A Flawed Meritocracy

QUITE A LOT of President Bok's recently released report on federal financial aid could be mistaken for one of his frequent open letters. Thirty pages are a leisurely and articulate analysts of a complex issue, devoid of the concrete proposals that could spell alarm or comprehensive policy change. The dangerous surprise doesn't come till about halfway through.

Expanding on his overriding assumption that Washington's primary rationale for financing needy students' educations is and should be the long-term national interest. Bok observes that the government largely wastes the money it bestows on the 40 percent of all students who start but do not finish college. Nothing that this category includes three fourths of all students with particularly low grades and College Board scores. Bok makes an outrageous leap of logic. He recommends that such students whose combined SAI scores are below 700 and who rank in the lowest quarter of their class--be ruled ineligible for federal aid. The reason: Educating them will probably not produce any "public benefit."

Suspect as the idea of basing public policy on grades and test scores--which notoriously reflect income level, race, and hometown as well as ability the most upsetting aspects of Bok's stance he deeper. It is bad enough that he as an educator, gives evidence of thinking in statistical rather than individual terms, he omits any mention of the 25 percent of these low achievers who do finish college, presumably by overcoming severe obstacles. ("It is impossible, of course," he says in passing, "to predict precisely which students will fall by the wayside.") It is worse that, in drawing absolute lines for the privilege of moving up the socioeconomic ladder, he relies so trustingly on yardsticks that may favor the advantaged.

More alarming than the suggestion itself is the philosophical basis it reveals--the apparent reversal of Bok's oft-profesed commitment to the goal of diversity. On Harvard's level, the decisions balancing the University's desire to provide access against the educational handicaps of an underprivileged background are made in the admissions committee, where they be long.

On the national level, though, a commitment to diversity implies more. Any nationwide program that denies funds across-the-board to people who do not meet an external standard--or whose chances of making a "public contribution" are not deemed satisfactory--undermines the initiative's basic thrust. The federal government should strive to break down the barriers imposed on society's poorer members early on; it should not be making what are fundamentally admissions decisions at the aid level.

In a sense Bok's proposal, if implemented, would go a step further even than that of Reagan's lieutenants. They aver that their projected and cuts will preserve students' "access" to higher education, limiting only their right to "choose" the higher-priced--and incidentally more prestigious--institutions. Bok's formulation implies that some students do not even deserve access.

Instead of putting forth dangerous suggestions in the name of a flawed meritocracy. Bok should be lobbying against the aid cuts wholesale. His vocal opposition will do far more for the cause of equal access than will his acceptance of the cuts as inevitabilities to be dealt with somehow.

We add our hearty condemnation to the other voices that have expressed anger and disillusion with Bok's approach to an issue on which he carries so much weight, both as a lobbyist and as an educational leader. If the president of an influential university can compromise his support of the basic principles of equal opportunity in favor of doubtful statistical patterns, we can hardly hope the Reaganites will be more generous. We hope Bok will instead continue to use his considerable influence to further the educational causes that most need support in Washington, rather than distracting the lawmakers and confusing the issues with policy suggestons that would kill more than they cure.