Los Angeles—Sponsors of future admissions conferences might want to consider furnishing guests with complimentary whips. Wherever enrollment officials gather these days, it seems, bouts of self-flagellation follow: “Woe, the admissions system is broken,” goes the wail, “what a mess we’ve made!” And then everyone goes home again.
There was plenty of hand-wringing here last week during a three-day summit (“The Case for Change in College Admissions”) hosted by the University of Southern California’s Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice. Speakers fretted about the intense competition for applicants, the stress levels of students, the tightening of institutional budgets, and the quality of instruction inside college classrooms.
Some of the discussion transcended the usual gripe-and-groan routine, however. I heard refreshingly frank appraisals of what ails the system, and some forward-looking proposals for treating those ills. Although opinions varied, there was general agreement that college leaders must start thinking of their respective institutions as part of an interdependent education system, redefine their recruitment goals and strategies to account for the increasing diversity of high-school graduates, and play much larger roles in preparing underprivileged students for college.
In his opening address, Andrew Delbanco, director of American Studies at Columbia University, described the ethical and psychological implications of the admissions arms race. He argued that elite colleges had become engines of self-congratulation. “Every year, deans and presidents announce that this year’s class is the best ever,” he said. “They define the quality of the institution by how many applications they throw away, which, if you think about it, is pretty weird.”
The way superselective colleges talk about themselves, Mr. Delbanco suggested, shapes applicants’ understanding of what it means to be accepted (or denied), often for the worse. “We could all stand to lower our self-esteem just a little,” he said.
For the next 48 hours, there was more than a dash of scorn for the nation’s most-selective colleges. William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard University, joked that he felt as if he were representing Satan or Voldemort when he took the podium. Mr. Fitzsimmons noted—accurately—that Harvard was not the only high-profile college that had seen its application totals reach stratospheric levels. The host institution’s numbers are in the neighborhood of Harvard’s, in part because of intense, globe-spanning recruitment.
Constraints From Above
Application totals are powerful metrics, of course. Several enrollment officials here said they felt constrained by presidents and trustees who expected “better” numbers each and every year. “Once you make sure you’ve got more applications, that your average SAT scores have gone up, and that you’ve brought in more tuition revenue, only then you can think about enhancing the diversity of the class,” said one veteran enrollment official. One dean said he was frustrated by his administrators’ demand for more and better applicants, but that he was afraid to suggest changing his recruitment tactics: “I’m not going to put my head on the chopping block.”
Robert Zemsky, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, acknowledged the difficulty of convincing institutional leaders that intense competition is problematic. “As far as they’re concerned, for all the hue and cry, it does get them good students,” he said.
Nevertheless, Mr. Zemsky warned that the dynamics of the higher-education market are changing in ways that might redefine the nature of competition among four-year colleges. For one thing, for-profit institutions have become major players at the same time that budget cuts are forcing institutions to do more with less. “Do not be disdainful of [for-profits], because they will eat you alive,” he told the audience. “You are about to go up against Wal-Mart, and the only way to compete is to become True Value hardware stores.”
William G. Tierney, a professor of higher education at Southern California, challenged admissions officers to redefine their understanding of what it means to shape the perfect freshman class. In short, the wants of individual colleges must match the needs of the nation. “If we want to craft a class that is as diverse as we will be in 2023, we need to make big changes,” he said.
To that end, he proposed that colleges adopt 10 underperforming high schools and provide students at each with regular college counseling and financial-aid seminars. “The students in these schools need intentional and systematic engagement,” he said. “We can’t act as if we’re above the fray.”
Thinking Out of the Box
Some speakers proposed ideas for reforming the admissions process that were far-fetched, yet intriguing. Michael S. McPherson, an economist and president of the Spencer Foundation, proposed that several highly selective colleges form a consortium that would offer a joint early-admission program. He imagined something similar to the matching process at medical schools, in which applicants rank their top choices.
Such a system, Mr. McPherson suggested, might ease application inflation, not to mention its attendant anxieties. “Schools would give up discretion but gain a reduction in uncertainty,” he said. “Students would give up discretion but gain peace of mind.”
That proposal drew puzzled looks from some members of the audience, as did a suggestion by Arlene Wesley Cash, Spelman College’s vice president for enrollment management, that four-year institutions consider establishing articulation agreements with for-profit institutions. But such ideas represented the kind of unconventional thinking that Jerome A. Lucido, the center’s executive director, had hoped the conference would spark.
One recurring question was this: Just how much did the behaviors of the nation’s most-selective colleges really matter? Some speakers insisted that fixating on the anxieties of affluent, high-achieving students who take a zillion advanced courses only distracts from more pressing problems. Philip A. Ballinger, assistant vice president for enrollment management and director of admissions at the University of Washington, said admissions officers should worry more about the many high-school students who are unprepared for college than about those suffering from “AP overload.”
Anthony P. Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, said that because elite colleges educate relatively few of the nation’s students, “in the grand scheme, they don’t matter much.”
Still, how hyperselective college operate is of more than symbolic importance to other institutions. “What those colleges do cascades down to everyone else,” the dean of admissions at one liberal-arts college whispered to me over crème brûlée, “because we all want to be like Harvard.”
13 Responses to Admissions Officials Do Some Soul-Searching
12041027 - January 31, 2011 at 8:12 am
Michael McPherson’s suggestion that the super-selective colleges and universities should band together to relieve the agonies of the families of very bright students reminds me of the short-sighted aristocracies of Europe under the ancien regime. Let’s close ranks and keep those other poor slobs out. Such a move would most assuredly lead to sclerosis in the American higher education system. Imagine a world in which excellent colleges not in the top fifty could no longer hope to compete successfully for the occasional superstar. I shudder at the prospect. McPherson is quoted as saying, “Schools would give up discretion but gain a reduction in uncertainty. Students would give up discretion but gain peace of mind.” What arrogance! Overlap revisited! For the thousands of colleges out there that don’t boast a blue-blooded pedigree, the ability to compete openly and fairly for top-talent is precious beyond measure. And let the students choose for themselves on the basis of the true merit of the colleges that recruit them.
Thomas Hochstettler
Provost, American University of Sharjah
quicksilver - January 31, 2011 at 9:32 am
“We can’t act as we’re above the fray”?
WHY NOT? As an admissions counselor at a large public, I say that the last thing admissions offices need to do is play larger roles in helping underprivileged students get to college. Why? 1]The numbers tell us again and again that the majority of underprivileged students do not succeed academically in the high school classroom. Will they miraculously gain the ability to achieve in college, which is often more difficult? 2]This group often enroll only to drop out before graduating. 3] This group has an alarmingly high default rate on student loans. 4] Admissions offices have to embrace a double standard on the SAT/ACT in order to admit said group, a practice that is straight-up unethical. 5] Telling this group that college is an achievable dream is morally and knowingly wrong because the vast majority are academically ill-prepared and/or cognitively unable to process the information needed to succeed.
And does this group really need “intentional and systematic engagement”? I may be wrong, but is that not what teachers and counselors do for 12 years prior to these students applying (most teachers, contrary to what the American public believes, work like dogs to help their students in every way possible). Colleges and American society must abandon this ridiculous notion that every student can be saved and transformed into college material because they CANNOT.
sand6432 - January 31, 2011 at 10:10 am
When we are hearing (from the authors of “Academically Adrift”) that over a third of college students don’t learn much of anything in college, and that many recent college graduates are complaining bitterly about their student debt load they will carry for many years into the future and about the difficulty they are having in finding jobs, any jobs, we must ask ourselves–as “quicksilver” is asking–just what sense it makes to try having everyone attend college and bending over backwards to make that possible. Whom are we serving here? Some abstract notion of mass democracy that “entitles” everyone to a four-year (or, more likely, five- or six-year) college education? The kind of education that community colleges and for-profits offer, which is generally much more utilitarian, makes sense for many students desiring further training beyond high school. And as for the rise in applications, the adoption of the Common Application surely has led to a spurious increase, which is deceptive because some students are not really serious when they apply to a dozen schools (as I can testify as an interviewer for Princeton when some students don’t even bother to show up for interviews). Moreover, public universities are fast becoming private in terms of actual financial support from their states, which has been declining for decades and will surely decline much more in the face of current budget crises. Tuition therefore will go up even more, making a college education even harder to pay for. It’s time to abandon the idea that every high school student deserves a full college education and start doing what is best, financially and otherwise, for our future work force, for a significant percentage of whom some type of vocational training would make a lot more sense.—Sandy Thatcher
wkmcneil - January 31, 2011 at 10:34 am
I serve at a public HBCU and I can tell you that I have seen these same underprivileged students to which quicksilver refers succeed in college. So to answer the questions posed:
1]The numbers tell us again and again that the majority of underprivileged students do not succeed academically in the high school classroom. Will they miraculously gain the ability to achieve in college, which is often more difficult? YES
2]This group often enroll only to drop out before graduating. Not all do! Perhaps your institution should attempt to retain them instead of writing them off.
3] This group has an alarmingly high default rate on student loans.
Is this common only to underprivileged group? I seem to have read somewhere about doctors and other professional groups not paying off student loans.
4] Admissions offices have to embrace a double standard on the SAT/ACT in order to admit said group, a practice that is straight-up unethical. Double standard? Not only are they underprivileged, they also need to benefit from a double standard?
5] Telling this group that college is an achievable dream is morally and knowingly wrong because the vast majority are academically ill-prepared and/or cognitively unable to process the information needed to succeed. I cannot respond to this last statement. It makes me sad that this is the resistance “this group” meets when trying to gain access to higher education. And you an admissions counselor?
Has your institution never had a success story? We have had plenty. “cognitively unable to process the information needed to succeed”. This is so sad.
mkreeger - January 31, 2011 at 11:04 am
Admissions broke the system. You sold out. On what planet do you forgo responsibility to moving to an education system designed with ranking first and teaching second.
Students taking too many APs and students with poor preparation for college are 2 symptoms of the exact, same problem. We stopped teaching in favor of ranking.
It’s easier to judge each school in our little competition if we can say we have the best incoming class based on performance. The increasing suicide rate, teachers who teach to the test, kids who are jumping through our hoops and the ones who can’t get there who jump off bridges instead. That’s our mess. Don’t feel sorry for ignorance, or poverty, or suicide. Fix it.
neurojoe - January 31, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Yikes @ quicksilver, while there certainly is a large population of underprivileged high school students that may never succeed in college, at least directly after their high school years, the same can be said for many students who have every privilege in the world. To summarize Academically Adrift, if they’re not internally motivated, they’re not going to benefit from the higher education experience. Shouldn’t we be getting involved earlier on with K-12 institutions to help the maximum amount of kids (underprivileged or otherwise) who DO have that internal motivation?
As for the others, there’s nothing wrong with a respectable and honest technical or blue collar job, either short term until the person does develop the drive necessary to formally learn more about how the world works and goes back to school, or permanently if that never happens. This is probably where we do agree though: a university education is NOT for everyone. We need to do a better job with the kids who legitimately DO want it and aren’t just here because their parents and guidance counselors told them that’s what they have to do.
softshellcrab - January 31, 2011 at 10:24 pm
@ quicksilvre and wkmcneil
Thank you, quicksilver! It was great to hear someone say it! Attempts at “diversity” are just quotas and discrimination in disguise. There is no way to enroll more of the less qualified students without giving them special lower stanards for admission, and that’s just not fair to better students who don’t get in. Let the chips fall where the chips fall.
I totally agree when you say ” I say that the last thing admissions offices need to do is play larger roles in helping underprivileged students get to college.” Who do they think they are? And why not admit what they really mean is discrimination.
wkmcneil, I don’t know if there are any truly high quality and selective HBCU’s. Based on what I have read, most would be difficult to flunk out of. HBCU’s have no reason whatsoever to continue to exist, and are simply a racist anachronism.
hfranquet - February 1, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Can someone tell me why Canadian universities require only an application, a high school transcript, and SAT scores–and therefore make admissions decisions relatively quickly? Are they doing a good job of admitting a diverse student population? My daughter applied to four Canadian schools, none of which required essays or recommendations. While I spend every autumn agonizing with students over their stacks of application materials, my own child got her applications submitted with very little stress.
Do they know something we don’t, or do they not care as much who gets admitted?
buildnewschools - February 1, 2011 at 7:02 pm
I don’t know who is posting this awful comments. Are you all employed by Universities? Highly selective ones? My Lord. Trying to sound really smart because you are representing your colleges.
Shouldn’t everyone be entitled to a college education?
Build some new schools please. And not just community colleges.
Add some space to existing schools and add some smart people to teach (not the ones posting above since they are not smart.)
Also research Race to Nowhere on Facebook and Google.com
Have any of the above posters even heard of it?
phoenix_kc - February 4, 2011 at 10:15 am
I am astonished at the ideological racism steeped in quicksilver’s and softshellcrab’s response. You are seeing the symptoms, and calling it the cause. Underprivileged students do not fail because they are cognitively unable to succeed – please! That pseudo-science was thrown out the window decades ago; have you not heard? If you’re actually interested in rectifying your own misunderstanding about this issue, read “The Evolution of Deficit Thinking” by Richard Valencia. (Go on, I dare you to educate yourself. Unless you are happy being ignorant and completely inaccurate in your understanding of race relations in this country.)
To be clear, white and/or economically advantaged students have NO cognitive superiority over other students. What causes the difference in achievement is not their capacity to learn and grow – it is the conditions under which they are forced to learn and grow.
Further, studies have shown that standardized tests are discriminatory against people who are not middle/upper class or European-American. The only double standard happening here is to say that ACT/SAT scores are a true reflection of a person’s intellect, when in reality it is just a reflection of how well they understand and interact with the dominant culture.
Quicksilver and softshellcrab, if marginalized students are failing at your college, you have just proven why they are failing. It is not because of some cognitive deficiency or lack of determination – it is because you believe that they will fail. It is because you believe that they are getting “special treatment” because of their identity. Do you not realize that your own perspective of these students directly impacts how you interact with them? And any higher education professional should be able to tell you that your interactions with students can make or break their college experience. You should both be ashamed of yourselves.
quicksilver - February 7, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Phoenix-kc,
I never mentioned race in my above comment, but it would not have mattered because race, not SES, is the most accurate predictor of college success (drill down into any admissions or registrar’s database [a primary source if you will], and that’s what you will find). This is information that colleges, college counselors, and college access foundations do not want to publicize because it means that the students with whom they work are facing two issues, income AND race, and no one wants to discuss the latter because it is not PC. My goal is not to disparage or deny college to anyone; rather, comments from me and others who are educationally conservative (I like to say realistic), are meant to help some see that facing the truth is an ultimately helpful, albeit painful, endeavor.
phoenix_kc - February 8, 2011 at 2:51 pm
“the students with whom they work are facing two issues, income AND race, and no one wants to discuss the latter because it is not PC”
When I encounter this perspective in people, it usually means that THEY are uncomfortable talking about race because they do not have the knowledge or understanding to discuss it without looking/sounding racist. The solution to this is to educate yourself, not to avoid the topic altogether. The inability to discuss race does not erase its significance from our students’ lives.
“My goal is not to disparage or deny college to anyone; rather, comments from me and others who are educationally conservative (I like to say realistic), are meant to help some see that facing the truth is an ultimately helpful, albeit painful, endeavor.”
What “truth” are you speaking of here? That students of color and low-SES students are supposedly unable to succeed in college? Again, that is complete pseudo-science babble that has no place in academia. It shocks me that as an educated person yourself, you have not learned that your idea of “the truth” has absolutely no bearing on a student’s potential to succeed. My recommendation to you is to stop pushing your beliefs onto the students you are trying to “help”, and instead see what they accomplish when you actually believe in them.
How would you feel if your high school guidance counselor or college admissions representative told you that you could not succeed in college because you are white? How would you feel if they told you that because you are white you can only go into certain academic majors or career fields? How would you feel if they told you that it’s “the truth” that you cannot and will not succeed because of your family’s income or your white skin color? Would you feel as if they were “helping” you, or hindering you?
phoenix_kc - February 8, 2011 at 3:30 pm
“race, not SES, is the most accurate predictor of college success”
Let’s get down to the root of this statement. When you say that race is the most accurate predictor of college success, I’m going to take a guess that you believe that somehow, the amount of melanin in someone’s skin is connected to their intelligence and ability to succeed in college – indeed, in life. What you’re missing here is called the “big picture”. Put on a wider lens for a moment and consider this:
In 2009, 25.8 percent of blacks and 25.3 percent of Hispanics were living in poverty, compared to only 9.4 percent of whites (National Poverty Center). When you’re poor, you are more likely to have limited money for groceries – and a recent study has shown that the price of healthy food has increased by 40% while the price of processed food has decreased by the same amount.(Good nutrition has been linked to higher scores and better learning). If you are a student of color, your family probably experienced institutional discrimination when trying to find a place to live, which means that you had no choice but to go to the school in your low-income neighborhood. Your school is most likely underfunded if not falling apart, and because of your skin color you are treated, from day one, as if you are inferior to white students – even if testing shows this is not true. There are still countless schools who use “tracking” to separate the white students from the students of color, giving each a different education. You are likely to see less parent involvement in your schooling, because they are working several jobs to make ends meet, or they have to take long bus rides to/from work, etc. Very few parents in poverty have the luxury of being “stay at home”. You do not have a choice to go to a private school. You may have to take long bus rides to get to school, which means less quality time at home. You may have responsibilities at home such as cooking, cleaning, and taking care of siblings because your parents are at work. It is not a “given” that you will go to college, as it is with middle- and upper-class children. To that end, you have not been given the same academic and financial tools as middle- and upper-class children. Poverty means that your parents could not save up for college which forces you to rely on financial aid. Most likely, you are a first-generation student, which means that nobody in your family understands how to navigate the complicated admissions and financial aid system.
Are you seeing the picture come together? Imagine if the roles were flipped in this country, and white people had 25% poverty rates while people of color were far more wealthy. Would you still say that it’s because of someone’s race that they cannot succeed? No. It is because of the way our society treats that race – from birth until death – they are LESS LIKELY to have the same social and cultural capital that is required to succeed in college. It is the way that our society treats white people – with unearned privilege in all aspects of life – that they are MORE LIKELY to have the social and cultural capital necessary to succeed in college.
Nobody holds a monopoly on the “truth” of someone else’s ability to succeed, quicksilver. Working in academia, you have a hand in determining what that future can be. For the sake of your students, please don’t assume you know their future before they even have a chance to live it. And again, I implore you to educate yourself – how can you call yourself “realistic” when you have no concept of other people’s reality?