Higher Education: Journal Of Blacks In Higher Education

Journal Of Blacks In Higher Education Detail
In employment matters, our country was founded on the theory that the pressures of competition rather than public law were best suited to provide for the fair treatment and evenhanded judgments about the abilities and qualifications of our citizens. In higher education, too, it was believed that fair and unbiased treatment in the admission of students and engaging scholars would be protected, in considerable part, by the rewards and penalties inherent in a system of open competition.In the most specific terms, the theory was as follows: If, because of some unfavorable class prejudgment or racial stereotype, a college or university consistently rejected qualified students or scholars, the forces of full-blooded competition would soon rush in and put the matter right. This was so because the rejected student or professor would be free to seek and win a position in a second institution where a more rational view of the applicant's competence and qualifications would prevail. Having made a wiser choice, the second institution would gain in educational prestige and strength by sturdily ignoring group stigmas or stereotypes and engaging the talents of the qualified person even though he or she belonged to an outcast group. The first institution, in turn — if it persisted in its prejudicial ways that called for the rejection of able but outcast people — would gradually lose academic prestige and eventually suffer deterioration in the intellectual standing of both its faculty and student body.In a classic example of the corrective power of competition in higher education, the anti-Semitism in faculty appointments that once prevailed at Harvard delivered a number of extraordinarily distinguished Jewish scholars into the welcoming arms of MIT.

Journal Of Blacks In Higher Education

Higher Education

Thursday, 31 January 2013

Journal Of Blacks In Higher Education

No comments:

Post a Comment