In Defense of the Ivy League
David Brooks is incontrovertibly full of shit
I’ve become really quite burnt out, socially and academically and however else. Somehow, by the grace of God, it’s time for Thanksgiving break, and so I’m taking the ‘break’ part as seriously as I can.
By that token, this isn’t new writing: I slapped this post together about a week ago. Some version will maybe / probably appear in the next issue of the WIHI Opal, my school newspaper. (Do they have any more presence than an Instagram account? I just don’t know…)
The December cover story in The Atlantic is called “How The Ivy League Broke America.”
David Brooks, who’s “spent much of [his] adult life attending or teaching at elite universities” spares no detail in a takedown of the meritocratic status quo. First, he details what there was before meritocracy, describes the aristocrats at the top of early 20th century America.
The elite man of the 1920s wasn’t necessarily very smart or talented. His degree came from Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, and to get into one of these schools he only had to be “‘clubbable’—good-looking, athletic, graceful, casually elegant, Episcopalian, and white.” Legacy admissions, too, were a dominant norm—if your father went to Harvard, you were a shoo-in.
Once at college, it wasn’t worth studying very hard. The only important aspect of the experience was earning entry into a secret society: each young elite-aspirant would vie for a spot in a “social club … that would help them ascend to white-shoe law firms, to prestigious banks, to the State Department, perhaps even to the White House.” Status was earned by sociability, connections, and heritage—not ability.
In 1933, James Conant became the president of Harvard University. He rejected the existing system (which he argued turned capitalism into “industrial feudalism”) for an admissions strategy that valued above all an applicant’s intelligence.
Conant’s new scheme would take into account high school grades and standardized tests, assuming them to be a strong proxy for intelligence. (An assumption far from foolish: IQ & grades, for example, are more closely correlated than height & weight.)
Unfortunately, Harvard’s reliance on alumni donations hamstrung Conant’s efforts—as late as 1951, the acceptance rate for legacies was 94%. And after the university’s new guidelines resulted in higher rates of Jewish entry to Harvard, Conant imposed strict, anti-meritocratic quotas for densely Jewish-populated regions.
Eventually, though, “Conant’s vision triumphed and helped comprehensively refashion American life.” All of a sudden, elite legal, financial, bureaucratic, and academic institutions that hired from universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton found their ranks filled with high-powered intellects instead of well-connected socialites. Rich alumni parents were no longer assured of their children’s admission, so they began to pour thousands of dollars into intensive tutoring, SAT preparation, and college counseling to present the highest-scoring versions of their children possible.
Entry into the upper-middle class is now restricted only to college graduates—particularly those graduating from top universities. A recent study found that among “lawyers, artists, scientists, business and political leaders … 54 percent had attended the same 34 elite institutions.” Social mobility is dropping, and social stratification rapidly rising.
Was meritocracy worth it?
Brooks is, incredibly, doubtful. Sure, he accedes, “some of the fruits of this revolution are pretty great.” The elite class has grown more diverse, and a University of Chicago research team found that “up to two-fifths of America’s increased prosperity” between 1960 and 2010 can be attributed to Conant’s intelligence-based power structure—that’s about $5 trillion of growth for which we can thank meritocracy.
Discrimination is out of style. The 1960s civil rights movement came toward the beginning of meritocratic capture of the elite “and the amount of bigotry—against women, Black people, the LGBTQ community—has declined.”
Despite clear social, economic, and moral progress, Brooks thinks “it’s not obvious that we have produced either a better leadership class or a healthier relationship between our society and its elites.” Too many elite graduates are going into “finance and consulting,” instead of—what, exactly? It’s not like the elites of the 1940s were doing more substantive work—if anything, fewer of them were driven by purpose or ideal; the dominant practice was simply to coast along in a cushy job at daddy’s firm, or maybe to slack off in a high-paying role at one of his golf buddies’ companies.
“Would we necessarily say that government, civic life, the media, or high finance work better now than in the mid-20th century?”
According to Brooks, the old elite produced “the Progressive movement, the New Deal, victory in World War II, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the postwar Pax Americana.” The modern elite, on the other hand, have only given us “quagmires in Vietnam and Afghanistan, needless carnage in Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis, the toxic rise of social media, and our current age of political dysfunction.”
I can think of some things missing from those lists!
The old elite produced robber barons and the Great Depression—where does Brooks think the Progressive movement and New Deal came from? The philosophical rot of early 20th century race science inspired Hitler and contributed to the immigration restrictions that kept millions of Jews in Europe before World War II. Pax Americana—supposedly the peacemaking power of American hegemony—actually refers to a costly and dangerous arms race—the world came within a hair’s breadth of total destruction countless times thanks to untempered nuclear build-up. Non-proliferation only caught steam as late as 1978, well into the age of meritocracy.
Before Vietnam, there was Korea, and both wars (plus the “quagmire in … Afghanistan”) were a consequence of the hawkish Truman Doctrine, which was developed, believe it or not, by the Truman Administration in 1947.
As for political dysfunction—Brooks paints too rosy a picture of American political history. Sure, we’ve had our share of election denialism and far-right revival. But the 1876 election was actually stolen (and spelled the end of Reconstruction). In the early 20th century, the Ku Klux Klan was one of the most powerful political forces in the nation. So powerful, in fact, that the Republican Party of the 1920s never explicitly denounced the violent white nationalist group.
Since meritocracy, we’ve elected a Black president, and a (historically unpopular) female candidate won the popular vote in 2016. We don’t live in a perfect society of racial harmony—police brutality is a problem, and mass incarceration since the War on Drugs has decimated Black communities—but we’ve come a long way. Remember, lynching was common practice well into the 1950s. The progress we’ve made is very real, and no small part of it is thanks to the rise of the intellectual elite, who overwhelmingly rejected discrimination and inequality.
It’s true, though, that the trend of the last decade or so has been one of increasing distrust and dislike for the elite class. Brooks explains how meritocracy has contributed to social polarization—listing its “six sins:”
“The system overrates intelligence.” IQ has become not just a measure of intellectual capability, but a measure of moral worth and human value, eroding social cohesion.
Brooks is right—this effect is real and it’s condemnable. When we’re taught that intelligence ought to be determinant of social status, we naturally assume that intelligence must be indicative of our essential human value as well.
In fact, we must realize that the stratification of society based on intelligence is, if anything, cause to overvalue the less intelligent. The same amount of moral effort will produce different amounts of welfare if spent on different people. For example, a gift of $10,000 will improve an unemployed single mother’s life significantly more than it’ll improve Elon Musk’s.
There is some hope: elite social movements like Effective Altruism have sought to call attention to this mismatch. They realize that all human lives are equally valuable, and follow the implications for how to direct charitable giving. The movement advocates for elite donations to the Against Malaria Foundation rather than multi-million dollar dedications to their alma mater.
Elites have the capability to think hard about ethics—their brain power is what’s made them elite. They can think past the knee-jerk intuition that social status is equivalent to moral worth. Perhaps elite educational institutions should teach them the principles of equality and cosmopolitanism more explicitly, but in any case, they should be able to achieve the necessary moral understanding. It’s no wonder that education level is well-correlated with political support for progressive politics and wealth redistribution.
Aristocratic elites, on the other hand, weren’t nearly as capable of ethical decision-making. They believed their elite status was earned by birthright, and had no incentive to support more ethical social schemes. The meritocracy is the cure for poor moral reasoning, not the disease.
“Success in school is not the same thing as success in life.” Soft skills are underemphasized in schooling, and universities that don’t select for them are depriving themselves of the students who will turn out to be truly socially valuable.
GPA is a poor predictor of career success. According to Brooks, “Google and other companies no longer look at the grade point average of job applicants.” Studies have shown that students “attending higher-ranking universities did only slightly better on consulting projects than those attending lower-ranked universities.” Finally, Brooks claims the rise of AI undermines the value of being good at school: “AI is already good at regurgitating information from a lecture. AI is already good at standardized tests. AI can already write papers that would get A’s at Harvard.” Any company that selects for those attributes among its employees is hiring those most easily replaced by a large language model.
It’s not entirely clear to me what Brooks wants from higher education. He writes that elite graduates are too often wasting their talents on elite jobs in consulting and finance—but actually, they’re not even that far above replacement at that sort of work. Doesn’t this imply that more of them will end up working elsewhere? If consulting jobs are subject to competition with applicants from lower-ranked universities, fewer ‘high-intelligence’ candidates will be hired, and they’ll be forced into more socially useful professions where their intelligence can be harnessed for good.
Google and the like don’t care much about college GPA because they know where they’re hiring from. Students at elite universities have already been filtered for their intellectual capabilities—that’s the whole point. As Brooks wrote, once students have entered college, academic success is no longer their concern—it’s about joining secret societies, networking, and building up leadership experience. The Atlantic itself has published about the hyper-competitive nature of elite university extracurriculars, and secret societies (or so-called “final clubs”) have remained relevant well into the 21st century—have you seen The Social Network?
If GPA at these universities doesn’t matter to hiring, then their meritocratic admissions processes have done their job. They’ve already selected the students who can be successful Google employees. The education that happens at the university isn’t the point—the most valuable part of the experience is the diploma that reads “Harvard University.”
In essence, not much of the experience of the Ivy League has changed since the pre-meritocratic age. All that’s different is that the students being admitted are simply more capable, meaning the graduates are simply more capable and so should be hired by Google at higher rates. What’s wrong with all this?
As for AI: yeah, it’s probably coming for the white collar workers first. Then again, as Erik Hoel has written, AI progress may soon stagnate. The higher-order analytical and critical thinking that a high IQ enables is less economically valuable now, but it’s not totally useless, and probably won’t be for some time. Individuals from elite schools continue to produce lots of economic value—after all, the pioneers of modern AI are graduates (or drop-outs) from Stanford, Caltech, Princeton, and similarly prestigious universities in the UK and France.
“The game is rigged.” Meritocracy favors the rich, just like our industrial aristocracy did. Rich parents can buy their children entrance into elite universities with high grades and high SAT scores.
Brooks writes that over time the share of upper-class students in elite universities has risen.
“In 1985, according to the writer William Deresiewicz, 46 percent of the students at the most selective 250 colleges came from the top quarter of the income distribution. By 2000, it was 55 percent. By 2006 (based on a slightly smaller sample), it was 67 percent.”
He argues this is evidence that the rich are gaming college admissions. They send their kids to preschool at higher rates, pay for private tutoring and SAT prep courses. “By eighth grade, children from affluent families are performing four grade levels higher than children from poor families, a gap that has widened by 40 to 50 percent in recent decades,” he writes.
But what’s the null hypothesis? What should we expect if the meritocracy was operating exactly as intended—if cognitive ability had been rewarded with entry to elite universities and higher-paying jobs for the past 70 years or so?
Well, we should expect the higher classes to be more intelligent. If we believe that intelligence of children is correlated with the intelligence of their parents—either through genetics or environmental factors like home culture and educational opportunity—then we should absolutely expect the higher classes to appear favored in college admissions.
I’ll grant that the proportions are somewhat shocking, and (maybe) that differences in access to early education contribute to the income inequality we see in elite college admissions. But let’s not be hasty to denounce the entire system as corrupted. If meritocracy had worked perfectly, we wouldn’t expect to see a college admissions landscape all that different from what we see now.
“The meritocracy has created an American caste system.” In overemphasizing cognitive ability, we’ve created an all-pervasive division between the well-educated elite and the poorly-educated masses.
Brooks admits that “every human society throughout history has been hierarchical.”
I’m not sure, then, why he thinks the hierarchy created by meritocracy is inherently worse than any other. He notes that “segregation by education tends to overlap with and contribute to segregation by race, a problem that is only deepening after affirmative action’s demise.”
That’s true, but you know what contributes even more to segregation by race? Segregation by race! We already covered this: the meritocracy has ushered in a post-segregation age of greater racial equality and a more diverse elite class.
Is there room for growth? Yes! Is affirmative action necessarily the best way to make it happen? Maybe! Or maybe it and related movements are prone to distortions and workarounds that defeat their intentions. In any case, once again, (some version of) meritocracy is the cure, not the disease.
“The meritocracy has damaged the psyches of the American elite.” Talented and bright young students are put under massive pressure to succeed and fulfill their potential. Adolescence has become a time for upskilling and networking instead of personal growth and play. Unsuccessful elite-aspirants are aggrieved, and even successful elites live disappointing, unfulfilled lives.
How unique is this to meritocracy?
Goodhart’s law— “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”—is true in general. Instrumentalizing any end will always be damaging to its value as a measurement and to those who pursue it. But the gains from putting smart people in charge of institutions seem, to me, clearly worth the costs: recall that meritocracy was responsible for $5 trillion of growth over 50 years.
Sure, our adolescence is, to some degree, deprived. We spend a lot of time on extracurricular activities and homework and SAT practice all for the sake of college admissions—but we still could spend plenty of time with friends and family. The most important reasons for dropping rates of social engagement are the time we spend on screens and time we spend asleep, both solved with a bit of phone-detoxing and self-control. Higher rates of mental illness and suicide are similarly attributable either to social media and screentime, or to adjustments in reporting methods.
Mental illness and social isolation are problems we should be addressing—but it’s far from clear that meritocracy is responsible for them.
“The meritocracy has provoked a populist backlash that is tearing society apart.” Meritocracy inspires hope that anyone can climb to the top of the social ladder with enough effort. When many fail to do so, they become resentful and easier to mobilize against the elite class.
This is true, and a result of the messaging around meritocracy. It was initially intended to facilitate greater social mobility—allowing talented lower and middle class students access to the elite upper echelon. And it worked! In its early days, meritocracy was too successful—so many lower class (particularly Jewish) students were being admitted that elite universities set stringent quotas to pacify their donors.
Over time, as meritocracy did its work, intelligent parents rose to the upper classes, and their upper class children, being more intelligent than average, were admitted at higher rates. Quite simply, meritocratic success is no longer as accessible across classes. It’s not that this is antithetical to meritocracy’s mission—just that it doesn’t match social expectations.
When so much of society falsely believes it can reach the elite classes, it’s only a matter of time until the truth trickles out and the masses become disillusioned and disgruntled. Then, as Brooks writes, they’ll revolt. “Wherever the Information Age economy showers money and power onto educated urban elites, populist leaders have arisen to rally the less educated.”
“When income level is the most important division in a society, politics is a struggle over how to redistribute money. When a society is more divided by education, politics becomes a war over values and culture. In country after country, people differ by education level on immigration, gender issues, the role of religion in the public square, national sovereignty, diversity, and whether you can trust experts to recommend a vaccine.”
Hierarchy breeds division, especially when that hierarchy tries to hide itself. So what can be done?
Brooks wants to redefine merit. He thinks traits beyond IQ are important, and should be more emphasized: traits like work ethic, relationship-building, curiosity, trustworthiness, and composure under pressure. He writes, “In reconceiving the meritocracy, we need to take more account of these noncognitive traits.”
He wants us to conduct college admissions primarily on four personal qualities:
Curiosity. Are you constantly seeking out new information? Do you strive to learn for learning’s sake?
A sense of drive and mission. Is there one pursuit that defines you and informs your education and likely career choice? Are you totally dedicated to a vision of how the world should be?
Social intelligence. Can you interact well with other people? Can you collaborate, be personable, and suck up to your boss effectively?
Agility. Are you adaptable? Can you change your mind to fit new information? Do you have strong intuitive ability?
I’m not sure what Brooks thinks that elite universities are looking for right now—because, as far as I can tell, it’s absolutely these things. Particularly when applying to liberal arts colleges, essays ask you to describe topics you’re interested in and causes you’re inspired by. Admissions interviews are blatantly a test of your sociability and mental agility.
And the fundamental underlying danger in overvaluing these personal qualities is their subjectivity. Brooks admits this, but he thinks it’s a feature, not a bug: “The whole system says to young people: You should be the same as everyone else, only better. The reality is that there is no single scale we can use to measure human potential, or the capacity for effective leadership,” he writes. “We need an assessment system that prizes the individual over the system.”
But this is missing the point. College admissions aren’t about the message they send—they’re about the society we want to create.
One of the revelations of the Supreme Court affirmative action case was just how poorly Asian applicants were consistently rated on personality metrics—after Harvard’s internal investigation discovered this bias, it was ignored and the records sealed. Evaluation of personality definitely “prizes the individual over the system,” but it only empowers prejudice and facilitates unfairness.
Yes, Brooks’ list consists of traits important for later success. But they’re incredibly difficult to measure with any degree of impartiality or precision. And many of them aren’t very well-formed at the age of 18. Most glaringly, “agility” is really just a stand-in for “experience.”
Brooks cites anecdotal evidence about Wall Street traders: “The ones who succeeded in avoiding big losses were not the ones with higher IQs but the ones who were more sensitively attuned to their surging testosterone and racing hearts, and were able to understand the meaning of those sensations.” In other words, the ones who’d felt those sensations many times before and understood their true meaning—the ones with experience. It’s strange to judge 18-year-old college applicants on their experience-informed intuitions—it simply doesn’t tell you much about the quality of the intuition they’ll build up over the course of their career.
Childhood intelligence, on the other hand, is a very strong predictor of intelligence during adulthood. It’s highly measurable and much closer to objective: SAT prep courses, for example, are probably only capable of raising scores by about 20 points—that’s a change indistinguishable from measurement error: “When the College Board checks the noise in scoring on the SAT, it finds a standard error of 32 points.”
What system can we devise, then, that produces a meritocratic, intelligent elite without disregarding, isolating, and admonishing the rest of society?
It’s not about devaluing Ivy League credentials or overhauling the admissions process—it’s about creating alternate routes to a dignified life. Brooks even gives some useful examples:
Vocational education. The decline of American manufacturing cost us a lot of middle class jobs, and contributed to the segmentation between the upper-middle class educated elite and the lower class, uneducated poor. The lower classes were convinced that education was the best route to improving their wellbeing and “[a]s a result, we no longer have enough skilled workers to staff our factories.” Increasing the prevalence of schools that “prepare people to build things, not just to think things” should be a priority.
National service. Widespread participation in civil service projects will not only improve life for all Americans, but also facilitate cross-class interactions and friendships—relationships which “powerfully boost social mobility.”
Make school less important. The United States is obsessed with education. Increasing spending on public schools is a perennially popular opinion. Scandals and protests at elite universities are regularly headline news. But there’s a lot more to our lives and upbringings than our schooling—even a lot more to learning than schooling. Research suggests “that neighborhoods, peers, and family background may have a greater influence on a person’s educational success than the quality of their school.”
Bring more manufacturing home. It certainly offends my neoliberal, efficiency-loving sympathies to write, but sometimes social cohesion is more important than the pursuit of profit. If overseas manufacturing killed the vocational middle class, then let’s try to bring some of it back. “[W]e should support economic policies, such as the CHIPS and Science Act, that boost the industrial sector” and create economic opportunity for those otherwise cast aside by the meritocracy.
There’s a place for all of this in a meritocratic society, and the Ivy League plays a vital role. We should continue to select highly capable individuals for impactful roles, make a greater effort to teach them how to use their power with intention and ethicality, and create more alternative, dignified opportunities for those unable to do the work of the elite.
The Ivy League didn’t break America—it made America the diverse, prosperous country it is today. And with its help, we can go even further.
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