Elite institutions, by their very nature, are not a mass-opportunity system. Even (especially?) in a democratic society they exist to shape a ruling class. And the tension between legacy admissions and affirmative action and merit-based admissions is really a tension between three ways that a ruling class can be legitimated –— through intergenerational continuity, through representation and through aptitude.

The “more meritocracy” argument against both legacies and racial quotas implicitly assumes that aptitude — some elixir of I.Q. and work ethic — is what our elite primarily lacks.

But is that really our upper class’s problem? What if our elite is already diligent and how-do-you-like-them-apples smaht — the average SAT score for the Harvard class of 2022 is a robust 1512 — and deficient primarily in memory and obligation, wisdom and service and patriotism?

In that case continuity and representation, as embodied by legacy admissions and racial quotas, might actually be better legitimizers for elite universities to cultivate than the spirit of talent-über-alles. It might be better if more Ivy League students thought of themselves as representatives of groups and heirs of family obligation than as Promethean Talents elevated by their own amazing native gifts. It might be better if elite universities, in being open about seeking a specific ethnic mix and encouraging an intergenerational tradition, ceded a certain amount of talent to public universities, and even saw their average SAT score go down.

And who knows — the Ivies might even teach undergraduates a little more rigorously if they weren’t so determined to prove they admitted the smartest kids by never ever letting anyone flunk out.

This is all admittedly fanciful, because to be open about racial quotas would require private schools to sacrifice federal funds, and to emphasize legacy advantages would cost them in the U.S. News rankings. And it might be culturally impossible, given the sway of the meritocratic idea, for elite schools to lean into their aristocratic profile rather than insisting (in whatever defiance of reality) that they are offering opportunity to all.

But the “more meritocracy” world — the world where bipartisan criticism produces a Harvard class of 2032 with fewer legacies and non-Asian minorities and an average SAT of 1570 — could be worse than what we have. Because such a change’s essential premise, that intelligence alone really merits power, is the premise that has given us many present difficulties, and if extended may only give us more.

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