Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [86]
We look forward nonetheless to seeing you in the fall.
Sincerely yours…
Such letters might lessen the sting for those who are rejected, and dampen the hubris of those who are accepted. So why do colleges continue to send (and applicants to expect) letters replete with congratulatory, honorific rhetoric? Perhaps because colleges can’t entirely dispense with the idea that their role is not only to advance certain ends but also to honor and reward certain virtues.
Why Not Auction College Admission?
This leads us to the second question, about whether colleges and universities may define their mission however they please. Put ethnic and racial preferences aside for the moment and consider another affirmative action controversy—the debate over “legacy preferences.” Many colleges give children of alumni an edge in admission. One rationale for doing so is to build community and school spirit over time. Another is the hope that grateful alumni parents will provide their alma mater with generous financial support.
In order to isolate the financial rationale, consider what universities call “development admits”—applicants who are not children of alumni but who have wealthy parents able to make a sizeable financial contribution to the school. Many universities admit such students even if their grades and test scores are not as high as would otherwise be required. To take this idea to the extreme, imagine that a university decided to auction 10 percent of the seats in the freshman class to the highest bidders.
Would this system of admission be fair? If you believe that merit simply means the ability to contribute, in one way or another, to the mission of the university, the answer may be yes. Whatever their mission, all universities need money to achieve it.
By Dworkin’s expansive definition of merit, a student admitted to a school for the sake of a $10 million gift for the new campus library is meritorious; her admission serves the good of the university as a whole. Students rejected in favor of the philanthropist’s child might complain they’ve been treated unfairly. But Dworkin’s reply to Hopwood applies equally to them. All fairness requires is that no one be rejected out of prejudice or contempt, and that applicants be judged by criteria related to the mission the university sets for itself. In this case, those conditions are met. The students who lose out aren’t the victims of prejudice; it’s just their bad luck to lack parents willing and able to donate a new library.
But this standard is too weak. It still seems unfair for wealthy parents to be able to buy their child a ticket to the Ivy League. But what does the injustice consist in? It can’t be the fact that applicants from poor or middle-class families are put at a disadvantage beyond their control. As Dworkin points out, many factors beyond our control are legitimate factors in admission.
Perhaps what’s troubling about the auction has less to do with the opportunity of the applicants than the integrity of the university. Selling seats to the highest bidder is more appropriate for a rock concert or a sporting event than for an educational institution. The just way of allocating access to a good may have something to do with the nature of that good, with its purpose. The affirmative action debate reflects competing notions of what colleges are for: To what extent should they pursue scholarly excellence, to what extent civic goods, and how should these purposes be balanced? Though a college education also serves the good of preparing students for successful careers, its primary purpose is not commercial. So selling education as if it were merely a consumer good is a kind of corruption.
What, then, is the university’s purpose? Harvard