My question was a little bit deeper. I understand why we have elite schools.
Harvard's an easy one. Rich and powerful people look smart by association with smart people. Smart people gain access to powerful social networks.
My question was why this was a good idea for society. MIT was funded through federal grants, financial aid, and philanthropic donations. It's a 501(c)3. If it's bad for the world, we ought to have some mechanism to fix it.
We don't, and that's a deeper discussion about how we want to organize society. We ought to. In the limit case of a self-perpetuating endowment harming the world, there ought to be some way for that to be repurposed to help the world.
I mean, all education does (and should) make use of state and federal funding to provide an education, arguably they don't give enough for quality education in grade school.
And I don't think there's much of a solution to the conundrum of "rich people donate to the rich places and attract more rich people". In all the various other ways billionaires avoid taxes and donate to shady organizations/"charities", it's hard to really knock on them giving money to a place where (in SOME capacity) individuals past their immediate community benefit. It can certainly be better utilized, but I don't have a big fuss with it in the grand scheme of things.
Financial aid is certainly a bubble soon to burst, but that's an issue that expands nationwide, not just in the elite schools.
Harvard's an easy one. Rich and powerful people look smart by association with smart people. Smart people gain access to powerful social networks.
My question was why this was a good idea for society. MIT was funded through federal grants, financial aid, and philanthropic donations. It's a 501(c)3. If it's bad for the world, we ought to have some mechanism to fix it.
We don't, and that's a deeper discussion about how we want to organize society. We ought to. In the limit case of a self-perpetuating endowment harming the world, there ought to be some way for that to be repurposed to help the world.