A new study from Public Agenda has found that the main reason students drop out of college is that they have to work. That raises the question: Has the time come for an affirmative-action policy based on socioeconomic status?
And that raises a further question: Are the selective institutions that could provide enough financial aid to needy students, so they could work less, doing enough to recruit them? In other words, should the discussion of retention include a discussion of class and admissions? The Chronicle asked a group of scholars and experts what they thought.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation:
Three trends are likely to push the idea of affirmative action for low-income students to the forefront in the next couple of years.
First, the enormous underrepresentation of low-socioeconomic students at selective institutions, always an embarrassment to higher education, is getting worse. A 2004 Century Foundation study found that at the most selective 146 institutions, 74 percent of students come from the richest socioeconomic quarter of the population, and just 3 percent from the bottom quarter, a roughly 25:1 ratio. Research by The Chronicle and others suggests that in recent years, the stratification has grown even greater, putting pressure on universities to take action.
Second, increasing attacks on race-based affirmative action will very likely push universities to put in place class-based programs as an indirect and legally sound way of promoting racial diversity. A new challenge to racial preferences at the University of Texas at Austin, currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, could prevail in the Supreme Court, where the new swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, dissented in the 2003 University of Michigan case supporting racial preferences. Meanwhile, Ward Connerly has plans to bring anti-affirmative-action initiatives to Arizona and Missouri in 2010.
Third, we have a liberal African-American president who is uniquely positioned to ease the transition from race-based to class-based affirmative action, having said that his own daughters don't deserve preferences in college admissions, and that low-income students of all races do. But if economically disadvantaged students are admitted to selective colleges through affirmative action, will they be able to graduate? With the right support programs, yes. As the new report from Public Agenda finds, students drop out not because they're unprepared, but rather because they are stretched financially and have to work to make ends meet. A forthcoming Century Foundation report by Edward Fiske finds that a new program, the Carolina Covenant, has increased graduation rates by ensuring that financial aid and support programs are in place for low-income students. Likewise, research by William Bowen and colleagues finds that students are more likely to graduate at selective universities than less-selective ones—even though the standards are more demanding—perhaps because selective institutions have greater resources to support students.
All of which is to suggest that class-based affirmative action won't lead unprepared low-income students to drop out. To the contrary, it should increase graduation rates—a central goal of the Obama administration.
Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP and a professor of history at the University of Virginia:
I think the time has long passed for adding socioeconomic status to the categories of affirmative action, but it must not and cannot be viewed as a replacement for race. Poverty is not a proxy for race, and to pretend that it is would eradicate the initial rationale for affirmative action—to correct for society's demonstrable biases against people of color regardless of their socioeconomic status.
The murder some years ago of Bill Cosby's son by a white racist who later bragged about the shooting to his friends shows how feeble the Cosbys's great wealth was in protecting their son against this ugly virus. The recent news that black graduates of prestigious colleges and universities feel they must "whiten" their résumés to hide their blackness demonstrates how little effect affirmative action in its original iteration has today, and how our current substitution of "diversity" for actual race-based affirmative action has rendered the latter almost useless. How many of our colleges count students from Africa and elsewhere toward their "affirmative action" goals?
So bring on socioeconomic status. And while you're at it, bring back race-based policies—you cannot get beyond race without going to race.
Walter Benn Michaels, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago:
Seventy-six percent of students from high-income families get bachelor's degrees; the figure for students from low-income families is 10 percent. Why? Because the American educational system is set up from start (the property taxes that largely finance public schools) to finish (the SAT's and AP's that point students toward the Ivy League or toward the community college) to reproduce and legitimate the class structure of American society. So, on the one hand, it makes complete sense to support economic affirmative action (every little bit helps) while, on the other, it makes no sense whatsoever to think it could be put into effect in a way that would make a real difference. With race-based affirmative action, a little fine tuning—basically enrolling more black students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, which turns out to mean more middle-class immigrant blacks (in the most selective schools, they often make up more than a third of the black student body)—has been central to what success we've had. So the proportion of black freshmen at the Ivy League's current affirmative-action leader (Columbia University) is 12.1 per cent, only a little lower than the black population nationwide. But if you're going after poor people, recruiting kids from higher socioeconomic backgrounds is an obvious nonstarter. And, perhaps more to the point, if you somehow succeeded in making, say, the Columbia student body more socioeconomically representative (with something like half of the students coming from households earning under the American median—about $50,300), you would have made the place virtually unrecognizable. Which is not going to happen, and which is why economic affirmative action is likely to take its place alongside economic diversity as yet another substitute for economic equality.
George Leef, director of research at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy:
It's nothing new to learn that some students are unable to balance their college work and a job to earn the money they need for tuition and expenses. This is probably increasing as colleges become increasingly expensive and enroll more students who are academically weak, disengaged, and have trouble managing time.
I'm not convinced this is much of a problem. After all, many Americans who graduate from college today find that the best employment they can obtain is in work that calls for no college preparation. If this is a problem, however, the solution is for schools that can't retain these students to offer more counseling. That would include both academic counseling and pre-enrollment counseling that weaker students would be better off at a less costly school, where they wouldn't need to work so many hours.
Colleges don't want a high dropout rate, and those with such rates have tried hard to minimize the number of dropouts for decades—without notable success.
Addressing this supposed problem with "class-based affirmative action" (that is, admitting into selective schools students who otherwise wouldn't qualify on academic grounds, but who come from relatively poor families) would seem, if anything, to exacerbate it. Students who struggle in college because they can't handle the combination of course work and part-time employment will not have an easier time if they're enrolled at a more-selective institution, where the work is usually more difficult and the costs greater.
Class-based affirmative action merely shuffles a small number of students from poorer families up into more-prestigious colleges, where they receive an education that isn't necessarily any better than they'd have received elsewhere. It also shuffles an equal number of students down into "fall back" schools just because those students aren't poor. This game of musical chairs accomplishes nothing.
Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University:
Everybody is rightly concerned with maintaining diversity on our campuses in many forms—geographic, international, racial, cultural and socioeconomic. That is not new in American higher education.
Clearly, we need to be sure that students from families with low and moderate incomes have access to the colleges of their choice, especially now. It is important for American society to maintain its dynamism through one of the proven avenues of economic opportunity. And it's important for our colleges and universities to provide young people with the opportunity to learn from and with those different from themselves, since we know they will be part of a century defined by globalization and interdependence of different cultures.
One thing I'm concerned about is that we not be forced to make a false choice between admission policies that focus on wealth and class and those that seek to achieve greater diversity based on race and ethnicity. We want our colleges and universities to reflect many kinds of diversity, and we cannot assume that focusing on one will address the other. Indeed, multiple studies and painful experience have demonstrated that where affirmative-action programs have been dismantled at our great public universities, minority enrollment has fallen off sharply.
At the same time, during an era when income distribution has become increasingly unbalanced toward the wealthy, no one would deny that a more equitable society demands that young people from families of low and moderate incomes ought to be able to attend college as a step toward achieving their highest potential in life. We have tried to do that at Columbia, where we have been able to attract a highly diverse student population with both need-blind admissions and full-need financial aid for our undergraduate college and engineering school. In recent years, like a number of peer institutions, we have also expanded financial aid, replacing all need-based loans with grants and eliminating tuition and room and board for all families with incomes below $60,000.
So we have worked very hard to ensure that financial pressures are not the cause of students' abandoning their education. This kind of commitment to financial aid is not easy for any institution to maintain in this economic environment. But I begin with the central proposition that true educational diversity is both economic and cultural—and we need policies in place that recognize as much.
Jamie P. Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation for Education:
This report from Public Agenda sheds new light on a persistent and pervasive problem. Simply put: When it comes to succeeding in college, low-income, minority, and other nontraditional students are far too often derailed by the pressures of "real life."
Many of these students face a long and arduous road through college because family obligations and economic necessity compel them to work—often in full-time jobs. In fact, only 20 percent of those who begin college at two-year institutions graduate within three years. At four-year institutions, not much more than half of first-time students graduate even after six years.
It is vital that we as a nation do more to help these students succeed. First of all, the national work force is in growing need of highly skilled workers—workers who are properly prepared for the 21st-century global economy. We simply cannot afford to waste the potential that these students represent. Second, as college costs continue to rise, and as our nation continues to become more diverse, more and more students will face these real-life barriers to success. If we fail to find effective ways to address this issue very soon, America's sagging college-completion rates could become far worse.
Clearly, federal and state governments should do more to craft policies that put more financial aid into the hands of students who need it most. Strategies proven to increase the success of at-risk students should be expanded and replicated—beginning with exemplary programs developed in institutions with the most experience at serving such students: the nation's community colleges and minority-serving institutions. Employers should make it their responsibility to support workers' educational goals, by providing child care, accommodating workers' class schedules, offering tuition-reimbursement programs, and simply fostering an environment that encourages lifelong learning.
Yes, it will require significant effort to address this issue. But failing to address it is not an option.
Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity:
I'll assume that the reasons given by the survey respondents are true. I'll also assume that, if someone wants to go to college, it's desirable that somehow the money be found for him or her to do so (but it's better if the money is come by voluntarily rather than through taxation). Neither assumption is unassailable. It's easier to blame outside forces than personal ones, and many would question the assumption that the more people who go to college, the better.
With those assumptions, however, if people are dropping out of college for financial reasons, that certainly would argue for better need-based aid for those admitted. It does not, however, argue for socioeconomic preferences in admissions.
As for racial preferences: The legal justification for them today is the supposed educational benefits that obtain from student-body diversity. Naturally, preferences based on race are a more efficient way of achieving racial diversity than are preferences based on socioeconomic status.
But I would much prefer that preferences be based on socioeconomic status rather than race. The educational benefits that supposedly flow from a diverse student body are rooted in differences in perspectives and experiences—not in skin color per se. Weighing socioeconomic status would provide such diversity to a similar degree as race, and without the ugliness, divisiveness, and myriad other costs of racial discrimination.
In a society that is increasingly multiethnic and multiracial, we simply cannot have a legal regime that sorts people according to skin color and what country their ancestors came from, and which treats some better and others worse based on which silly little box they have checked.
Final caveat, though: I doubt that the educational benefits of any sort of diversity can justify admitting students other than those most willing and able to do work at a high intellectual level.
Comments
1. cfox53 - December 16, 2009 at 08:00 pm
WAY PAST TIME - as one who comes from a lower socioeconomic status group and worked full time while going to school full time I have to say that a concept of 'diversity' that ignores socioeconomic status is foolish. A black man from a wealthy background has much more in common with the dominant culture than a working class white man
2. 11242283 - December 17, 2009 at 07:14 am
Did most of the folks above read the same report I read? Although I'm actually all for recruiting and supporting more working class/lower income students for elite institutions, I'm concerned that discussion of the problem almost always goes right to that issue. I guess the NYT isn't the only publication that considers the only "real" higher education to be one that happens at an Ivy!!
Students need help while they are in college, even at "lowly", inexpensive regional comprehensives like my own. They need help because they often have families (unlike students from upper class and upper middle class cultures, many of these students are married at 20 and have children coming out of high school -- what are the Ivies going to do about that!) and/or because they work to support those families and sometimes even help support their families of origin (if they don't have kids). Many are culturally disposed to stay at or near home -- so moving across the country to attend an Ivy isn't something that most will necessarily be adventurous enough to do: their support systems are close by and they need them there.
We need to recognize that not everyone in college is at a prestigious university or liberal arts college and we need to get out of our heads the notion that this is the only kind of university education that it's worth having. We need to concentrate on the vast majority of college students who aren't in the idealized demographic and put our minds to thinking about how to serve them. I'm all for identifying high acheiving high school students in low income areas and recruiting and supporting them to attend the college of their choice. But my sense of the study is that we need to do a better job of addressing the needs of many, many more students than that. And that means, looking at the things that these students said would help them persist and graduate: more flexible scheduling for both classes and services (advising, etc), inexpensive high quality child care (instead of climbing walls & hot tubs), etc.
3. sher2824 - December 17, 2009 at 07:15 am
Duh. Of course we need class-based AA and with it the support structure that can help students that often first-gen college students or simply from families that don't understand the ins and outs of college (vital knowledge for success). I can't tell you how many times I've heard intellectual elites (who may not be economically elite -- e.g., aka, grad students with parents who are professors) complain about "these" students -- the ones at a 4 yr public -- as I also overhear students complaining about working 20+ hours a week and struggling with their coursework.
4. csgirl - December 17, 2009 at 07:44 am
This is so true. Yesterday, I signed late withdrawals for 3 students who were trying to go to school fulltime and work fulltime, and who discovered that trying to do both was impossible. One student missed half the mandatory labs in my class because his boss at Best Buy switched his schedule so it conflicted with the lab sessions, and he had no recourse. Our babysitter, a bright young Hispanic girl, is also having problems with this. She can't get enough financial aid to go to the local public college without also working fulltime to support herself. She decided to defer college until next year in the hopes of saving some money, but the minimum wage jobs she can find now do not pay enough to save money. I fear she will end up deferring college forever.
5. lexalexander - December 17, 2009 at 08:12 am
I worked full-time in radio while also attending a private, liberal-arts college full-time. I graduated in 1982 with college debt in the high four figures -- the equivalent at the time of about 1 1/2 years' worth of college expenses. (At the same school today, the inflation-adjusted figure would be about $70,000.)
It helped that 1) as an English major, I had no fixed-schedule sessions, like labs, outside of class; and 2) I had no trouble juggling classes and work from a scheduling standpoint as long as I worked midnight to 6 a.m.
I don't know how many times I almost fell asleep at the wheel during the 20-mile commute from work back to school at 6 in the morning.
I managed this schedule with an average of four hours' sleep a day during the week, with those four hours seldom being in one uninterrupted block of time.
I knew going in exactly what kind of education I wanted to get, and 25+ years out, the educational choice I made was exactly the right call for the kinds of work I've done over the years. But getting that education damn near killed me, and the kind of work I've done hasn't allowed me to sock away enough money to write big tuition checks for my own kids when the time comes.
I won't deny that sitting in an air-conditioned control room talking into a microphone is very civilized work compared with what most college students have to do for money. That said, I don't want my kids, or anyone else's, to have to do what I did. Not only is it physically dangerous and debilitating, it negatively affects academic performance and detracts from pretty much all aspects of the college experience outside the classroom.
Not everyone wants or needs the traditional four-year liberal-arts experience, but money shouldn't be an obstacle for those who do. The benefits to society that are derived from that education are immense and, I would argue, more than justify the use of tax money for this purpose. There's a growing innovation gap between the U.S. and other Western industralized nations, and our failure to match elite students efficiently with elite educations, and to provide appropriately rigorous and accessible education for all students for whom college is a good fit, will only make that problem worse.
6. amnirov - December 17, 2009 at 08:27 am
No. Of course it isn't. We don't need affirmative action anything. I'm a working class product and I think that if you don't have the energy or intelligence or ambition to pay your own way through college (a job, grants, loans), then you shouldn't go.
7. lexalexander - December 17, 2009 at 09:08 am
Amnirov, the countries that best identify and develop their human capital are going to be the ones that thrive in this century. Even when you have 300 million of them, people are too valuable to waste when your biggest competitors have a billion-plus each.
8. jffoster - December 17, 2009 at 09:12 am
Wrote Columbia University's President Bollinger:
"Clearly, we need to be sure that students from families with low and moderate incomes have access to the colleges of their choice, especially now."
This may or may not be true but it is certainly not unassailably clear. First, we do not ensure that such students or families have access to the anything else of their choice. Second, and more importanly I think, one can get a perfectly good education at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Or at Clemson, Or at Colorado School of Mines. (Indded I'd have chosen each of those over Columbia.) Why shouldn't a student have to look for a place they can afford where they can get a good education?
9. observer001 - December 17, 2009 at 09:50 am
jffoster- your statement might have been true 20 years ago, but state universities are being decimated by budget cuts. Only those institutions that are able to privatize (and in SC this is a serious option that the governor has put on the table to cut the state budget) or become private in everything but name (meaning private-univ. tuition levels) will maintain their quality. Otherwise, the education offered at a Columbia and a Clemson cannot be compared anywhere else than in a rich fantasy life. http://www.thestate.com/local/story/1049632.html
10. madamesmartypants - December 17, 2009 at 11:49 am
I think that the best thing universities can do to ensure more middle-, working-, and lower-class kids will be able to take advantage of the socioecon mobility higher ed can provide is: 1. reduce the cost of admission by lowering university expenses as much as possible _without_ sacrificing their educational mission; 2. provide sufficient aid to students from lower-income families while eliminating, as much as possible, the university's dependence on student and parent loans to pay their tuition; and 3. get rid of rich people AA, i.e, legacy admissions.
In the first instance, universities need to husband more carefully their financial resources in flush times--invest in green technology, for example, to reduce fixed overhead like utility bills; plant plants that need little water and/or care to reduce landscaping costs; limit tech and admin sprawl, which have been the two big drivers of university costs in recent years. Even reducing or raising temperatures in classrooms--to the extent that no one will die of heat stroke or frostbite--can save hundreds of thousands of dollars that can, in turn, be used to fund poor students. In my opinion, a cold classroom with lots of poor kids is better than a warm classroom for the rich.
In the second, research presented in the Chronicle has shown that a great deal of financial aid is needlessly spent on wealthier students. If universities were to expand grants for poor to mid-class students, they could perhaps fund it by restricting such aid to any family that makes a combined income over, say, $200,000. Often, universities count on loans as the way for families to bridge the gap between what they can afford and tuition. This just perpetuates socioecon inequality--the rich kids leave college loan-free, while the poor kids are strapped with 25K or more in debt.
11. witten426 - December 17, 2009 at 02:33 pm
as my coal miner grandfather used to say back in the depression.
the rich get richer and the poor getbabies
12. jaysanderson - December 17, 2009 at 02:34 pm
I learned at least as much working through college as I did in classes. What my warehouse job kept me from doing was partying and wasting time, because I had no time to waste. Individual struggle is not a sin against humanity (or academia). Quite the opposite--struggle builds character and provides opportunities to apply academic work to our lives (practical application is no sin, either).
Furthermore, selective colleges need to get over themselves. There is nothing wrong with attending a community college for the first year or two and then transferring. The last time I checked, my colleagues who went to Harvard and Yale park in the same parking lot and used the same bathroom that I do.
13. marciet_dfa - December 17, 2009 at 03:06 pm
I applaud the Chronicle for reporting on this study. Our Financial Aid office sees many students every year that either never matriculate, or drop out because they can't handle the stress of having to work full time while going to school. (Don't get me wrong, I believe that having a part time job for extra expenses is a good thing and builds character and work ethic.)
However, I believe that this study is spotlighting the wrong grouping of students. The low income students have so much free money now that they are being able to attend almost any institution they like without having to take out student loans.
The group that our University (private, 4yr) sees most often dropping out is the middle income students. This group has an EFC of 4500 to about 9500. For dependent students- has an income somewhere between $35,000 to $65,000 (depending on the number of family members), and usually has very little to no savings (maybe $5000 total savings and a small retirement fund).
The independent students that we see in this group are usually single parents trying to get their education full time, while working full time to feed their children. They are working sometimes two jobs to keep from having to live in government housing and are told that they make too much to get any help via food stamps, reduced and free lunches, or Federal or State Grants.
Our University gives very generous scholarships to our incoming students, but even so, this group usually ends up being awarded the maximum loan amounts for the student. Dependent students are awarded large Parent Plus loan amounts and if the parent gets turned down for the Plus loan, the student gets the extra $4000 in Unsub loans, but then they have a huge balance with the University. The student is already working a job to pay for extra expenses, and the parent(s) is/are already "working poor" and can't make the payments that the Federal government think they should be able to.
The independent students get the maximum loans and then have to apply for Private Alternative loans. They are already working part time and sometimes full time. If they get turned down for the Private loan, which is what usually happens because of debt to income, late payments....etc., they drop out.
I don't know what the magic answer here is. I know that every action will have an opposite reaction somewhere. I just know that it is heartbreaking to see people working so hard to better themselves and not being able to afford it. It's disturbing to know that they have to quit their jobs and go work at Walmart for minimum wage to be able to get a little help for an education.
I think it's high time that the government stops enabling those that won't work, encouraging bad work ethics, and help the people that want to help themselves and be a productive part of society.
14. 22097984 - December 17, 2009 at 03:33 pm
The short answer is that we should not have AA in any form. No AA for racial or ethnic groups. No AA for poor or rich or short or tall or any other group.
Governments' (including the educational systems built by governments) exist to protect the rights and liberties of all citizens. Even the rights of rich spoiled kids. Governments do not exist to draw up lists of certain lucky groups that get goodies they do not pay for. Governments should not be giving goodies to certain lucky banks at the expense of other less lucky banks (Bear Stearns vs BAC). Governments should not be giving goodies to the certain lucky kids from lucky houses based upon any criteria other than ability and willingness to pay. That is: the ability or skills of the citizen and the money, representing withheld or stored labor the citizen is willing to pay.
Harvard, Yale, Chicago can do what ever they want as long as they do not request taxpayer money to do it. Harvard is welcome to refuse rich kids, only accept rich white kids, let in Al Gore's kids, not let in Palin's kids. Including Palin's kid with a child (yet another victim of the system), but as she decided or failed to decide not to get pregnant, the government should not be deciding on the worthiness of her educational objectives over someone else's. Geez people, that is not what governments are for.
I do not care as long as I am not paying for it. But if my tax money in involved, governments should not be playing the "favorite repressed class of academics" game. It really does get old.
15. amnirov - December 18, 2009 at 03:04 pm
College is an absolute benefit to those who attend in terms of future income. It should be up to those who are going to get that benefit to pay for it themselves. I'm a working class kid, I had to work long hours and get loans, fellowships and scholarships to get to the PhD level. I got into higher ed by playing by the same rules that everyone else played by. I am still paying off my loans, and you know what, that's fair.
16. rtanderson - December 18, 2009 at 03:10 pm
All public higher education is subsidized, and if that subsidy goes 75% to students in the top 25% income bracket, then it is another way to have welfare for the well off. Talented low income students need grant and scholarship opportunities to gain a college degree. Our nation benefits from their opportunity to move into the middle class.
17. darklogos - December 18, 2009 at 04:19 pm
The issue we face is more based on getting the disadvantaged into higher education so they have the tools to better society. The problem that I feel that has not been defined but stated is diversity. What is diversity and how does it produce a better student? If diversity produces a better student then why are the elite places, which have less diversity, doing better or considered better places to be. It seems quite the opposite from what we suppose. The elite breed elite.
Now the other thing people have to ask is what is a Harvard/Yale education experience. I think that is the thing that needs to be cracked and less the economic things. What does it take to make a schoool better? One can say they can trhow money at whatever they like. If that was true they would be broke. Money helps but it doesn't fix poor teaching theory, or develop inovation. The key thing that needs to be looked at is the Ivy system utilizing teaching methods superior to all others. Thing is the data, unless it is in house, is available to everyone. Data is a moot issue. It is in the application of the data and the teaching of how to see the data that comes into light. If adjuncts are part of this "quality" problem then they may have to be removed or required to be more refined in their methods. Schools may have to do "forced" mentoring of older proffesors with younger ones so that advanced teaching methods are passed on and the quality of the bar for salary proffesors rises.
The biggest issue is not that the low income need help. The biggest issue is that are k-12 system is crap. As another poster stated that property tax makes the public school system broken. THis needs to be fixed. I've come out of public school and my mom sacraficed my college money that had been saved up to put me in private high school because the system was that bad. I found that my experience in college was so much easier and I knew things that other who went to public school didn't. When I looked back the issue wasn't the pay of the teachers. The public school teachers got paid more. It was the methods in which I was taught and the experience to use and refine these methods that gave me an edge. Many public school teachers don't have access to the methods. They don't have access to the books. They barrely have access to a class room. The better public schools are always those in rich areas. When you have problem students, gang fights, and other issue with poverty that are in a public school would you want those issues in an Ivy Leauge school? The answer is no but no one wants to answer.
18. raymond_j_ritchie - December 21, 2009 at 02:46 am
When I was a post-doc in the USA the thing that struck me was how much poverty there was and no-one seemed to be frightened of it or threatened by it. If all the EEO/AA programs had been directed to giving poor people a chance to get an education and a job it would not have suffered so much resentment and resistance. Given US realities, the target population would have been much the same as the racial/ethnic criteria now used and abused so much. Besides it is much easier and much more objective to determine if someone is poor than to determine their racial/ethnic status. Haven't americans heard of interbreeding and mixed racial origin? For example, as a post-doc at Cornell and Washington State university I accurately described my racial/ethnic origin as "Australian" under "other". Both universities crossed that out and I became an "Asian/Pacific Islander" and hence minority faculty against my wishes. No-one ever came around to do a ground truth check. The laughable thing is that I do not know my racial/ethnic origin and my arbitrary reclassification could well be correct. Most real people are in that situation.
19. mkant69 - December 23, 2009 at 06:50 pm
Need-blind admissions, while intended to prevent colleges from considering a student's ability to pay as a factor in admissions deciscions, implicitly discriminates against lower-income students. A student who has to work to put food on his or her family's table does not have the luxury of lettering in a sport or learning to play a musical instrument. Yet someone who has succeeded academically despite adversity is much more impressive than a student who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Consider the potential performance of the low income student if his or her financial needs are adequately met.
(The current need analysis system does not adequately meet the needs of low income and non-traditional students. The expected family contribution cannot drop below zero, effectively putting a cap on financial aid. Loans are overemphasized and treated as though they were gift aid, even though there is considerable evidence that loans have a chilling effect on enrollment by low income students. The accommodations for nontraditional students with families to support are minimal, forcing these students to work full-time jobs and study part-time.)
While the six dozen colleges that have adopted "no loans" policies that replace loans with grants in the financial aid package are taking a step in the right direction, they need to establish admissions preferences for low income students. This should be part and parcel of their nonprofit mission. Unfortunately, some colleges have gone beyond no loans for low income students, extending more generous need-based and merit-based financial aid packages to middle and upper income students. This increases the competition for admission, and in a need-blind process makes it more difficult for low income students to get in.
It is also ironic that many of these colleges also require work-study as part of the financial aid package. This perpetuates a caste system where low-income students work in the cafeteria serving food to their wealthier peers.
Mark Kantrowitz
Publisher of FinAid.org and FastWeb.com