Kevin Carey tags my opinion about private colleges and prep schools, which he doesn't care for, with the word "indefensible." That I am hereby defending it proves Mr. Carey's label logically wrong, and I hope he will retract it.
He may be right, though, that looking beyond ritzy private schools will bring more meritorious students to Harvard's halls. Or he may be wrong about that, too. Whereas I posit ideas on this topic, Mr. Carey posits certainty. I simply worry that if university admissions officers feel pressure--either from outside their institutions, inside their institutions, or themselves--to look with disfavor on students from private schools (which may be happening, no?) that they??could??either intentionally or unintentionally enroll many pupils who are less qualified than those who aren't offered entry. And that could water down the intellectual experience on campus. The same might??happen if universities over-enroll pupils admitted through legacy or athletic considerations, of course, but it seems that the prevailing pressure is for them,??universities,??to do the opposite. The bottom line, I suppose, is that Harvard really ought to be able to offer admission to whomever it wishes and then reap the rewards or suffer the consequences. ????
On another note, Mr. Carey is wrong (never mind--same note) elsewhere, too. He has yet again ascribed to me words that aren't, in fact, mine. The writing to which he refers at the bottom of his post (the portion in which he??grows exasperated about a quote from Thomas Sowell) was produced by my colleague Eric. What we do on this blog, you see, is to have our names placed directly beneath a post's title to denote who wrote the subsequent lines. The bylines??should not be confused with subheads.