The Shrinking Pool Problem
How Diversity Rules Guarantee Mediocrity
The Shrinking Pool Problem
How Diversity Rules Guarantee Mediocrity
By Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com
Everyone says they want excellence. We want the best doctors, the best engineers, the best pilots, the best professors. We want institutions that know what they’re doing and people who can actually fix the car, defuse the bomb, land the plane, or teach the next generation something worth knowing.
But behind the scenes, academia and large institutions are quietly adopting a hiring philosophy that guarantees the opposite: a shrinking pool of talent dictated by non-merit restrictions. And when you shrink the pool, you shrink the outcome. Every time.
Call it what it is: The Shrinking Pool Problem.
The logic is simple. When you restrict hiring based on traits that have nothing to do with performance — gender, race, ideology, political statements, grievance identity — you automatically eliminate huge numbers of potentially excellent candidates. This isn’t politics. It’s math.
START WITH COMMON SENSE: THE MECHANIC
If your car breaks down, you want the mechanic who can diagnose the problem quickly, choose the right tools, communicate clearly, and get you safely back on the road.
Now imagine announcing you’ll only hire female mechanics, or only mechanics from one ethnicity, or only mechanics who submit a DEI loyalty statement promising to fix carburetors from a justice-informed perspective.
You’ve just shrunk the pool by eliminating the majority of high-performing candidates before evaluating merit.
Your odds of excellence go down.
You didn’t get worse workers because women or men or any demographic is inferior — you got worse workers because you throttled the talent pool.
Everyone understands this when it’s their own engine on fire.
LET’S TURN UP THE HEAT: THE 6-FOOT NBA CENTER
Now imagine an NBA franchise announcing the following hiring rule:
“Our next center must be no taller than six feet.”
Instantly, you’ve eliminated 99.9% of the world’s viable centers.
You have mathematically guaranteed mediocrity — or worse.
Not because short athletes lack heart — but because you replaced performance criteria with irrelevance.
This is what universities are doing with hiring.
NEXT LEVEL: THE 200-POUND BEAUTY PAGEANT
Suppose a beauty pageant announces:
“All contestants must weigh at least 200 pounds.”
Nothing wrong with heavier women. They can be beautiful. They can be glamorous. But the pageant has abandoned its own purpose. It no longer selects for beauty — it selects for eligibility under a new ideological rule.
Congratulations: you have once again shrunk the pool and torpedoed the mission.
FULL ABSURDITY: THE DMV OF NON–ENGLISH SPEAKERS
Now picture a Department of Motor Vehicles that proudly advertises:
“All new hires must be native non-English speakers.”
Instant chaos.
Not because non-English speakers are bad workers — but because the institution has chosen criteria that directly contradict its mission of helping people navigate paperwork, rules, and communication.
It’s the Shrinking Pool Problem pushed to the brink: criteria chosen for symbolism, not performance.
THE BACKYARD POOL OF DIMINISHING RETURNS
Your family decides they want a backyard swimming pool. You run the numbers, and discover something brilliant:
The smaller the pool, the more money you save.
Less concrete. Less plumbing. Less water. Lower heating costs. Lower maintenance. Lower chemicals. The smaller you go, the more efficient the savings become.
You lean into the spreadsheet.
You explore the options.
You push optimization to its logical endpoint.
Finally, with great pride, you settle on the perfect design:
An in-ground circular swimming pool with a diameter of three feet.
Your masterpiece.
Summer arrives. The sun is blazing. You head out back, ready for refreshing relief, and you slip gracefully into your new, highly efficient pool — achieving what engineers call “maximum dampness.”
Sure, there are a few minor drawbacks:
Only one person can use the pool at a time
Lap swimming is limited to “rotational exercise”
Diving is banned (a major safety improvement!)
Water polo requires extraordinary imagination
And best of all…
MARCO!
… glub-glub …
POLO.
Gotcha! Your turn.
But look at the savings!
Look at the precision!
Look at the elegance of your logic!
You optimized the pool right out of its purpose.
And this is exactly what universities are doing when they hire — or deny tenure — based on ideological checkboxes instead of intellectual merit.
THE PUNCHLINE THAT ISN’T A PUNCHLINE
When you replace competence with criteria,
when you shrink the talent pool in the name of symbolism,
when you restrict who is allowed to win before the competition even starts—
You end up with a three-foot pool and a sinking institution.
This is how great universities become mediocre universities.
How high-trust institutions become low-trust punchlines.
How excellence collapses into bureaucracy.
The Shrinking Pool Problem is real, measurable, and deadly to merit.
And the absurdity is not in the analogy.
The absurdity is that universities are actually doing this.
