There has been a lot of public discussion recently about college admissions. A large number of applicants are very keen in their pursuit of a smaller number of places available in highly esteemed institutions, and blood is in the water. In 2019 there broke upon the world the scandal and criminal conspiracy cleverly named “Varsity Blues.” Alert citizens reeled when confronted by two pieces of information spread across the quality press. The first was that a young person can considerably improve her chances of admission if she can produce a photograph of herself sitting in a racing eight with a resolute expression on her face, and her hands firmly grasping a pair of oars. The second was that there are real people in the real world able and willing to pay a bribe of one hundred thousand smackers to get their kid into the University of Southern California. It is hard to say which bit of news is more astonishing. The subject returned to my mind a few days ago when I read a David Brooks column in which, with uncharacteristic violence of language, he encourages us to “smash the college admissions system.”
There is, however, no single identifiable “system” to smash. Admissions criteria range from very “highly selective” to “come one, come all.” Most of the anxiety swirls around a relatively few institutions in the first category, some of which (immorally in my view) actually encourage hopeless applications, as a low acceptance rate in itself is a badge of institutional prestige.
There are in my opinion at least three hundred good institutions of higher education in this country, probably many more. There may well be that number of good public institutions, even before we get to the relatively few famous private ones that seem to monopolize the discussion of college admissions. I apply the adjective “good” to an institution with a clear and useful educational mission, one that works hard and successfully to provide the material resources required by its mission, and one that invigilates and evaluates in a responsible fashion the performance of its faculty and the progress of its students in carrying out its mission. Largely because of its many very different exemplars of high quality institutions, American higher education has long been the envy of the world. If that reputation is somewhat diminishing, as it probably is, it is in part because of the Americanization of so many universities in various parts of the world, especially Europe. Oxford continues to laud its spectacularly inefficient “tutorial” system, for instance, but in its government, fund-raising, and academic alliances it looks ever more like Cornell.
Especially to be execrated are legacy admissions, admissions partially based in some personal association between candidate and institution. This is yet another topic that needs to be thought through dispassionately, but it would require a substantial essay of its own. Take a parodically extreme hypothetical case. Mrs. Gotrocks comes to the president of Aspiration College and says “We’d like to give you another seven and a half million dollars….Mr. Gotrocks and I so admire what you are doing at Aspiration, and we would be so very proud if our own little Jessica, who graduates from Peabody Springs next year, might have the privilege of being an Aspirer just like her great granddaddy “Groove” Gotrocks, legendary tight end and Heisman contender on the legendary Team of Destiny. Go, Marooners!” Little Jessica may actually be a slightly flighty party monster, but she has respectable SATs and is certainly going to graduate from her undistinguished prep school. Experience suggests she would graduate from Aspiration in the third or fourth quintile of her class, the lower end of whose admission profiles she fairly closely matches. Is there anywhere in this world the college president, trial lawyer, Speaker of the House, high tech tycoon, or street vendor of falafel so dumb as to turn this implicit deal down? Is the evaluation of a college application actually an exact science as opposed to a good faith guess? Good old Aspiration ought to be able in good faith to educate one little Jessica and in equally good faith exploit the resources needed to educate a couple hundred much desired but impecunious applicants on their wish list.
As parodic as my tale of Aspiration U. is, it does not exceed the extravagance with which many critics respond when they hear the phrase “legacy admissions.” I have already said that legacy admissions deserve an essay of their own, but I shall note here that they come in different shapes. I began my own teaching career at a great university located in Madison, Wisconsin. I admired the institution, and I’d probably be there today if the administration had seen fit to accommodate my reasonable demands for much milder winter weather. One of the things I most admired was the way they handled their legacy admissions policy, now long gone. Still maintaining an old belief that the university had been founded and financed by the citizens of Wisconsin primarily with the citizens of Wisconsin in mind, the college authorities pursued a brazenly discriminatory policy. Their admissions policy was that any young person who graduated from a public high school in the state of Wisconsin had the right to matriculate at the University. Admission was theirs by legacy. Out-of-state applicants (there were many) had no such right, and the relatively small number who were admitted paid a considerably higher comprehensive fee than in-staters. There was a rub. Admission got you in, but to stay there you had to perform in your first semester at a standard deemed satisfactory for a Madison freshman-- a pretty high standard. This system, essentially self-selection, worked about as fairly as any other I have seen. I certainly noticed a lot of very hard workers in the freshman class.
Let me express again my opinion that a great strength of American higher education is its variety. The word diversity falls easily from the lips of college administrators, but its applications by academicians are actually highly selective. We need to acknowledge the useful diversity of educational institutions themselves, beginning, perhaps, with the dramatic differences in their financial resources. If you have an endowment of ten to forty billion, as most of the institutions most frequently discussed do, you can pretend your admissions process is simon-pure and renders results of scientific exactitude. The major Ivy League institutions, and many others, are in fact largely charitable foundations and engines processing the redistribution of wealth. But there are many schools, including some distinguished ones, heavily dependent upon tuition revenues. If the ability of an applicant to pay is a top priority, other desiderata may well excite a reduced urgency. One thing leads to another.
