Higher Education: The Great Equalizer Or Business As Usual?
** Also posted here on "Valerie Strauss' Answer Sheet" in the Washington Post
Several weeks ago, a survey of college admission directors and enrollment managers conducted by Inside Higher Education sparked considerable media coverage about an issue that is not entirely new: Money, not only merit, matters in college admissions.
According to the survey of 462 directors and managers, in the face of generalized budget cuts, universities are favoring applicants who don't need financial assistance to pay their tuition. About 22 percent agreed that “the financial downturn [had] forced them to pay more attention to an applicants’ ability to pay when [making] admissions decisions." Directors acknowledged seeking more candidates who would not need financial aid, including out-of-state and international students. Furthermore, 10 percent of four-year colleges reported that the admitted students who could pay in full had lower grades than their peers who couldn’t.
These findings resulted in headlines like “College Admission Directors Finally Admit They Want Rich Students More Than Smart Students” or “Universities Seeking Out Students of Means." Journalists wrote that higher education institutions are no longer in the business of recruiting “the best and brightest […] but the richest” and noted that “money is talking a bit louder in college admissions these days.” David A. Hawkins, director at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, told the New York Times: “As institutional pressures mount, between the decreased state funding, the pressure to raise a college’s profile, and the pressure to admit certain students, we’re seeing a fundamental change in the admissions process. Where many of the older admissions professionals came in through the institution and saw it as an ethically centered counseling role, there’s now a different dynamic that places a lot more emphasis on marketing."
The actual finding that money matters in admissions did not strike me as a particularly surprising. After all, social scientists have long been skeptical of meritocracy’s role in higher education – see here and here. What surprised me was that survey respondents were comfortable giving a “socially inappropriate” answer. Let me explain.