Word: klitgaards
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
ROBERT E. KLITGAARD '68 learned the hard way to be careful when writing about college admissions. When draft of a report he was writing on the biect was leaked to the press in 1980, shell broke loose at Harvard, where any considered his findings about affirmative action and the academic performance of minorities in universities inflammatory...
...Klitgaard, an associate professor at the Kennedy School of Government and formerly a special assistant to President Johnson was vilified as a racist, students marched in the Yard in protest, and Bok went to pains to distance the University from the report...
...Klitgaard Report" disappeared unceremoniously from public view, and the controversy subsided, but five years later the economist raises virtually the some issues--and comes up with similar conclusions--in his new book, Choosing Elites. This time around, however, Klitgaard is careful to qualify his potentially inflammatory findings. His conclusions are not the irresponsible uminations of a racist--but rather an honest effort to bring policy analysis to hear on one of today's most perplexing social issues...
...Klitgaard's purpose is to provide a framework in which selective institutions, in particular colleges and universities, can best choose their members. "If a few highly valued positions or opportunities are to be allocated among a large number of aspirants, how should this be done?" he asks. In essence, Klitgaard examines how society should best choose its elites. His guiding principle throughout is that there is no single "right" admissions process. Rather he offers a way of thinking about these issues, to which admissions officers and other gatekeepers at elite institutions may then apply their own values...
...Klitgaard's work should prove invaluable to admissions committees for improving their capacity to think clearly about the selection process and in developing more effective procedures for picking the kind of students they want. In a very important philosophical way, however, it misses the broader picture. Klitgaard fails to develop an adequate moral justification for his conclusion that a selective university's admissions system ought to give greater weight to academic merits in choosing its elites. While his specific suggestions are useful, his overall analysis serves as a disappointing defense of a system automatically favoring certain groups--in particular upper...