One would think that an educator’s primary task should be to actually educate the children and young people in his or her charge. Sadly, many far-left educators seem to want nothing to do with teaching basic academic facts.
In a move that flies in the face of basic common sense, a growing number of professors, teachers, and faculty members are calling for college admissions to be determined solely by a raffle-style system. Put simply, anyone who wants to get into a college or university would put his or her name in a hat to see if it gets drawn, with no regard for one’s academic accomplishments or capabilities.
Progressives give a lot of reasons for supporting raffle-style admissions. Meritocracy is racist. Math is racist. Testing is racist. Legacy admissions favor rich, white people as do admissions based on sports skills. Some, such as former Barnard College mathematics professor Cathy O’Neil, think that students should not be pressured to study certain course material but rather be given ample time to get laid and write bad poems. If people whose names are drawn out of the hat aren’t able to pay for admission, that’s fine because, as Ms. O’Neil notes, the colleges and universities can fire all the faculty members who previously worked in the admissions department to decide who would be admitted and who would be rejected.
As an added bonus, a raffle-style system would prevent lawsuits such as Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. In this case, Asian-Americans want to hold Harvard responsible for discriminating against them in an effort to make the campus diverse.
Naturally, there are big problems with deciding admittance to college based solely on pulling names out of a hat. Left-wing activists don’t pay much attention to them, but they could have a huge impact on society at large. What happens to unqualified students who gain admittance but can’t handle the coursework? Will such students be shown the door — or be allowed to stay on and graduate if they come from a minority background? Will companies want to hire unqualified graduates? What happens to young people who learn that making an effort to study and learn is pointless?
The negative affects of such a system are honestly pretty obvious. The real story here is that, once again, left-wing academics are saying the quiet part out loud. It’s no longer a speculation — they want to remove all semblance of meritocracy from their culture. This is a chapter straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
