I believe the connection (which might or might not directly pick up on something you are defending?) is that if you go beyond merely starting your student community building with top universities first as a heuristic, and you further concentrate spending on the top universities to extreme degrees, you are in fact assuming a very strong distinction between those universities. David T has described the distinction in an approximate way as saying there are ‘only’ influential/high-earning-potential people at top universities.
The assumption of a strong distinction can be read from how the decision to concentrate implies it takes a huge amount of marginal funding before the diminishing returns of giving the next dollar to top unis is considered less valuable than giving a first dollar to a mid-range uni.
To defend large disparities between funding of different universities, it’s not enough to say ‘well you have to draw the line somewhere as you can only fund so many universities’; you need to further justify the choice to treat top universities as being in another class.
And arguably that’s an elitist worldview which sees a large difference between top unis and the rest — it’s more elitist if it talks about large talent gaps, implying top unis are able to filter students on intelligence very well; and it’s less elitist if it talks only about ‘people who will go on to be influential’, putting the blame of elitism on the society that rewards elite resumes.
That’s how I relate what David T has been saying, to what you said, DavidNash.
I believe the connection (which might or might not directly pick up on something you are defending?) is that if you go beyond merely starting your student community building with top universities first as a heuristic, and you further concentrate spending on the top universities to extreme degrees, you are in fact assuming a very strong distinction between those universities. David T has described the distinction in an approximate way as saying there are ‘only’ influential/high-earning-potential people at top universities.
The assumption of a strong distinction can be read from how the decision to concentrate implies it takes a huge amount of marginal funding before the diminishing returns of giving the next dollar to top unis is considered less valuable than giving a first dollar to a mid-range uni.
To defend large disparities between funding of different universities, it’s not enough to say ‘well you have to draw the line somewhere as you can only fund so many universities’; you need to further justify the choice to treat top universities as being in another class.
And arguably that’s an elitist worldview which sees a large difference between top unis and the rest — it’s more elitist if it talks about large talent gaps, implying top unis are able to filter students on intelligence very well; and it’s less elitist if it talks only about ‘people who will go on to be influential’, putting the blame of elitism on the society that rewards elite resumes.
That’s how I relate what David T has been saying, to what you said, DavidNash.