CMEI Colloquium
Larsen Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Education
November 10, 2011
How do students attending elite universities make meaning of their admission, given both strong competition as well as public debates over the underrepresentation of disadvantaged groups? In this paper, Prof. Natasha Warikoo compared the meaning-making of undergraduates attending two elite American and one elite British university with respect to admissions meritocracy and the university’s role in promoting diversity in the student body. British students emphasize two key drivers of success in admission to Oxford: (1) ability, or being “smart”; and (2) training, best done at private schools and in middle- to upper-class families. United States students, on the other hand, more frequently frame meritocracy flexibly such that, for example, athletic skills count toward meritocracy and hence justify athletic recruits. This meaning-making stems in part through different institutional goals articulated by students, which resonate with the institutional goals expressed by representatives of the respective universities. For British students, admissions focuses on individual skills and potential to succeed in one’s subject, and takes a universalistic perspective, eschewing any race- or class-based affirmative action. This allows students clear focus in their views, while preventing room for discussion on how to reduce the underrepresentation of particular groups on campus. In the United States, students emphasize the importance of a diverse cohort of students that the admissions office carefully constructs to create a rich educational environment. Although we find important cross-national differences, most students express support for their respective universities’ admissions processes, legitimating their own success in those processes. The paper draws upon 144 one-on-one in-depth interviews with undergraduates attending Harvard University, Brown University, and University of Oxford.
Speaker Biography: Natasha Warikoo is an expert on the relationships between education, racial and ethnic diversity, and cultural processes in schools and universities. Her most recent book, The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities illuminates how undergraduates attending Ivy League universities and Oxford University conceptualize race and meritocracy. The book emphasizes the contradictions, moral conundrums, and tensions on campus related to affirmative action and diversity, and how these vary across racial and national lines. Her first book, Balancing Acts: Youth Culture in the Global City, analyzes youth culture among children of immigrants attending low-performing high schools in New York City and London. Balancing Acts won the Thomas and Znaneicki Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association's International Migration Section.