When we wrote our recent blog post about easing the admissions rat race by expanding enrollment at top colleges, our aim was to illustrate concretely that getting serious about deescalating the competitive scramble for slots at high end places would require doing some things that were unconventional and even painful for schools that are at the top of the heap. That post has provoked a lot of discussion about whether there is a problem here at all and, if there is, whether enrollment expansion on the scale we suggested (50 percent) is at all plausible. We are inclined to think that expansion would be more feasible and less traumatic than many of our commentators seem to, but we certainly agree that a searching discussion of how much expansion is feasible for particular institutions and over what time frame would be a valuable exercise. Rather than entering at this point into an analysis of the logistical questions, we want to make sure that we don’t lose sight of the underlying questions of fairness and efficiency here.
Think of this fairly realistic example. Imagine an undergraduate college with 2,000 students and a $1-billion endowment. (Call it Willhurst.) Costs at this college are basically financed by student tuition (net of student aid) and earnings from the endowment, with some additional help from current giving. The endowment supporting each student’s education is half a million dollars, which generates about $25,000 of spending every year toward that student’s education. Nice work if you can get it.
Now suppose the college receives an unrestricted gift to the endowment of $100 million. The college considers two options for spending it. Option 1 is to spread it over all the students, enriching the student experience by creating more faculty positions. So $100 million for faculty expansion generates $5-million per year, enough to hire and support 25 added faculty at an average cost of $200,000 per year, including salary, benefits, added office and classroom space, and other support. If Willhurst formerly had 250 faculty, for an 8 to 1 student-faculty ratio, the 10 percent increase in faculty size would reduce that ratio to a US News-pleasing 7.27 to 1. The college’s alternative choice would be to use the $100-million gift to expand the student body by 10 percent without reducing the endowment per student. The new endowment money again goes to added faculty, to preserve the old faculty-student ratio. But now the college also has additional tuition and room and board revenue from 100 extra students, which can be used to support the classrooms, housing needs, and other support services required by a larger student body.
(Amherst College recently undertook an expansion of roughly this kind, for the admirable purpose of facilitating enrollment of more highly disadvantaged students without having to reduce the number of places available for other applicants. But we don’t think our basic argument here depends on the newly admitted students being any different from the students in the regular admissions pool.)
It is very hard for us to see why it’s a better use of philanthropic dollars to further enrich the educational experiences of a small group of highly selected students who are already receiving a fabulously expensive education, rather than extending that very valuable experience to more people. The education offered at Willhurst and its real-life kin truly is extraordinary, and we agree that exceptional education for exceptional students is a worthy part of American higher education. Our aim is not to undermine that experience but to share it with a broader group of students with similar qualifications.
Reflecting on the fact that the donor of that $100-million will receive a rebate amounting to $30-million or more from American taxpayers in recognition of the gift reminds us that we all have a stake in how Wellhurst spends its money.
Right now, the endowments of the wealthy colleges and universities have not fully recovered from their drop in the financial crisis, but they are rising and they will almost certainly in the future surpass their old highs and continue to grow. At that time, the choice we have described here becomes a very real one: Should they devote added resources to further improving the educational services and the amenities provided to the limited numbers of students they currently enroll, or devote some or all of their future gains to expanding opportunities?
Just as important, if one agrees that the best use of the next $100-million is to broaden opportunities, it becomes natural to step back and wonder whether the last $100-million might have been better spent. This raises the question of whether these places should consider reallocating some of their existing endowment resources toward enrollment expansion.
8 Responses to Expanding Enrollment at Selective Colleges: What Is the Point?
jffoster - February 7, 2011 at 9:48 am
If anybody can go there, will anybody want to go there?
interface - February 8, 2011 at 9:01 am
Does anybody really buy the excuses of the defenders of “Willhurst” for why they are hypocritical and self-serving – i.e. a big part of the big problem? C’mon, you can point this out until hell freezes over or Harvard admits more undergrads, but good luck separating the greedy from their power and money. Next time write an analysis of why they don’t care.
smcdonald999 - February 8, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Here is one simple answer to interace’s question. The rich alumni who control a large and growing portion of elite universities budgets have no interest in diluting their brand by expanding admission. They want more selectivity not less. They thrive on hearing stories like “only 8% admitted this year,” and “university determined to become top five on US News and World Report rankings.” Every development officer will tell you, wealthy alumni donate much more when selectivity and rankings go up. Its and ego thing. And since their progeny already get a back door pass around the admissions office, their really is no downside in perpetuating increasing selectivity.
sand6432 - February 8, 2011 at 12:26 pm
A counter-example to “rich alumni” not wanting to dilute “their brand by expanding admission” comes from the experience of coeducation, which was introduced at most Ivies (that had not already been coed) in the 1970s. At Princeton, e.g., a deal was struck with alumni not to decrease the number of male undergraduates but simply to increase the number of admissions overall so that females could become part of the student body. Some alumni resisted coeducation initially, but the more of them who had daughters who could go to Princeton, the more quickly that opposition dissipated. On analogy with this example, I think there might actually be more support for expanding the size of the undergraduate student body in order to allow for more admission of students from underprivileged backgrounds than just expansion for its own sake. Fairness and equal opportunity are values that most alumni would support, more so than just increasing access overall.—Sandy Thatcher
rfrank1813 - February 8, 2011 at 3:16 pm
I guess the problem is that schools get a lot of benefit from being selective, even if there are plenty of qualified students who don’t get in. I started a site where students who got into top colleges can share their story of how they got there – http://www.dreamschoolstories.com – and I’ve noticed for me and most of my classmates at Stanford, it was something intangible about the admissions decision. The stereotype of perfect grades, perfect SAT scores, and student body President don’t apply. Anyway, just my two cents.
div411 - February 8, 2011 at 6:32 pm
Spare us the naivete about selectivity. I know well, as student and as professor, how nonacademic the criteria for admission are. (I taught for several years at Stanford and was shocked at the mediocrity of many students.) The admissions director who’d arrived a year before I started (several decades ago) as an undergraduate at Wesleyan changed the criteria abruptly. Wesleyan was among the first selective schools to relax its previously rigid quota on Jews, especially from public schools, and to begin admitting African Americans. Still, the “legacy” of Wesleyan remained. The dumbest students in my class were sons of alumni. Perhaps the least talented student I encountered turned out to have been the son of, I believe, an investment banker. He eventually became chairman of the Board of Trustees, and he even got an honorary degree when his term ended.
Things are doubtless more egalitarian today, but I doubt that merit carries all that much weight even now.
Admissions directors in selective schools like Wesleyan used to be from the dumbest alumni, ones who couldn’t get hired by Wal Mart or pass the Army mental exam. They tended to perpetuate themselves. Again, things have doubtless improved, but by how much?
I wonder how different a Wesleyan class would look if its members were chosen on the basis of intellectual ability and not geography, alumni ties, athletic ability, or race.
In short, selective schools need only select students on a fairer basis, not increase the number of students admitted.
Robert Segal
jffoster - February 8, 2011 at 7:09 pm
Mr Segal just above writes: “In short, selective schools need only select students on a fairer basis, not increase the number of students admitted.”
Well, actually, they need not do either one.
art_professor - February 9, 2011 at 3:51 am
I guess the big question for me would be, “who cares?” What is the real point of these colleges opening up a few more slots? It’s not going to change the landscape in any noticeable way, so why even bother?
If you wanted to be serious about egalitarianism, you’d do what the Netherlands does in certain cases and just set have a lottery to see who goes where. But in the US, where you have schools like Amherst, that spend $100,000/yr/student, and then the vast majority of schools that spend probably $5000/yr/student, there’s just no point in comparing them – the educational experience is not in the same universe, and can never be.
Basically, this idea strikes me as less about any real commitment to educational reform or egalitarianism, but simply a bunch of whiny upper-middle-class suburban parents who are horrified at the thought that their little darling can go through 12 years of expensive private school, plus tutoring, plus expensive extra-curriculars, etc., and STILL not get accepted into one of the top 20 schools. THERE MUST BE NO JUSTICE IN THE WORLD!!! LOL. Really. Cry me a river.