Having touched last week on the somewhat — if not downright — disproportionate regard for IQ readings in the corporate world, I believe it is in the fitness of things to have a look at what it is like in the academia. Unfortunately, since data is not kept or analysed at the local level, one is forced to build the argument on the basis of what goes around in the First World.

Even where data is processed to any degree of empirical acceptance by the local institutions of higher learning, nobody wants to share the information at any public forum. This is rather strange and may make one think that there must be something fishy to hide for otherwise an institution would love to highlight the transparency factor in its admission process and compare it with the outcome to underline the efficacy of the mechanism in place.

Generally speaking, it is not rare to come across people of highly debatable (in fact, detestable) calibre coming out of elitist institutions, especially business schools. And the same applies — very, very unfortunately but realistically — to the faculty. Meet them or, better still, talk to the students under their care who may well be your own children, and you would have some idea of the calibre of a faculty that is selected through a process which apparently tests individuals comprehensively.

Despite all this, they, the institutions, remain prized possessions for both the faculty and the students. Things, however, are evolving elsewhere and maybe one day our institutions will also learn a thing or two.

With the local scenario behind us, we can now move on to the academia at large. Not surprisingly, things are pretty much inline with happenings in the corporate world that we shared in this place last week, with the most high-ranking of the high-ranking and the most respectable of the respectable educational institutions stressing more and more on a better intelligence quotient.

A few years ago, Harvard University, for instance, received 27,462 applications. And Harvard, mind you, is just an example; not an exception. There can be little doubt that every single applicant would have been a genius of sorts, for the ‘non-genius’ would not even dare to apply to an Ivy League institution. Just the brand is enough to scare away the lesser mortal.

It is, therefore, not unexpected that of the applicants, 2,500 had scored a perfect cent per cent on the Critical Reading segment of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Another 3,300 had a flawless reading on the Maths component. More than 3,000 others were ranked first in their respective high school/college classes. Harvard accepted about 1,600 from this pool of ‘geniuses’, which basically means that it rejected over 94 per hundred applicants.

Ivy League data has been used quite often by psychologists to assess the worth of the admission process and studies tend to suggest that all is not well with the system. The Harvard data in any case does not prove that the best — the really, really best — six per cent were picked. The university itself makes no such claim.

The argument is supported by a study of applicants at the Law School of another elite institution, the University of Michigan. It employs a policy of affirmative action whereby 10 per cent of all admissions are offered to racial minorities against a special quota away from the routine entry-level SAT and other requirements.

When the University set up a study a few years ago to track the careers of its graduates in order to compare the two categories, it was surprised to find that there was hardly any difference between the two. One of the authors of the study, Richard Lempert, has quoted Malcolm Gladwell in the Outliers as saying that the researchers were “completely surprised” by the fact that members of the quota group — the supposedly lesser mortals — were doing “every bit as well” and that there was “no place (where) we saw any serious discrepancy”.

Based on such studies, psychologists have often raised questions about the selection procedure at institutions of higher learning. There is an enormous amount of research, they say, that points at the insignificance of both the subject-based and IQ testing. The Raven’s Progressive Matrices test that requires no language skills or specific body of acquired knowledge, but focuses on the abstract reasoning skills, has also proved to have an almost zero impact in terms of real-life success. What these psychologists have been gunning for is acknowledgement for the ‘threshold’ concept.

People at the bottom of the IQ scale — below 70 — are considered mentally disabled. A score of 100 is considered average that is good enough for people to pass through college. To be able to survive in a reasonably competitive environment, one needs an IQ of around 115. Up to this point, the IQ factor has practical relevance. But beyond 120, additional IQ points have failed to show on their own any measurable or distinct advantage for the individual. As noted by Arthur Jensen in his book IQ Fundamentalist, once the 120 threshold is crossed, IQ ceases to be the deciding factor.

Barry Schwartz (www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bschwar1/) is another naysayer. A professor of Social Theory and Social Action, he has suggested that elite institutions should better move from convergence testing to divergence testing which has already shown high IQ achievers to be struggling.

Till that happens, he says, institutions should simply divide the applicants into two categories — ‘good enough’ and ‘not good enough’ — and then hold a lottery among those good enough. No, seriously, a lottery.

Apparently, there is not much wrong with the suggestion. In the context of Harvard, the six students accepted out of every hundred applicants will have a reason — the lottery luck — to explain why they are there while the other 94 are not. Right now, they parade their ‘luck’ as ‘intellectual smartness’ which is blatantly WRONG.

humair.ishtiaq@gmail.com

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