Did you hear about Bruce Charlton’s recently published study in the Times Higher Education? Probably not, because American papers haven’t been covering the issue (not for a lack of dramatic cleavage of classes). I stumbled upon the article on BBCBrasil.com’s web site, which details Charlton’s thesis that
A pequena proporção de estudantes de classe média baixa em universidades renomadas é o “resultado natural de uma diferença de QI entre classes sociais”, afirma o acadêmico inglês Bruce Charlton.
A small proportion of middle class students in universities is the “natural result of a difference in IQ between social classes,” affirms the English academic Bruce Charlton
Other international sources, such as newspapers in Bangalore and Africa, are picking up on the story as well. Charlton’s classist study undermines all attempts at creating non-discriminating public universities and plays into a convenient and naive stereotype. Perhaps Brazil’s current class striations, for example in Rio, where the richest neighborhoods are contrasted within a stone’s toss with expansive favelas, made their editorial board more receptive to fueling a dissenting voice against these claims.
The editor-in-chief of Medical Hypotheses also stated:
When admissions are assumed to be absolutely meritocratic, social class IQ differences of plausible magnitude lead to highly significant effects on the social class ratios of students at university when compared with the general population
