A Higher Degree of Justice: Considering Fairness and Capability in Higher Educational Access.

摘要

Discussions of higher educational access in the United States of America have, at their root, an awareness of a tension between a long-standing, stated allegiance to meritocratic guidelines for admission and the moral intuition that these enacted procedures have led to a troubling system of educational and social stratification and exclusion. It is in this unease that my project rests.;I cast the subject of this moral suspicion as an urgent problem of distributive justice. My work proposes normative principles in critique and towards reform of the impulses behind admissions policies and practices in light of educational and social justice goals.;I align insights from John Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness with elements of Amartya Sen’s and Martha Nussbaum’s work on capabilities to highlight the previously under-considered moral contours of the higher educational admissions system. From this perspective, I suggest a theory of Capability Fairness in Higher Educational Access to serve as a rubric in the creation and performance of admissions policies. An appreciation of the postsecondary institution’s role in cultivating self-respect, coupled with recognition of the human dignity of potential student, creates a new conceptual space from which policymakers, professionals, and other persons might compassionately consider their roles in admissions decisions.