and probably it’s also the issue we can most practically (expect Harvard to) do something about.

Photo credit: Flickr stream of Hybridotus

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