The great Charles Murray writes that “Every advanced nation has a small group of people who have the potential to accelerate scientific progress and the advances that go with it.” Murray adds that they’re brilliant not “because of their personalities or their virtues,” but because “they have exceptionally high cognitive ability in science, technology, engineering or mathematics – STEM.”
Murray is crucially clear that “’Exceptionally high cognitive ability’ doesn’t mean the top percentile but something far more demanding.” He vivifies the previous point by noting that “A member of the starting lineup of any U.S. men’s college basketball team is almost certainly in the top percentile of basketball ability among American males,” but adds that LeBron James is part of that percentile to show “how wide the top percentile is.” Murray writes that what’s true about basketball “is true in almost every realm of human endeavor.”
Murray’s lament is that “admissions offices of elite universities ignore” the evidence of what Reuven Brenner refers to as the “vital few” who thrive in each field, and who lift us all. Murray believes the allegedly purposeful ignorance of universities doesn’t matter to “brilliant performers in the social sciences, humanities and nonacademic majors,” but puzzlingly contends it does in STEM. In his words, “It takes a brilliant mathematician to push a brilliant math student to new heights,” which explains Murray’s disdain for universities increasingly embracing a “’holistic review’” of applicants (think qualities unrelated to measurable cognitive ability) given his belief that “It should be one of the nation’s highest educational priorities to get its most brilliant STEM students” into elite universities. The bet here is that Murray could be persuaded otherwise.
To see why, consider those from the “social sciences, humanities or nonacademic majors” allegedly not harmed by the embrace of diversity for diversity’s sake, or in the case of LeBron James, none of the above. He’s widely seen as possessing the most advanced IQ in all of basketball right now. Did he attain that from high-school instruction in Akron, OH?
Sports historian Jeff Pearlman has joked that Larry Bird had a basketball IQ of 450, but he was largely taught the sport on the collegiate level by Bill Hodges at Indiana State. The best shooter in the history of the game (Steph Curry) was coached by Bob McKillop. And no, McKillop didn’t coach at Duke, UCLA, or Kentucky.
In football, the best player on the best team in the NFL (Kansas City Chiefs) got to the NFL from Texas Tech, not Texas or Texas A&M. Tom Brady planned to go to USC, but had his scholarship offer rescinded after “can’t-miss” recruit Quincy Woods signed with the Trojans, only for Brady to wind up at Michigan. As evidenced by where Brady was drafted, he too frequently missed out on brilliant instruction (starters get first-team reps and Brady wasn’t always the starter), but plainly achieved a lot. Some will say that Brady was coached by a football savant in Bill Belichick, but Belichick played at Wesleyan University, a school hardly known to be stocked with the world’s best football minds. It’s worth adding that Brady added to his championships without Belichick as head coach.
It’s a long way of asking what’s so different about STEM? If we ignore that the incredibly cerebral nature of football would completely stump most every STEM genius, we can’t ignore that the greatest authors of “advances in living” (think people like Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and the late Steve Jobs) were all college dropouts as is. Thinking about college grads Jeff Bezos and Fred Smith, it’s not as though either majored in e-commerce or overnight delivery at Princeton and Yale. How could they major in what they invented?
Considering the “most brilliant” STEM professors, ultimately they’re just that. Which means they’re at best teaching the past. That’s important simply because “advances in living” are a function of discovering an all-new future which, as their professional designation indicates, professors are unequal to the discovery of.
Murray has a point that elite universities should focus on exceptionally high cognitive ability over the “holistic,” but as “one of the nation’s highest educational priorities”? Since when does the right support such muscular action from national governments? Furthermore, it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t because truly relevant genius only becomes apparent after lots of ridicule from commercial powers that be, investors, and most certainly academics.
“The Roots of STEM Excellence” can’t be found in instruction, but in people too brilliant to be held down by non-admission to an elite school, or a lack of schooling altogether. Murray himself attended Harvard after growing up in Iowa. The bet here is that in a quiet moment he would sheepishly admit that he was already brilliant when he arrived in Cambridge, and would be no less brilliant if a “holistic” approach to admissions at Harvard meant that he attained his BA in Iowa City.
Republished from RealClear Markets
