Thomas Freer on Education Inequality
Thomas Freer
Education Inequality
Claims and stances
Transcript
- 0:00 You know, funny you bring this up because I actually recently saw a um an Instagram reel that kind of totally encompassed what you're talking about.
- 0:11 And it was basically a an Oxford professor, and he'd gone to Harvard for his undergrad, and he at the beginning was comparing Harvard to Oxford and talking about how Harvard is one of the worst schools when it comes to who they let in.
- 0:29 They're all top 1% income, um, many of them privately educated, and that is in a huge part to their high value on legacies or parents or grandparents going to other Ivy League schools, prestigious schools, and then honestly, like networking to get into the school.
- 0:51 Um, and he was um talking poorly about his alma mater because he went there, and he was trying to talk to the Oxford class.
- 1:00 I believe it was some sort of graduation or some other ceremony, and he was saying that Oxford is much better because they don't do legacies, they are in fact a pure meritocracy in terms of admissions, but they still see the same issues of almost all of the classes and the top 1% of earners and their family's income, and almost all of them are privately educated growing up, and his basically his um his point was that even in a pure meritocracy, you're still gonna see these disparities.
- 1:38 It's not um the admissions process is not able to weed that out.
- 1:44 Um, and it's it what it comes down to is that these families that can't afford private education or can't afford tutors to increase their kids' ACT scores or SAT scores, those kids just aren't gonna get into the top schools, or it's gonna be way harder.
- 2:01 And that's the issue that we're experiencing today.