Liberalism as a political doctrine was a reaction against the absolutist regimes that emerged in Europe as feudalism receded. Among other things, those regimes incorporated much of the social stratification of the Middle Ages. One of the most odious characteristics of the Ancien Régime was the privilege given to certain segments of society to access opportunities for education and employment. That was understood by many as a quintessential part of the obscurantist nature of the absolutist regimes.

No wonder that one of the banners of the liberal opposition was the abolition of those privileges, something finally achieved when, early in the nineteenth century, Napoleon declared “La carrier est ouvérte aux talents,” that is, the careers in the French civil service and military were open to the talents—to the most qualified candidates for the tasks at hand, regardless of the conditions of their birth.

The Founding Fathers of the United States established an independent political entity inspired by many of the same liberal ideals. Even if many of those ideals remained aspirational for generations, they are the bedrocks upon which American society has been built.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision rejecting the constitutionality of racial discrimination in admission to institutions of higher education is part of this broad historical movement.

Let’s start at a high level of abstraction: There is just one human race, and to try to classify people based on their appearance, including the color of their skin, is simply quackery. For instance, it is preposterous to say that a medical doctor—just because of the color of his skin—will be a more proficient physician to a baby of similar skin color. Nevertheless, that is exactly what Justice Jackson claimed in her dissenting opinion.

Jackson relied on an amicus brief that cited a sociological (not medical) study sponsored by the NAS, an agency of the US government. And that study does not state such a thing. It merely indicates a correlation. However, correlation is not causation, as anyone clever enough to attain a seat on the Supreme Court must know.

It is true, individuals are widely different in their abilities, with some individuals more suitable for intellectual work than others, but the distribution of intellectual aptitude among the population has nothing to do with the appearance of the individuals, with skin pigmentation, or, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome.

From this general observation, we can move to a more specific one, the purpose of higher education should be excellence in producing new knowledge and transmitting existing knowledge to future generations. Mind you, the “excellence” is important: Institutions of higher learning should not merely do these things, but do them to the best of the abilities of the persons involved.

Anything less than that is to live below their potential—to leave unfulfilled their promise and betray their mission. The same is true of any other human activity, creation, or anything in nature to be evaluated in relation to humankind.

As stated by Aristotle, a good horse is the one that performs best the tasks we expect from it, be that speed or strength, as the case may be. A good knife is the one that best performs the particular uses we may have for it, and so on.

For an institution of higher education to excel in its mission, it should attract the most suited persons it can find to perform that mission. All other considerations are secondary.

The admissions process is a tool to that end—a tool to select the people with the greatest ability suited to the kind of activity done at the college.

A priori, there are many possible ways to make such a selection. But we may find out that some of them live up to our expectations better than others. So, if we hope to find the best admissions process we are able to design, and not resign ourselves to one that is merely “good enough,” we need to compare the alternatives.

Incommensurate Traits

To make such a comparison, we might think of three types of administrators: cynics, idealists, and fiduciaries.

A cynical administrator will apply an admission process that would enhance his or her wellbeing, regardless of the impact on the mission of the institution. There are many ways in which such criteria may operate, no need to detail them here, I will leave that to the imagination of the reader.

An idealist administrator has his or her own conception of the good and may pursue it regardless of the consequences of the mission of the institution. Again, I leave to the imagination of the readers the many ways in which that happens.

Finally, the school administrators who act as fiduciaries take seriously the mission of their institutions and try to design an admission process that may follow from that. We will concern ourselves in the remainder of this essay with the ways in which they can achieve that.

The great institutions of higher education that aim to produce and transmit knowledge should not discriminate against applicants based on any characteristic other than merit.

Before doing that, however, let us come closer to the ground from the high level of abstraction we have dealt with so far.

Even a sincere administrator, mindful of his fiduciary duties, with the best of intentions, may think that he or she will be able to “balance” subjective attributes of prospective students in order to best fulfill the mission of the institution.

I don’t think that it works. There are so many different attributes that an applicant may have that it is impossible to assign a “value” to them to “balance” them.

That is the epistemological limitation of all subjective evaluations: they cannot be commensurate.

Economists, for instance, use the concept of “revealed preference” as a proxy in order to make the different subjective evaluations of economic agents susceptible to “intersubjective” evaluation. That is, if people are willing to pay a certain amount for a certain product, the price of that product reveals the “sum” of all the individual evaluations. In practice, that may be good enough for theorizing about economic activity, but that does not solve the problem of commensurability of subjective value.

Administrator “A” may evaluate attribute “Z” higher than attribute “Y” while administrator “B” would do the reverse.

No, subjective evaluation will not do. What is needed is a truly “blind” evaluation, not only “colorblind” but a totally blind evaluation.

Suppose that all academic disciplines would require the same set of qualities and preferences, and that “bundle” could be revealed by the IQ of the applicants.

We know that is not true, that there are specific propensities that are best suited to some careers and other propensities that lead to others. Inclinations that lead someone to medicine are not the same that lead someone to engineering or law, and the “standard” test for admission may “balance” that by measuring proficiency in mathematics, language, physics, biology, history, and geography, on top of plain IQ, with different weights for different careers. But let us put this aside for a moment.

In that case, an objective IQ test, with no identification of the applicant, would reveal the ones most qualified for admission. If there were 1,000 places to be filled and 10,000 applicants, the first 1,000 applicants with the highest IQ would be offered a place, period. Only after they have accepted placement would the school know who they were, their sexes, how much melanin they have in their skin, etcetera.

If we believe, as I do, that intelligence is distributed equally among the population, with no correlation with the appearance of the individuals, such an admissions process will result in a group with a diverse appearance.

Someone may say, however, that some of the abilities measured in the “standard” test, be that the plain IQ test of our example, or a more complex one mentioned above, may be “nurtured.” That is, a good preparatory school could give a leg up to wealthy students and that would be “unfair.”

I reject the relevance of such claims for the question at hand, even if I do not necessarily reject their truth.

First of all, given that higher education aims for excellence, the fact that some meritorious applicants were nurtured by their families or their close communities is irrelevant.

To the extent that the American government has taken upon itself to provide public education and has failed large swaths of the population miserably, it is an indictment against government intervention in education and ought to be sorted out by rethinking the way that elementary and secondary education is provided in this country. It is not a justification for changing the meritocratic nature of higher education.

Furthermore, the distribution of intelligence and disposition for intellectual work does not mirror wealth: some wealthy kids simply are not bright or fit for intellectual work, and some may have other inclinations. Attendance at a good preparatory school is no guarantee of merit.

If society wants to give opportunities to all bright kids to attend college, the work is to be done before they apply to college, not by tweaking the admission system to favor less prepared or less talented students.

The Admission Process

What does this mean on the ground?

Many institutions of higher learning were not established with this abstract ideal of creating, accumulating, and transmitting scientific knowledge. Many were created with the purpose of training an elite to advance some narrow interest—the interest of a religious community, the interest of a political association, etcetera. Before we conclude, we need to acknowledge this caveat, there are many institutions of higher education whose mission is not scientific excellence in the abstract.

Those missions may be legitimate missions, and those institutions should be at liberty to establish an admission process that would satisfy their specific goals. In The Idea of a University, Cardinal Newman stated in 1852 that the Holy See recommended to the hierarchy of the church in Ireland the establishment of a university not for the sake of the scientific matters to be taught there, but for the sake of the students.

That is as legitimate a mission as can be possibly conceived. However, that is the result of a voluntary arrangement among the members of that faith community.

If The Catholic University of Ireland was initially established by Cardinal Newman in order to advance scientific excellence for the children of his coreligionists, it is only natural that the admission process of that institution reflect that. Later, when the institution generously extended admission to members of other faith communities, the admission process was adjusted accordingly. 

It is a completely different story when resources are taken by coercion (by taxes, to be clear) and used to fund higher learning of groups favored at that particular moment by the powers that be.

It is also a completely different story when a natural or a legal person, an individual or a corporation, violates the laws of the land, be that the Constitution or the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which assures equality under the law and no discrimination.

The great institutions of higher education that aim to produce and transmit knowledge should not discriminate against applicants based on any characteristic other than merit. Now, thanks to the recent Supreme Court decision, their process must be colorblind. Ideally, they should make it completely blind.

Once understood the way to achieve that, I leave again to the imagination of the reader to conceive all the ethical, political, and strategic implications of the liberal ideal that opportunities for employment and education funded by the public should be done by merit alone.

Any opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of Liberty Fund.