Last week I found myself in Sun Valley, Idaho, at a conference with a lot of big wigs. Among them was Larry Summers—an economist, the Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, and a former president of Harvard University. The timing was fortuitous.
Last month, Harvard went before the Supreme Court to defend its race-based admission policies—and lost the case, thus overturning the legality of affirmative action. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that those admissions programs quote, “cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
This ruling has led to a debate in American life about the future of higher education, and it’s caused many to question another admissions policy that numerous American universities have long taken for granted: legacy admissions, the policy of giving preference to college applicants whose family has already attended the school. In light of the Supreme Court ruling, legacy admissions have been scrapped at top schools including Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, and just this week at Wesleyan University.
So I wanted to sit down with Larry Summers to talk about the future of American higher education, whether eliminating legacy admissions actually goes far enough, what he thinks admission departments will do in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, and what he might have done differently as president of Harvard if he could go back in time. And lastly, what makes American higher education worth saving in the first place.
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Many problems with Summers statements, but I will focus on the glaringly obvious thing that he failed to include in his suggestions for reforming higher education. Eliminate “developmental admits.” There is zero that is meritocratic about having parents who can donate obscene amounts of money to a University in order to buy their way into a school. He picks on “aristocratic sports,” but at least those mean that the student has worked hard and excelled at something. The elite sports category can mean parents who are upper middle class or lower upper class and heavily invested time and energy in something obscure. It is still a special talent. The developmental admit is completely unfair and requires no special talent or skill - it simply says we will take you because you are filthy rich. This only serves the 0.01%.
I'm surprised that this interview hasn't generated more comments. Mr. Summers really sent me through the roof with the I have all these great ideas, but yeah I didn't do any of them when I was in charge because you know interest groups, challenges, yada yada. Does this guy even hear himself? Is he serious?
Bari I'm glad that you interviewed him. I wish you had pushed harder not on his new ideas, but more on why he didn't do more when he was in charge. That's the thing I just can't get over. It's like he doesn't want us to remember he was in charge.