If Michael Bloomberg Is Looking for Ideas…

By Matt Reed. I’ve written before about my distrust of the “undermatching” thesis. (Quick review: “undermatching” refers to talented, low-income students choosing colleges that are easier to get into than they could have.) Defining “undermatching” as a significant problem writes the academic prestige hierarchy into nature, ratifies resource inequality among institutions in the name of “meritocracy,” writes off the institutions that most people attend as irredeemable, and assumes an independent effect of selectivity that empirical social science suggests doesn’t exist. It assumes that the solution to mass drowning is a few life preservers. Read more...