Superb article about Ivy League Universities

[T_i_B]

Unusually, the Lexington column in The Economist this week is actually very good indeed.

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7945858

AMERICAN universities like to think of themselves as engines of social justice, thronging with “diversity”. But how much truth is there in this flattering self-image? Over the past few years Daniel Golden has written a series of coruscating stories in the Wall Street Journal about the admissions practices of America's elite universities, suggesting that they are not so much engines of social justice as bastions of privilege. Now he has produced a book—“The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates”—that deserves to become a classic.

Mr Golden shows that elite universities do everything in their power to admit the children of privilege. If they cannot get them in through the front door by relaxing their standards, then they smuggle them in through the back. No less than 60% of the places in elite universities are given to candidates who have some sort of extra “hook”, from rich or alumni parents to “sporting prowess”. The number of whites who benefit from this affirmative action is far greater than the number of blacks.

The American establishment is extraordinarily good at getting its children into the best colleges. In the last presidential election both candidates—George Bush and John Kerry—were “C” students who would have had little chance of getting into Yale if they had not come from Yale families. Al Gore and Bill Frist both got their sons into their alma maters (Harvard and Princeton respectively), despite their average academic performances. Universities bend over backwards to admit “legacies” (ie, the children of alumni). Harvard admits 40% of legacy applicants compared with 11% of applicants overall. Amherst admits 50%. An average of 21-24% of students in each year at Notre Dame are the offspring of alumni. When it comes to the children of particularly rich donors, the bending-over-backwards reaches astonishing levels. Harvard even has something called a “Z” list—a list of applicants who are given a place after a year's deferment to catch up—that is dominated by the children of rich alumni.

You might imagine that academics would be up in arms about this. Alas, they have too much skin in the game. Academics not only escape tuition fees if they can get their children into the universities where they teach. They get huge preferences as well. Boston University accepted 91% of “faculty brats” in 2003, at a cost of about $9m. Notre Dame accepts about 70% of the children of university employees, compared with 19% of “unhooked” applicants, despite markedly lower average SAT scores.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

1. Legacy admissions

have been going on a long time. When you have alumni heavy donations, it is logical and it isn't likely to stop.

[bluestateguy]

2. Cut off federal funds for schools that use legacy admissions

We need a bill in Congress to cut off federal funding for colleges that use these bullshit "legacy admissions". If Harvard or Princeton want to do this, that is their legal right, but they should not get federal funding if they do. You would all be surprised if you knew how much federal funding goes to these supposedly private schools.

[Lexingtonian]

3. this is news to people?

I went to one or two universities of the sort and crossregistered to a third. What admissions people told me at one was that ~15% of the students that enrolled were the people they truly wanted for academic ability or promise; many of those 15% tended to flame out during their undergraduate years though a few others without high expectations do tend to prosper. The other 80+% of students were admitted to create the social atmosphere, to bring in the money and retain the institutional connectedness to various elites and classes and ethnic groups, to be leaders or very good citizens outside of academia (where having parents already high up in that sphere is generally crucial to success). Or on the outside chance of academic achievement to very high levels.

Paul Fussell's book "Class" is very accurate about the American education system. It does, and is forced to, act in such a way that it maintains and furthers the interests of the social and economic order and status system that exists beyond the walls of the schools and laboratories. So elite schools take students from the Establishments and feed them back into the Establishments.

[T_i_B]

4. Well I wasn't going to post this in LBN!

The question really, is whether or not these pratices are right. That much should be questioned.

What is news here is that the Lexington column in The Economist has stopped licking the GOP's behind and actually come out with a brilliant article. Very unusual, and for that reason alone it's worth posting this.