An essay excerpted from How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (Harvard University Press).

In American higher education, excellence, merit, and quality are often captured by quantitative measures such as GRE and SAT scores (if you are a student) or number of citations (if you are...

An essay excerpted from How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (Harvard University Press)

Excellence is the holy grail of academic life. Scholars strive to produce research that will influence the direction of their field. Universities compete to improve their relative rankings. Students seek inspiring mentors....

Diversity and excellence are often pitted against one another in American higher education. Those who oppose taking diversity into consideration in university admission or other forms of academic selection argue that some "get in" because of their skin color or gender while others "get in" because of their achievement and...