Higher-education policy debates often pit economists primarily concerned about efficiency against sociologists mostly concerned about equity.  But at a three-day conference I attended last week, a powerful argument was advanced that we need more input from a third group—philosophers—who can help guide policymakers and administrators on basic issues of fairness and justice. Hosted by Spencer Foundation president Michael S. McPherson and University of Wisconsin philosophy professor Harry Brighouse, the conference ranged from discussions of whether it is permissible for psychology researchers to lie to subjects to debates over whether university endowments should include stock in tobacco companies. In a keynote address, University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann took on the big question of what makes a university education worthwhile and suggested that selective institutions should ...

In the contest between doing well and doing good, universities, like people, usually choose the former. So it was somewhat surprising, and heartening, back in 2006 when Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Virginia each unilaterally disarmed in the competition for students by forgoing early-admissions policies. Those universities' officials noted at the time that they believed early admissions gave an unfair leg up to advantaged students, who had the knowledge of the benefits of applying early, and who didn’t need to compare financial-aid packages between institutions. The advantage of applying early is estimated to be the same as scoring 100 points higher on the SAT. Back in 2006, the universities hoped that others would follow, and for a while, it seemed they might. I remember attending a conference at Yale University around the time of Harvard’s announcement, and the attendees ...

A new book released today, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, is already creating quite a stir with its finding that an astounding 45 percent of students learn little in the first two years of college, as measured by progress on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). But the research, by New York University’s Richard Arum and the University of Virginia’s Josipa Roksa, also sheds important light on the perennial debate about whether it matters if one attends a more selective or less selective college. Past research on the potential advantages of attending selective and wealthy colleges and universities has focused on inputs (spending per pupil) or long-term outputs (the degree to which attendance increases adult earnings.) My reading of the best evidence is that attending a more selective institution provides substantial advantages, which should intensify our...

I was pleased to see The Chronicle’s recent special supplement, “Diversity in Academe” take up the issue of “Social Class on the American Campus” this year. In the academy, the holy trinity used to consist of inequality by race, class, and gender.  In recent decades, class has often been bumped aside, with the new trio featuring race, gender, and sexual orientation.

But as we make slow – and often unsteady – progress in including and celebrating people of color, women, and gays in our society, class inequality remains, and in some ways has deepened. As Peter Schmidt notes in the supplement’s lead article, “one of the most underrepresented minority groups at many four-year colleges [are] students and faculty members from the working class.” Schmidt gives some heartening evidence that the pendulum may be swinging back on this issue, citing examples of renewed interest in social-class...

Next Tuesday, the White House will hold its Summit on Community Colleges, giving “the Rodney Dangerfields of higher education a bit more of the respect they deserve,” as Wall Street Journal columnist David Wessel notes.  One enormous concern is funding, as cash-strapped community colleges are forced to turn away growing numbers of students, or teach classes beginning at 6 am because classroom space is so scarce.

But as participants gather, I’d like to raise another issue of concern: the need to take steps to prevent community colleges from becoming essentially separate institutions to educate poor, working class and minority students.  

According to research by Anthony Carnevale and Jeff Strohl reported in The Century Foundation’s book, Rewarding Strivers, the socioeconomic and racial makeup of the community college population – which has always been poorer and more heavily tilted toward...

On Wednesday, the Century Foundation released a book I edited, entitled Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions, at a forum at the National Press Club. (Video from the discussion can be found here). Write-ups of the book and the forum appeared online in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Inside Higher Education, Education Week, and CBS Moneywatch.  Key points from the book also appeared in an article I wrote for The Chronicle, entitled, “10 Myths About Legacy Preferences in College Admissions.”

I’ve been struck by the responses at the forum and among comments from readers of the Chronicle, the Times, and elsewhere. Most people didn’t really defend the idea of admitting students based on lineage—an un-American idea if there ever was one—but rather, two concerns stood out: What’s the big deal? And might the elimination of legacy preferences hurt...

One of the key questions that will shape the future of affirmative action programs in higher education is whether universities can create sufficiently diverse student bodies without relying on race per se.  The 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grutter v. Bollinger affirmed the University of Michigan’s use of race but only because the university said it could not find race-neutral ways of producing racial diversity  – through, for example, admitting economically disadvantaged students, or those who rank in the top of their high school classes.

    The Supreme Court, which has grown more conservative since the Grutter decision, may have a chance to re-examine this question in the near future.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is currently considering a challenge to the use of race at the University of Texas at Austin.  Plaintiffs contend that Texas...

Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus’s new book, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids – And What We Can Do About It, has been receiving a great deal of attention, from the pages of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal to the Colbert Report. As I noted in a recent review of the book in The New Republic, Hacker, a Queens College professor and Dreifus, a New York Times writer, seem to have hit a nerve because they’ve tapped into today’s strong populist sentiment about elites.

Some of this populism is fully warranted. The authors are right to question the ways in which selective institutions cater to the wealthy. At Duke, Yale, Stanford, and Brown, for example, more than half of students come from very wealthy families who can afford to pay the full $200,000 in tuition, room, and board required for a B.A. degree—a cost that is out of reach to the vast...