That's Good News

The world is complicated place -- a lot of grey areas, a lot of ins, outs, and what-have-yous. It's hard to be sure. Yet I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's unambiguously a good thing that it's apparently getting harder for rich Manhattanites to push their children into Harvard by spending vast sums of money on expensive private schools, $46,000 private Ivy League admissions consultants (that's not a typo), etc. etc. The reason (anecdotal, to be sure): all the criticism of the Ivies' plutocracy-sustaining admissions policies and near-total lack of economic diversity seems to be paying off, at least a little. I've said previously that all the hoopla surrounding Harvard's more generous aid policies is only justified if it results in more equity as defined by the real coin of the realm in elite higher education: admissions. If this is legit, great--hopefully in the future we'll be reading more stories about people with too much money losing their minds because it turns out there are still a few things that money can't buy.