Coping with change at MIT
How to achieve the goals of DEI in a legal and non-discriminatory manner
Things are changing in American higher education. Discriminatory policies have been deemed illegal. DEI programs, according to President Kornbluth, have not provided the value that was intended. However, their intent was beneficial: to reach out to deserving but possibly ill-prepared students and offer them a place at MIT, along with a chance to reap its benefits. So how might we achieve the positive goals of DEI while achieving better results and remaining legal? We offer three suggestions.
First: set up a low- or no-cost one-year online curriculum open to graduates of underfunded high schools. This would serve as a bridge for students with high potential but poor preparation to succeed. At the end of the course, there would be an in-person proctored exam given at regional centers that mimics the final exams for 8.01 and 18.01. Those who pass would be admitted for the following school year. This would serve the function of outreach to the underserved while retaining merit as the metric of admission.
Second: regarding tuition, consider an option where students either pay the current tuition (as they do now), or they attend for free with the proviso that they will tithe in a manner based on their IRS income tax return after graduation. For instance, students will tithe 1% of their salary each year when their income reaches five times the poverty level, 2% upon reaching six times the poverty level, and so on, up to 25%. This would allow the poorest students to attend and would not penalize those with lower earnings, but would pay vast dividends from those whom MIT has enabled. Those payments would be tax-deductible as long as MIT remains a charitable organization — hopefully forever. And they’re on gross salary, not after-tax.
Third: increase the undergraduate class size and scale faculty to match. This will make room for the incoming students from the first two suggested programs without penalizing those accepted through the current application process. We recognize that this proposal is not without its logistical problems — chief among them housing for a large number of students and adequate TA staff for recitation sections. But MIT is nothing if not able to solve knotty problems. We do, after all, have an architecture department.
We believe that MIT is well worth protecting from arbitrary mandates, but will only be allowed to do so if it initiates major changes from within. We hope these changes can serve as a model for other schools that may be threatened, so that MIT becomes a leader, not only in academic subjects, but in administrative practices as well.
Steve Carhart (MIT class of 1970) runs a financial services company and has a strong interest in climate change.
Tom Hafer (MIT class of 1970) worked in and for DoD and DHS for nearly 50 years and is now trying to stay ahead of his 7th grade robotics team.
Joseph Horton (MIT class of 1969 and the Tulane Medical School class of 1973) practiced in neurointerventional surgery and is now (mostly) retired.