Schools, and especially elite schools, need some form of measurement to identify top students.
Yes and no. If you just pick the "best" students, without any consideration of diversity, then the system will become bias towards whatever the system believes the best students are. No one will ever challenge that, and the system will stagnate. The great success of the western liberal education system is to care more about diversity than about getting the best.
Liberal in this case is the opposite of servile, not the opposite of conservative. The liberal arts would be the studies of free people, while the servile arts would be the studies of slaves.
The Greeks had many different types of political systems, but they all were political. Debating was an import part of a Greek free person's education. For debate to happen you need diversity, people from diverse backgrounds. That had the unintended consequence of creating an ever changing education system, constantly admitting new diverse people in, who are constantly testing the system.
The Arabs, East Asians, South Asians, and others had education systems that got the "best" students, and stagnated.
Don't quote me on this but I believe a very sizable number of black students in the Ivy Leagues are first or second generation immigrants. The argument I've heard is they didn't have to grow up with the legacy of slavery thus their better performance. That's a whole other discussion.
There is something to be said for starting a new life. People who immigrate, and the next few generations, often do better in school.
A lot of Boomers on this board didn't have to compete with large number of Asian, Indian and students from all over the world when applying for schools.
They had to compete with Jews who were no longer being held back. Every generation has to compete with more diversity.
60% of the world AI developers live in the USA, but two thirds of those were born outside the USA. China has nothing that can ever compare. It will never be able to convince foreign experts to move there in huge numbers.
