LuckyR wrote:Of course, I take it for granted that everyone agrees that children of alumni, children of large donors and athletes should lose their preferential admissions status, right?
Private schools should be free to adopt any admission criteria they wish. The issue is more complicated for public schools. In a perfect world, they would condition admission only on factors predictive of academic success, such as GPAs and test scores. In the real world they must be concerned with budgets. Admitting children of donors and alums translates into revenue for the school, as does (in some cases) athletics. Without that revenue either the costs to the taxpayer would be greater, or fewer students would be admitted.
Public schools should not, however, subsidize athletic programs, which most do. If the programs are not self-supporting they should be scrapped.
-- Updated August 9th, 2017, 12:23 pm to add the following --
Eduk wrote:GE Morton. Good so you don't understand what equity means.
Well, I've given you the meanings given in two dictionaries. You're free to check others if you wish.
Please Google 'equity equality'.
As I said before, we do not consult political web sites for the meanings of words. We consult dictionaries. A google search for your term will surely yield many lefty sites whose authors are making the same mistaken assumptions you are. The view that natural inequalities --- or any material inequalities --- are "inequitable" is ubiquitous among lefties. But they are not, per the
dictionary definitions of that term.
You will see a picture of three boys standing behind a wall looking at a game. They have one box each. The boys are three heights such that the tallest could see without a box. The middle can see with one box and the shortest needs two boxes to see. Now it is equal if they have a box each. But it is not equitable.
Whether or not it is equitable depends upon who is handing out the boxes and what obligations that person has to the three boys. As I said before, "equitable" (and "fair" and "just") apply
only to the acts of moral agents. That one of the boys is not tall enough to see over the fence, and could not come up with two boxes to stand on, is, in itself, neither fair nor unfair; neither equitable nor inequitable. It is just a physical fact. Fairness and equity come into play only when the distribution of boxes results from the act of a moral agent (a person). And it is only unfair or inequitable if that person has specific obligations to all three boys.
No one has any obligation
a priori to supply boxes to any of the boys. If (say) the middle boy is accompanied by his father, who brought a box for his boy to stand on, there is no "unfairness" or inequity because he did not bring boxes for other boys. He has no duties to those other boys.
You cannot charge the mere distribution of some asset or advantage with unfairness or inequity, solely on the grounds that it is unequal, as your scenario attempts to do. You need to know how that distribution came about, and if it came about by the acts of moral agents, then what obligations those actors had to the parties involved.
When talking about morals this is the standard definition of equity and equality.
No, it is not. It is the
lefty definition of equity. And it is Newspeak.
Also please stop using 'lefty' as an insult. It's painful to me. Being left or right or in the middle isn't an insult it's a political label.
It is not meant as an insult. It is simply a descriptive term, denoting persons on the "left" of the political spectrum. I do not use the terms lefties prefer --- "liberal" and "progressive" --- because both of those terms are disingenuous when applied to lefties ---- "liberal" (classically) denotes an advocate of freedom (the word is derived from the Latin
liber, "free"). Modern lefties are certainly not advocates of freedom. "Progressive" is also disingenuous, as the world view held by lefties is actually regressive (it envisions a tribal social structure).