A theory of academic justice

by Allen B. Downey
August 2004

In 1971 the political theorist John Rawls proposed a thought experiment that has kept ethicists' heads spinning ever since. Here is my paraphrase of the experiment: imagine that you are about to be born, but you don't know yet where you will be born or who your parents will be. How would you want the world to be?

Rawls uses this scenario to examine the idea of justice, but you will have to read A Theory of Justice to see what he has to say. I want to pose a slightly different question: imagine that you are about to enter college, but you don't know yet whether you will be the smartest kid in the class, or the... let's see... the one who will find the work most challenging (whew!). How would you want college to be?

As the Olin phoenix rises once more from the ash-heap of the previous semester, we have another opportunity to answer this question for ourselves. Every year the incoming class finds itself facing a surprisingly real version of Rawls' "veil of ignorance". In high school, nearly all our students were in the top 5% of their classes. Here at Olin, 95% of them are no longer in the top 5% of the class.

Most likely there will be a few students that do well at everything, without seeming to try, and there will be a few students who fail no matter how hard they try. And most likely the majority will find themselves huddled in the swollen belly of the bell curve, comfortably in sight of the median.

But here's the interesting thing: at this point in the year, most students don't know yet where in this distribution they will fall. So now is when I want to ask: how would you want college to be, if you didn't know who you were going to be?

First, imagine that you find yourself at the top of the heap. Maybe you went to a good high school and you have already seen some of the material in the first-year ICBs. Or maybe you just pick it up more quickly than average. What should we do with you? Do you want to wait for your classmates to catch up, or do you want to press your advantage while it lasts? Do you want to skip over introductory classes, do you want a more challenging version, or do you want to pursue independent work or research?

Now imagine that you find yourself in, say, the bottom fifth of the class. How are you going to handle it? You might find yourself wondering whether you belong here, or thinking that engineering isn't the thing for you after all. So far, you've probably been pretty good at everything you've tried. Maybe here you will find out that there are some things you're not so good at. Do you want help, and what kind of help? Do you want the chance to catch up, or just a chance to do the best you can? If you never catch up, can you be comfortable with that?

If you find yourself in the middle of the curve, your reality shock may not be as stark, but you will still have some adjustments to make. If things have been coming pretty easily so far, you might find that you need to develop study skills, thinking skills, and a disciplined approach to work that you could live without in high school. And you might encounter setbacks of a kind you haven't dealt with before. If you find yourself running at full speed just to stay in the middle of the pack, will you find a way to be happy there?

Some of you might be thinking that if you find yourself below the median, you will just work harder. If that's what you think, then you are missing my point. I take it for granted that Olin students are hardworking and conscientious. Nevertheless, some of you are going to find yourselves below the median, and no matter how hard or how much you work, some of you will stay below the median. Such is the nature of the median. I don't mean to be harsh, but I think the question I am posing is difficult, and I don't want us to be misled by a facile answer.

Another tempting answer is to promise that we will give each student the opportunity to learn and develop to the best of his or her ability. This is a useful ideal, but it needs to be tempered by reality. We have finite resources, and some opportunities come at the cost of others. If we offer more introductory classes, we can offer fewer advanced classes. In a given class, the students with the best command of the material can be a valuable resource to the students who are still struggling, but acting as a peer tutor may not be in the best interest of a student who is prepared to move on to more advanced material.

If there were no conflicts, then academic justice would be easy. But there are, and I think these questions deserve some thought. Which students does the college serve best? Who are we neglecting? Are we allocating resources in a way that is just? The arriving students, while they are still behind the veil of ignorance, have an unusual opportunity to live Rawls' thought experiement. I would like to hear what they have to say.