The Moral Bankruptcy of Ivy League America

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If the oligarchs of Rome could travel to the future, they would have learned a trick or two from the US Ivy League. It’s hard to think of a better system of elite permanence than that practiced by America’s top universities. Last week the US Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in American higher education – a decision lamented by the heads of each of the eight Ivy League schools. Dartmouth also offered counseling to students suffering from concussion. An ancient Roman would have thought that some fundamental change had taken place. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Of the 31 million Americans aged 18 to 24, only 68,000 graduated from Ivy League schools—about one-fifth of a percent. Of these, non-white beneficiaries of affirmative action are in varying proportions. Many of them are from privileged black or Hispanic backgrounds, in contrast to Chicago’s South Side or Detroit’s slums. This is the basis on which the Ivy League claims to be a social change. This is an optical illusion. The Supreme Court has done America a favor in that regard. Any disruption to this status quo is a plus.

But this is unlikely to satisfy America’s soul-stirring needs. The ethnic divide of the small number of students who win the Ivy League lottery stubbornly monopolizes American debate. Of those 31 million young Americans, 19 million or more never make it past high school, and about 12 million who go to less exclusive colleges barely make it. Whatever changes the Ivy League has to make to maintain its diversity ratio after last week’s decision is largely irrelevant to the 99.8 percent who will never get there.

A truly radical Ivy League option – spending its massive endowment to rapidly increase student numbers – is unlikely to be considered. The key to the Ivy League is exclusivity; The large expansion in intake would reduce that premium. Thus we are likely to end up with a situation in which universities like Harvard with its $53 billion endowment, or Princeton with its $36 billion, continue to get richer. Each of these assets could revolutionize financial aid at dozens of public universities.

The second most radical option for the Ivy League would be to eliminate what it calls the “ALDC”—athletics, legacy, dean’s list, and children of faculty and staff. Forty-three percent of Harvard’s admissions come from one of these groups. The first, athletics, included sports that only the privileged could learn, such as lacrosse, sailing, and rowing. Liberal athletics admissions by universities have resulted in several recent admissions corruption scandals, such as the FBI’s Varsity Blues sting operation, involving athletics directors. Contrary to popular opinion, most athletics scholars are not black basketball players. 65% are white,

Second, legacy students are close relatives of alumni – the very definition of elite breeding. Again, these are mostly white. The third, the Dean’s List, is a euphemism for the children of people who have donated a lot of money. an example of this Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump, whose father Charles gave $2.5 million to Harvard. Finally, there are the children of faculty members and staff. Overall, the Ivy League can easily be understood as an affirmative action program for wealthy white people, a far cry from the progressive brand it has developed.

Its main victims are Asians. The historical irony is rich. Affirmative action was conceived in the 1960s as reparations for the descendants of slaves. This quickly turned into a system of race-based gaming for multiple races. The group that has lost the most, Asian-Americans, are immigrants from countries that had nothing to do with American slavery. The main beneficiaries have been elite whites rather than African-Americans. The latter supplies the window dressing for a system that has remained largely unchanged.

Perhaps the greatest cost to American society is the elite’s obsession with race. Having benefited from a system they want their children to inherit, it’s no wonder they were angered by last week’s decision. Ivy League graduates dominate the American media. It is a life experience that prepares people to see color above class.

The only change that qualifies as radical in a society that claims to be merit-based is one that will boost life chances for the rest of us. This would mean starting a child’s life with better child care, good pre-school education, etc. This would dramatically increase the number of students who could have a chance to win the educational lottery. Until that changes – and until it becomes the focus of the US – the current debate is at great risk.

edward.luce@ft.com