I Hate the Ivy League: Riffs and Rants on Elite Education

The United States higher education system is one of the best in the world. Yet, it is also one of the most exclusive. The top schools get a huge amount of the money and the best students. Even attempts to increase access can often backfire. Schools are spending more and more on fancy facilities and amenities. 

Brown v Board of Education is an interesting case. The family didn't want the school district to tell them what school they could go to. However, they liked the school that they were going to and felt they were getting a good education. The Supreme Court instead declared that the black schools were inferior. Instead of integrating teachers, school district tried to integrate students. There was a great loss of black teachers and closure of black school. Black students tend to fare better and more likely to be in high achievement programs if they had a black teacher. Integration ended up hurting black students.

Our systems of school admissions (and even elections in general) has many artificial gatekeepers. The LSAT filters for fast test takers. This may be useful for quick business contracts, not so much for complex Supreme Court cases. Elections filter for charismatic speakers, not good administrators. School admission criteria in general are not very useful. Even in science, there is almost no relationship between the rating of proposed research and the citations of the research. Lotteries after a very basic filter would produce greater success.