Random selection is important to know if your system actually improves anything, or if the results are only good because the input was good to begin with.
For all we know, those universities that only pick the best and brightest may actually produce inferior results that are nevertheless still very good.
Thomas Sowell, when challenged on the success of charter schools in New York as being biased due to a "better selection" of students, was able to point out that this bias was limited by the fact that admission was based on a lottery.
Great! This is getting closer to a testable hypothesis. I’m imagining “students chosen randomly from the applicant pool, and students chosen based on merit will have indistinguishable academic results”. This isn’t perfect yet but it’s closer to being testable.
However, my hazy understanding from psych lectures years past is that similar experiments have already happened and the results are in. University achievement was found to be correlated with big 5 consciousness and IQ. (I can’t remember the effect sizes.) I have no idea how well the US collage admissions process selects for those traits. I’d love to be proven wrong, but I would bet money a lottery would lower the average academic achievement of collage graduates.
> I’m imagining “students chosen randomly from the applicant pool, and students chosen based on merit will have indistinguishable academic results”. This isn’t perfect yet but it’s closer to being testable.
That's not the point though.
Remember, the article proposes to draw a random sample from all applicants who are "good enough", so you would have some sort of aptitude test. However, instead of selecting the best N results from that test, you select a random N.
I wouldn't hypothesize that the results are going to indistinguishable or even that they will be better. I would argue that total welfare may improve as a result and that is worth testing.
The reason is as follows: If you only take the "best and brightest", there's little room for improvement.
> Random selection is important to know if your system actually improves anything, or if the results are only good because the input was good to begin with.
Right, this is the scientific approach. You have to disprove the null hypothesis, otherwise your theory is unsubstantiated.
For all we know, those universities that only pick the best and brightest may actually produce inferior results that are nevertheless still very good.
Thomas Sowell, when challenged on the success of charter schools in New York as being biased due to a "better selection" of students, was able to point out that this bias was limited by the fact that admission was based on a lottery.