inamerrata

So, let’s just ignore the problem of working out what sort of sliding scale should be used. We’ll propose that (a) it should be non-decreasing, and (b) it’s set by colleges in response to market forces. It can be linear, flat, exponential, polynomial, logarithmic, whatever. But what it does have to be is set, and made public, in advance.

What then does that mean for students trying to enter college? When I was applying for university (straight out of high school) we had to make our applications for courses and universities before we’d finished our exams, let alone had our results, and we had to go on what last year’s cut-offs were. With a setup like the above though, instead of saying “I can probably get into these courses, and these are my preferred three”, you instead have to say “I’d prefer to get into these courses, but, depending on my grades, I can only afford to pay so much”. Effectively, this means bidding on a course, with the result that if you do better, you get in cheaper (yay!), and if you don’t do well enough to get in under your budget, you go elsewhere.

Which sounds basically workable, although the details are likely to be complicated. You can’t really set the fees in advance, since that could result in you having more students than you can handle — and if there’s that much demand, a real market should simply increase the prices. That seems difficult to regulate well, especially if the form of the curve the fees take can fluxuate after the university knows how much everyone’s willing to pay.

Going back to the original point of this, that allows you to give bright but poor minority kids affirmative action scholarships so that they can either get into courses that they’re extremely well qualified for, but could otherwise not afford (and it’s probably in society’s interest to do that for anyone who’s poor and bright), or so that they can get into courses they’re underqualified for, in the same way that scions of industry barons do. Maybe they end up doing poorly (maybe the scions do too), maybe they get extra tutoring (paid for as part of the scholarship), or maybe they excel when they’re finally given the opportunity — the affirmative action goals are met by: not introducing any bias within the college based on skin colour, gender, etc; giving them an extra chance to pull themselves up and act as role models for others; and letting the presumably exclusive majority have a chance at seeing a minority member do well, and losing some prejudices.

Loans, scholarships, rich parents, part-time jobs, and competition amongst schools should make such a thing plausible; encouraging both excellence at the high end (where bright students will be attracted with their scholarships, and rich parents with their oodles of money), and at the low end (where there’re financial incentives to make even small improvements in your grades, rather than just coasting along with a C). Of course, you’ve also got an incentive to threaten and bribe the people giving you the grades so you have less expense down the track; which would probably result in fairly heavy standardised testing.

This also allows the government and colleges to back off from affirmative action if they want — scholarships can equally well be provided by foundations, charities, philanthropists, or collectives.