The Harvard degree has lost its luster. The Ivy League announced this week that undergraduate applications shrunk by 5% this year — while other elite schools soared to record highs.
Dartmouth, Columbia, MIT and University of Penn all saw spikes.
Rot from Within
Since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Cambridge campus has erupted with antisemitism: swastikas on campus, chants of “Intifada” from student protesters, and Jewish students mobbed.
Jewish students even slapped the school with lawsuit, alleging violation of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Former President Claudine Gay: Many Shortcomings
Despite mounting pressure from alumni, donors and US congress members, former Harvard president Claudine Gay failed to condemn campus antisemitism — testifying on Capitol Hill that “it’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying and harassment. That speech did not cross that barrier.”
For a university ranking last in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) free speech rankings last year, receiving a score of -10, suddenly hiding behind the defense of free expression fell flat for many. It also, ultimately, led to Gay’s resignation in January, following more than 40 plagiarism accusations.
Nor was anti-Jewish prejudice lost on employers and influential voices in the corporate world — like prestigious law firm Edelson, which boycotted Harvard recruiting events this year.
Harvard alumnus Bill Ackman sought the names of Harvard students who publicly blamed Israel for the Hams attacks. Meanwhile, law firm Davis Polk reminded a job offer for one such student.
Barstool Sports owner Dave Portnoy wouldn;t recruit from Harvard.
But campus antisemitism is not the only issue driving away potential students.
Last June the Supreme Court blew the cover on Harvard’s now illegal race-based affirmative action practices, which were found to violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protections Clause.
Discrimination against Asian American students
That case reveal discrimination against Asian American students — who were systemically scored lower on subjective “personality” ratings by admissions counselors — but it also exposed the school’s nepotistic favoritism toward the ultra-elite.
Three quarters of them are statistically unlikely to have gotten in without that special interest status.
Harvard’s applicant pool shrunk from 56,937 to 54,008 this year, defying trend of record-high applications across academia?
Between 2009 and 2014, a legacy applicant to Harvard had a one in three shot of getting in. A child on the “dean’s interest list,” term used by admissions officers often to denote a relationship to donors, had 42.2% chance of admission.
One cannot blame high schoolers and their families for questioning whether weathering antisemitism, anti-Asian bias and rampant nepotism is really worth the hype.
