Social Closure in American Elite Higher Education Author(s): David L. Swartz Source: Theory and Society, Vol.

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TheorSoc (2008) 37:409-419 DOI 10.1007/S11186-008-9064-2

Social closurein Americanelitehighereducation

David L. Swartz

Published online: 22 April2008 Science+ BusinessMedia B.V. 2008 Springer

AbstractElitecollegeadmissions of social closurein which exemplify processes thestrategic use of cultural ideals conflict, self-interest, organizational status-group and broader social trends and contingent historical eventsinterweave to of merit, Karabel's shape institutional power in the UnitedStates. The Chosen,Jerome of college admissions at Harvard, monumental Yale, and studyof the history a political and a 1900 to 2005, offers of eliterecruitment Princeton from sociology thathas guidedthesethree of the definition of merit cultural and social history As Max Weber current aboutcollegeadmissions. schoolsandshapedmuch thinking ofelite idealsofan epochbearthestamp definition ofcultural reminded us,thevery uses interests and their idealsbutcultural notcultural strategic groupdomination: demonstration an impressive The bookprovides empirical power. guideinstitutional of merit as organizational it identifies four different definitions of that proposition: over the last tools thathave guided Harvard, Yale, and Princeton gatekeeping were molded by status-group hundred years and shows how these definitions the central of This essay outlines and organizational interests. conflict arguments of thehistory, forourunderstanding Karabel'sbook; it identifies keycontributions ithighlights of thesethree and politics institutions; interests, culture, organizational and it reflects on a fundamental theanalysis; thesocial closureframework guiding

at and Exclusion A review The Chosen:TheHiddenHistory Karabel, ofAdmission essayon Jerome Boston:Houghton Yale,and Princeton. Harvard, Mifflin, 2005, D. L. Swartz (ISI) MA 02215,USA BostonUniversity, 96-100Cummington St.,Boston, Department, Sociology e-mail: dswartz@bu.edu

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in Karabel's thinking about meritocratic ideals as governing ambiguity principlesfor modernstratified societies. Social closure: "a process of subordinationwherebyone group monopolizes to anothergroup of outsidersbeneathit advantages by closing off opportunities " which it definesas inferior and ineligible. (Murphy 1988:8) and broadcastmedia, includingtheNew YorkTimes, Widely reviewed in the print The New theLos Angeles Times,The Economist,Christian Post, Yorker, Washington Science Monitor,and the Chronicle of Higher Education, JeromeKarabel's book, The Chosen: The Hidden HistoryofAdmissionand Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton(Houghton Mifflin, 2005), is, as one reviewerputs it, a "scholarlyepic," the "big meta-academic book of the season." The scholarly community has been even more enthusiastic. Winnerof numerousawards1crossingdisciplinary and subboundaries,The Chosen has achieved what few sociological workshave disciplinary been able to do: interweave seamlessly history,organization and institutional analysis, culture,education, and politics. Indeed, this monumentaloeuvre of over 550 pages of textand another115 pages of endnotesbringsoriginalcontributions to each of these subfieldsin sociology. It seems only fitting thatthisworkbe reviewed in the pages of Theory and Society, where an early installmentoutlining the the theoretical and the empiricaldata of the first thirdof the framework, argument, book already appeared (Karabel 1984).2 A central concern of political sociology is power, the multitudeof ways that societies. In recent years new power finds expression in modern differentiated attentionis being given to the ways that power is expressed throughcultural to shape political environments. A resources, processes, agents, and institutions in the sociology of cultureconcerns how through the manifestor growinginterest latent operations of definitions,classifications, distinctions,and categorizations cultural hierarchiesboth constituteand express social hierarchies, just as Pierre Bourdieu (1984 [1979]) argues. Karabel's book is an exemplarywork of this new culturaland institutional in political sociological work. It stands within orientation the C. WrightMills tradition of power elite researchthough Karabel, much more

Book Awardof the American Distinguished Scholarly SociologicalAssociation Contribution to Scholarship Awardfrom thePacificSociological Association (2007), theDistinguished Waller Award from theSociology of Education Section of theAmerican (2007), theWillard Sociological Association Jewish Book Awardin American Jewish (2006), theNational (2006), and theMax History WeberAwardfrom the Organizations, and WorkSectionof the American Occupations, Sociological Association, (2006). 2 In theinterest of fulldisclosure: I participated in theveryearlyphasesof theresearch to this leading bookandhavediscussed with theauthor various ofhisresearch for thebookoverseveral I aspects years. reviewed the manuscript forthepublisher and wroterecommendation letters thebook for nominating several awards. The author, has notseenthoseletters orreadthis review to publication. As however, prior I think the reviewindicates, of thiswork.My critical evaluation comes in identifying quite highly contributions to sociology that in sucha largevolume, notbe immediately in fleshing out might apparent thetheoretical thework, andinpointing more framework ambivalence explicitly guiding up a fundamental theauthor has aboutmeritocratic ideals. j Springer

1These includethe

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thanMills and his followers,includes as integral membersof the power elite leaders of dominantculturalinstitutions.3 This remarkablestudyof the Big Three, Harvard, that Yale, and Princeton(HYP), offersa political sociology of elite recruitment and theirleaders have shaped America in shows both how these threeinstitutions significantways and at the same time have been obliged to make strategic adaptationsto changes in American society. The Chosen is a historyof college admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton from 1900 to 2005. But it is much more. It is also about institutional power. A centralargument of thebook is thatpower lies at the centerof the decisions made by and that admissions policy tends to reflectpower relations college administrators interests of the schools.4 The book social among major groupsand theorganizational of the definition of meritand the recurrent also offersa culturaland social history opposed to equality in Although meritis frequently strugglesover thatdefinition. is opposed to equalityof just as equalityof opportunity today's popular imagination, conditionas a sortof zero-sumtradeoffwhere an advance in one necessarilymeans thateverything in the other, Karabel's book is a usefulreminder a retreat depends on - a key thesisof is politicallyneutral how one defines"merit"and thatno definition of culturalideals of an epoch, as Marx Weber the book. Indeed the verydefinitions remindedus, bear the stampof elite group dominationthoughtheyare occasionally of that contested.5 The Chosen provides an impressive empirical demonstration definitions of meritthat have guided HYP proposition;it identifiesfour different admissions over the last 100 years and that emerged throughcultural and social conflict. And these definitions all privilege the "attributes most abundantly possessed by dominantsocial groups" (549). Inspiredby the work of Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1984 [1979]; 1996 [1989]), Karabel brings an organizational field perspective to his analysis. The book maintain highlightsthe relational and power dimensions these three institutions and segmented with each other and with externalreferenceschools in a stratified system of higher education. Their decisions regarding admissions need to be

Karabel's elite includes "individuals who occupy the leading positions in major organizations in the economy, the polity,and the culture" whereas the Mills traditionincludes militaryleaders in the power elite but "exclude fromtheirdefinitionthose who preside over the nation's major cultural institutions" (560). 4 In his 1984 paper Karabel framesthe early 1918-1940 period of HYP admissions with social closure autonomy and change that draws inspirationprimarilyfromWeber theoryand a theoryof institutional (1978), and elaborated by Parkin (1974; 1979) and Murphy (1988). Two components stand out: statusThe Chosen expands upon and elaborates that earlier group struggle and organizational self-interest. theoreticalframework.It takes into account a wider range of contingentfactors such as conditions of national crisis when the urban riots of 1968 propelled the Big Three to open their doors to minority students-a move that did not result directlyfrom status group struggleamong elites or the defense of organizational interests.Against both marxism and particularlyfunctionalism,Karabel stresses both organization autonomy and status group struggle yet also interweaves historical contingency into his account of institutional change. 5 with systems of social esteem, Weber In discussing how cultural and educational ideals interconnect (Gerth and Mills 1970:243) remarksthatthe educational ideal of the "cultivated man" was "stamped by and by the social conditionformembershipin the ruling of dominationand the rulingstratum the structure stratum." 4y Springer

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understoodin termsof fiercelycompetitiverelationsthat the Big Three entertain with each other and with those socially proximate schools such as Dartmouth, such and those socially more distantbut relevantreferences Williams,and Stanford, as Columbia, MIT, Chicago, and Perm. Indeed, The Chosen is one of the best available. organizationfield analyses currently Karabel details with devastating precision his argumentthat the changes in of meritthatguided the Big Three were not admission policies and the definitions interestsand power but rooted in concrete and evolving institutional arbitrary struggles. The changes were spurred by the need of HYP to maintain their competitivepositions within the field of higher education and to fosterthe "the preservationof the larger social order of which they were an integral - and privileged - part." In the struggleover the definitionof meritthat would guide admissionspolicies, we see HYP and theirleaders guided not so much by ideals but by organizational interestsas they act to maintain and enhance the competitive positions of their respective schools. Thus, the decisions by Yale and Princeton finally to admit women in 1969 were made less with the ideal of equality of in mind thanby theirfearthattheirall-male character opportunity endangeredtheir "the best boys." This does not mean thatideals were not important; abilityto attract in fact, they were often objects of struggle as the decision to admit women, at Yale, was met with vigorous alumni resistance(William F. Buckley particularly was among the leaders). Yet considerationof competing organizationalinterests carried the day as the leaders of the three schools behaved like "constrained fromthe heads of large corporations, whose primary managersnot so verydifferent environment."6 task is to defendtheirorganization'spositionin a highlycompetitive The book also says something important comparatively:by focusing on the Americancase, it pointsup yetanother instanceof Americanexceptionalism. striking thenotionthat"theability to throw, As Karabel noteswithirony, kick,or hita ball is a in determining criterion who should be admittedto our greatest research legitimate thatwould be consideredlaughablein mostof theworld's universities is a proposition countries."In France's Ecole Normale Superieure, of Tokyo, and Japan's University most of the world's other elite schools, academic excellence, not extracurricular abilities,defineswho is to be admitted. Karabel turns, as the best of historicalsociology does, our attention fromfixation on the presentto an understanding of how today's taken-for-granted values and came about. As The Chosen fits with that in the such, practices scholarship "origins of the present" genre that uncovers the processes that created the basis of elite recruitment in the United States. Today, college bound high contemporary schoolers and theirfamiliestoil away on the increasingly tasks of anxiety-ridden7 out for and the SATs, collectingletters filling college applications,prepping taking

witha different issue in mind Weber's (1970:280) famous line "Not ideas, but material Althoughwritten and ideal interests,directly govern men's conduct" is suggestive of the emphasis Karabel wishes to convey. 7 In a poignantremarkKarabel observes that"It is no exaggerationto say thatthe current regime in elite (547). college admissions has been far more successful in democratizinganxietythan opportunity"

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for the of recommendations from guidance counselors and teachers, performing All in of this and to be creative the interview, personal trying personal essay. us that has been foisted embodies a defining of individual merit upon by elite image into the historical admissions. The Karabel book offers originsof that college insight thatguides access to our best colleges and universities view of themeritorious today. Far frombeing a universalattribute, merit,The Chosen shows, has undergonefour different definitions over the last hundredyears in HYP admissions. at the turnof the twentieth who thinks century Anyone colleges and universities HYP did not turndown werejust like theyare today,only smaller,will be surprised. many applicants then; moreover, these schools were strikinglymeritocratic, admittingstudents almost largely on the basis of academic criteria,especially remained knowledge of Latin and Greek. This worked as long as these institutions WASP enclaves, where limited numbers of qualified candidates applied, mostly channeledby a handfulof elite northeast privateschools - such as Groton,Andover, and St. Paul's thatprovided the kind of classical education HYP then required. described so well by E. Digby These were the days the Protestant Establishment, to groom its able (male) Baltzell (1964; Baltzell 1976), reignedand HYP functioned membersforpositionsof power. of meritbecame problematicfor these institutions But this academic definition when it startedattracting large numbersof qualified applicants fromthe growing childrenof mass immigration, urban, public-school-education notably Jews. This change occurred in the context of a powerful national movement to restrict Faced with growingnumbers in the earlypartof the twentieth century. immigration of applicantswho seemed to be not "the rightkind of people," all threeinstitutions of merit. theirdefinition "JewishProblem"by setting solved their quotas and altering Lowell in which he expresses a letter fromHarvard's President Karabel unearthed not only his prejudices, widely shared by the WASP elite of the time, but also the practical institutional identifies problem: "The summerhotel that is ruined by but Jewsmeetsits fate,notbecause theJewsit admitsare of bad character, admitting leave the Gentileshave left, because theydriveaway the Gentiles,and thenafter they also." The problemwas fear of WASP flight;too many East Europeans - Jews would scare away the upper-classgentlemenwhose presence was essentialboth to efforts. Harvard'ssnob appeal and its fund-raising of meritbased on academic criteriawas leading to Realizing thatthe definition of merit.And the solutionwas to change the definition the wrong kind of student, A meetingof did. and Princeton at Yale thatis what Lowell and his counterparts how to limit the this addressed in 1918 New England deans problem: explicitly of redefinition in motion the It set the elite on campuses? growingnumbersof Jews of merit A definition new the next few over take that would merit years. place shiftedthe focus fromacademic to "personal qualities." "Character" became the it includedhighlysubjectivequalities like "manliness,""personality," centralfeature; social ethosthatcould be used to and "leadership"and was in facta code foran entire in universal Yet when out. undesirables terms,qualities of character presented keep seemed indicativeof only leadershippotentialand quite in line with the ideals of admissionofficesat the Big In line withthisnew definition, equalityof opportunity. letters of recommendations, Threebegan asking forphotographs, personalinterviews, etc. to weed out the undesirable.A new symbolicboundarywas erectedand a new
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boundary maintenanceprocess put into operation.8Karabel thus shows that the over the definition of excellence was not only about a culturalideal but also struggle an organizational tool. gatekeeping The response to the "Jewish problem" in the 1920s led to the emergenceof a " systemof admissionscharacterized by high levels of "discretion and "opacity" that to produce the outcomes they desired under permitteduniversityadministrators "Discretion" circumstances. gave the gatekeepersfreedom"to do what changing wished" and they "opacity" permittedthem to exercise their selection powers This became a definingmomentof the modernIvy League withoutpublic scrutiny. a college admissions systemthatwe still have today. Ironicallyit is and instituted and opacity to the this same system grantingdiscretionto college administrators reformulate the definition that it some later to yet again permits forty years process and of meritto include "diversity"thatwould open the doors to racial minorities women. This shift begins what Karabel, echoing RobertMichels (1962), coins as the "iron will retaina particular admissions policy only so law of admissions": "a university interests." long as it produces outcomes that correspondto perceived institutional Admissions policies are, in otherwords, drivenby outcome ratherthan principle. and culturalhistorythatthe Big Indeed it is the centralthesis of this institutional Three have always determinedtheir merit criteriaaccording to the admissions interests.9 outcomes thatwould suit theirinstitutional occurredagainst a backdropof social anxiety The shift fromintellect to character in its broader thatwas not limitedto theseparticular elite schools. Situating the shift context, Karabel writes that "the redefinitionof merit was part of a larger mobilization by old-stock Protestantsto preserve their dominance by restricting available to both immigration and the educational and occupational opportunities and theirchildren." The Chosen shows how the Protestant elite recentimmigrants underchallenge was obliged to set up new symbolicboundariesto regulatethe flow of candidatesto these elite institutions. scientific By the 1960s, the challenge of growingdemands formore sophisticated and of the Cold War - symbolized research,of more international competitiveness, It called forrecruiting of merit-as-brains. by Sputnik- ushered in a thirddefinition intellectually gifted applicants with high standardizedtest scores and specialized extracurricular excellence. The book analyzes how thethreeschools had to deal with their own internal constituencies in response to these external pressures: the of the 1960s, studentsand the press demandingmore diversity, the egalitarianism for"more brains," and alumni clingingto growingpower of the facultypressuring the past and activelyopposing manyof the changes. The alumnirevoltsat Princeton - remindone thatthisshift and Yale - thereled by William F. Buckley Jr. towardsa
8

Karabel's analysis of the efforts by the Big Three to find new symbolic criteriafor maintainingsocial closure intersectswith the relativelyrecent interestin the sociology of culture with culturalboundaries (Lamont 1992; Lamont and Fournier 1992). 9 Like Michels who uses the testcase studyof the German Democratic Partywhere one would least expect in terms of the political ideology to find hierarchyin party organization, Karabel shows the irony of self images of serving the findingthat though at the very citadel of intellectualideals and institutional HYP hone theirideals of meritto serve first and foremost theirorganizationalself interests. public interest, } Springer

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was not a smoothtransition but highlycontestedby alumniwho favored meritocracy treatment for The Chosen is not a historyof just elite alumni sons. preferential domination but also one of resistance by opposing and subordinate groups.The book shows how the university and admissions officers presidents adjudicated,prodded, negotiated,and compromised with these various constituenciesand drew on a varietyof culturalresourcesto accomplish theirtask. A fourth definition of meritemerges in response to the turmoilof the 1960s and includes the values of "diversity"and "inclusion." This permitted recruitment of minoritiesand coeducation. Here race-based affirmative action came into being, motivatedless by the moral claims of the civil rightsmovementthan by desire to preservethe social order in response to the massive race riots of 1965-1968. But did not bring class diversityas well. Indeed, as gender and racial/ethnic diversity Karabel points out, the Big Three are no more open today to the lower socioeconomic reaches of society, than they were during the 1950s. In the concludingpart,Karabel suggests the possibility- and advocates for- a possible fifthdefinitionthat would redefine merit to incorporatethe socioeconomically thatwould include class of diversity disadvantaged,creatingan expanded definition as well as gender,racial, and ethnicdiversity. diversity of "merit"thathave governedadmissions to This history of the many definitions of America over the last withthe largerhistory HYP since 1900 is also interwoven 100 years,notablyhow America changed fromone dominatedby a small group of privilegedwhite men of Anglo-Saxon originsto one thatlittleby littleenlarged its and women but veryfew fromthe poor leadershipto include Jews,racial minorities, or workingclass. archivalresearchto documenthow, over theyears,HYP Karabel uses painstaking institutional have definedand redefinedmeritaccording to theirshifting priorities. He gives a patientanalysis of annual admissions reports,internalmemorandaand statisticalstudies, administrative correspondence,admissions, facultyand trustee committee memoirs,and otherpreviouslyprivatedocumentsto minutes,biography, in admissionspolicies. Karabel treatsthis providesolid empiricalrecordof the shifts rich and varied material to document a central claim: admissions practices are thattendto reflect culturalartifacts tools and their reports gatekeeping organizational power relationsamong major social groups and strugglesover how organizations The text environments. withinchangingcompetitive defineand pursuetheirinterests offers manytellingdetails and vivid anecdotes,but always withan eye forhow they field in which theyare generated express the dynamicsof the institutional Theory informsthis enormous empirical work without being heavy handed. and broader Karabel interweavesstatus-group conflict,organizationalself-interest, The Chosen to the other. one events withoutreducing social trendsand contingent field withoutthe of of Bourdieu's concept provides an exemplarydemonstration Here his ideas. the use of that frequentlyaccompanies conceptual fetishism it numerous is the data. does not Indeed, through overpower conceptual language tellingdetails and vivid anecdotes thatKarabel is able to theorizethroughhis rich narrative.Echoing the classical view of Weber and Bourdieu's (Bourdieu and bears the imprint Karabel arguesthatmerit Passeron 1990 [1970]) "cultural arbitrary," "merit" is neutral, fora of No definition of dominant of theideals and interests groups. others. while some definition disadvantaging groups always advantages particular
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Moreover, cultural ideals are frequentlygenerated over contested terrains for recognitionand legitimacy.The great virtueof this book is that it documentsin considerabledetailjust how thisoccurs. enrollment and revenues,Yale During WorldWar Two, thoughfacingplummeting continuedto turndown qualified Jewishapplicants. Ever attentive to the multiple causal factorsthat play in organizationallife, Karabel writes "in the language of sociology,Yale judged itssymboliccapitalto be even morepreciousthanitseconomic capital." Yale would not sacrifice reputationfor short-term gain. Echoing the of Karabel that out the of college Bourdieu, contemporary theorizing points history admissionsand thedefinition of merit also pointsto a broaderchange in theAmerican stratification structure: a shiftaway from economic capital as a means of class to indirect transmission via culturalcapital; as such, the battleover the reproduction definition of meritin college admissionshas largelybeen a battlewithintheelite,for the workingclass has largelybeen excluded while the economicallyprivileged"old class" of businessmen has competed for slots with the culturally privileged"new class" of knowledge-basedprofessionals.It is a storyof the rise of culturalcapital. For all of the transitions in the definition of meritKarabel offersa finelyhoned analysis thatpoints up the agency of the individualuniversity presidentsand their admissions directors, the negotiatedenvironment of competinginterest groups,and the constraints of broadersociety forces.It is a culturaland political history of elite and theory, data, and method. highereducationthatintegrates agency and structure, One findsno sense of arbitrary withinthis work. History disciplinarydistinctions and sociology, for example, are seamlessly interwoven,avoiding what Bourdieu calls the "disastrous"separationbetween these two academic disciplines.KarabePs work can be seen as an expressionof what JuliaAdams et al. (Adams et al. 2005) as the recentthird wave of historical identify sociology,which gives new emphasisto the agency of actors. Karabel shows how the HYP presidents and theiradmissions directors and adapted theiradmissionsystemsto promoteequality devised, modified, of opportunity as a safeguard againstmore radical demandsforequalityof condition. We see in his analysismulti-dimensional who drawon images of thesekey individuals variouscultural resourcesto formulate their interests and desiresthatrepresent creative to changingcircumstances and in doing so reorient and defendtheinterests adaptations of theirpositionsand institutions. Structure and agency intersect so thatwe see both the effects of structure on agency and the creativeinnovation of agencyon structures. And cultureis constitutive of institutional power as well as an expressionof it. The Chosen offersmemorable biographical sketches of pivotal figures,such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Princeton's President Woodrow Wilson, Harvard's presidentsCharles W. Eliot, A. Lawrence Lowell, and James BryantConant, and Yale's Kingman Brewsterand his dean of admissions, R. Inslee Clark Jr.Karabel moves deftlybetween biographical glimpses of these importantactors and the institutional contexts they stepped into and attemptedto mold. He brings solid archival data and sociological theoryinto a lively narrative;in doing so he has createda textthathas both literary appeal and sociological insight.This capacityto attract a broaderappeal makes this outstanding book quite distinctive in the fieldof It is also in that it informs political sociology. public sociology directly the contemporarydebate over race-based affirmativeaction. By challenging the universal notion of merit,Karabel's book shows once again that the debate over
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the natureof equality of opportunity and how it should be expanded is not just a interests. matter of principle;it is also a matter of politics and institutional The Chosen can also be read as Karabel's critical reflectionson meritocratic ideals: to what extentdo, can, and should they govern the systemof rewards in modernsociety.On this,Karabel is ambivalent.His work shows convincinglythat than universal in thattheyboth reflect our definitions of meritare historicalrather and constitute social elite domination and struggle. Even when intellectual achievementbecomes the ideal standard,the actual practicesof these elite schools The quasifall far shortof the ideal proclaimed as this book amply demonstrates. because of a in "is not meritocratic meritocracy"(548) regime currently place and because the constituencies for certain institutional very powerful preferences most abundantly definition of "merit"itselfprivilegesthose "attributes possessed by dominantsocial groups" (549). At least until the late 1980s Harvard - widely considered the world's leading - had a 10% quota on "intellectuals"(those admittedstrictly on researchuniversity academic grounds) and Yale was similar. For this reason Karabel points out - a systemin of Max Weber- thatan "ideal of a meritocracy followingthe thinking whichpower plays no role in defining'merit'and in which richand poor alike enjoy unattainable"(550). to succeed - is inherently genuinelyequal opportunities Nonetheless,thisdoes not lead Karabel to conclude thatthe ideal of a meritocracy are should be discarded or that "attemptsto renderthe systemmore meritocratic meritocratic doomed to failure"(550). He considers the imperfect systemwe have over the older system based on highly visible today to be a vast improvement heritageand privilege.Elite college admissions have gained in gender,ethnic,and to the era of the thatKarabel applauds. He would not have us return racial diversity when Harvard admittedmost of its studentson the basis of century early twentieth academic merit(knowledge of the classics). Indeed, he calls forfurther expansion of advance the current He proposes four measures that could further meritdiversity. regime toward its ideal: eliminatepreferencesfor legacies, end quasi-meritocratic early admissions and early action, reduce preferencesfor recruitedathletes,and of meritthatwould include class diversity. embrace a new definition the systemof While adoptingthese fourpolicy changes would hardlytransform ideals elite college admissions,theywould push thema bit closer to the meritocratic these schools proclaim. Yet the book unearthsa historicalrecord of these schools above those of studentsand the broader interests pursuingtheirown institutional rarelypursue policies forvalues or ideals withoutthe society.School administrators pressureor supportof powerfulsocial carriers.Even "such modest measures are or unless powerfulpressure- whether external, internal, unlikelyto be implemented 10 Here Karabel seems While he both is applied" (555). strikingly pessimistic. thatin the end Karabel does measures,it is noteworthy suggestssome modestreform not lay out a politics for institutional change. Perhaps he does not see an obvious that.Perhaps thereis none. Shortof a period do that would emerging political force the 1968 urbanriotsthatmotivatedelite school in to similar of social crisis intensity order to reach out beyond theirusual social of a fearful administrators crumbling
10A education analysisby David Karen(1991) of the politicsof higher pointmade in an insightful admissions. 1 Springer

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constituencies to the disenfranchised, there seems little chance for significant in "Real changes prevailing patterns. change does not come withoutcost" (555) Karabel notes, and for the possibilityof increasingthe class diversityof the Big Three, Karabel observes the absence of a potentially powerfuladvocacy force- the Americanworkingclass. Indeed, withouta powerfulpolitical forcein sight,Karabel is obliged to resortto moral admonition.He asks: is it too much to ask the leaders of our most prestigiousinstitutions of higher thatconstantly education- institutions to the ideals proclaimtheircommitment of meritocracy and inclusion- thattheyexhibitthe same integrity and firmness of character theydemand of theirapplications?" (555) Good question. But absent a political force in sight, and as Karabel's historyof change in admissionsshows, it much more likelythatelite school leaderswill follow theirmaterialand ideal interests than theirideals. Finally, even if we were able to approach much more closely the ideal of rewardingindividuals on the basis of theirintellectualachievements,Karabel sees limits to even a successful meritocratic system. If the prospects for significant of meritocratic ideals are alreadywithus change seem elusive, the ideological effects and it is this darkerside of the meritocracy thatKarabel also stresses.Like Michael Young in his classic The Rise of the Meritocracy (1961[1958]), Karabel believes is a selecting and rewardingindividuals on the basis of talent and performance "reasonable principle" but "seriously flawed as a governingsocietal ideal." The distinction is worthconsidering. need not replace the ideal of Equality of opportunity equalityof conditionas it seems to have done in the minds and practicesof so many Americans. Both Young and Karabel would retainthe equality of condition as a in college admissions suggests. But guiding principleas his call forclass diversity the ideology of individual meritalso has its darker side as Young prophetically suggested fifty years ago. Inspiredby the work of Young, Karabel argues thatthe meritocracyultimatelydeflects "attentionfrom the real issues of poverty and inequalityof conditiononto a chimericalquest for unlimitedsocial mobility"(5). Karabel believes that Young's prophetic fear is in full realization before us: Americansbelieve thereis more social mobility thanthereactuallyis, Americansare tolerantof economic inequality,Americans are much more inclined to strikingly investin highereducation than in the social safetywelfarenet forthose who fail in the competitiverace, and Americans believe that the way to address economic More and more the coveted slots at inequalityis to increaseeducationalopportunity. our most selectiveschools go to the inheritors of culturaland social capital as well as economic capital. Yet in the minds of many Americans,success and failurego to individualsalone: winnerscan self-congratulate and losers have only themselvesto blame. In Young's words, the equality of opportunity in factmeans the "equality of to be unequal." It is this"dark side of themeritocracy" thatbothKarabel opportunity and Young would have us consider. It encourages elite self-righteousness and dampens the chances for criticalinsightthatpermitsthe disadvantagedto see that their"personal troubles"may well be "public issues" (Mills 1959).11
1' The corrosive effects ofmeritocratic on both winners andlosersis an early theme in Karabel's ideology (1972) work. } Springer

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of Culture & He is theauthor at BostonUniversity. Professor of Sociology David L. Swartzis Assistant VeraL. of ChicagoPress1997) andco-editor Bourdieu Power:TheSociology (with (University ofPierre Publishers Academic Elaboration Bourdieu: ofAfter 2004). He is a (Kluwer Influence, Critique, Zolberg) thestudy of interests include His research forTheory and Society. Editor and Book ReviewEditor Senior a book and he is currently and social theory, elitesand stratification, education, culture, writing religion, of Pierre Bourdieu. on thepolitical sociology

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