#23 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Monday May 10)
Good morning,
I inadvertently included today’s original Musing at the bottom of Friday’s Musing. For those who read only to the first “Have a good day” and missed the Musing on college admissions, it is include its suggestions after today’s additional thoughts on admissions:
A HUGE part of the problem is the U.S. News Ratings. One of the major measures of rankings is the level of selectivity. As a result, schools gleefully report ever-declining admissions rates (e.g., “State University reports only a 6.8% acceptance rate, the lowest ever!”). If you want to move up, demonstrate that you’re more selective by accepting fewer students. Want to be favorably viewed? Disappoint more kids. The formula is simple—make it easier to apply, reduce the cost to apply and convince kids with virtually no chance of being admitted to apply nonetheless. Huge misinformation campaigns are ongoing to boost applications. The only people paying the price are 17-year olds. And who cares about them? Oh wait, wasn’t the whole purpose of this to educate these young people? The current system cares little about how we treat the kids; it is about how the institution can benefit.
Kids have a daunting task and are applying to 12-15-even 20 schools to increase their odds. Perhaps we should institute guard rails to control the feeding frenzy. If one had to make good choices on where to apply, then admissions rates would trend higher and greater certainty could exist. Perhaps we should consider limiting kids to five “first choice” schools for a first round. If admitted to zero or one, they can apply in the second round to five more. If they were admitted to two or more, they now have a choice and are not allowed to enter round two.
What if there were a matching program, like with medical residencies? Students can apply to Tier One schools and the Tier One schools can “match” with them, following the same methodology through Tier Two and Tier Three. Yes, I know that establishing tiers could be difficult. While this and other replacement systems might be complex, they would increase equity and reduce unnecessary numbers of applications.
What if colleges refuse to share information with U.S. News and others unless the reporting changes. Isn’t a better metric for selectivity simply GPA and test scores? Why is the percentage admitted from a self-selecting pool particularly relevant anyway?
Why are kids encouraged to go out of state? Should we consider having set minimum in-state admissions at the state funded schools? Should we encourage the same in private universities?
There were a number of personal reflections of readers:
One person around my age said he applied to only three schools and one was the UC system, with one application that allowed the applicant to rank order the campuses.
Paul Kanin: “When my sons applied to George Washington University 20 years ago (disdaining all California schools to the expense of their parents) we learned that GW limited total applications to 8,000- accepted roughly 4,000 and enrolled around 2,000 They ranked annually between 49 and 53 in US News. For some off-putting reason, they decided to try and improve their ranking. How to improve? Allow more applications, hire some clerks to process thousands more apps but accept the same class size. This would be a profitable endeavor (app fees) and they rose to 47 in the rankings.”
David Lash: Did you hear about the high school senior from Georgia, a young and brilliant Black woman, who got into 29 colleges and has received offers of financial aid of more than $2 million? And they are quite a list of fine schools. But why the heck is someone of that caliber applying to so many schools? Why is she spending so much unnecessary money on application fees? Why is she just lengthening already crowded wait lists? She certainly is screwing up all those numerators and denominators. Good point…
And it’s too expensive: From Jerry Lucido (who runs an institute on college enrollment and usually the smartest man in any room he’s in): “Given that college prices have risen almost 150% in 2019 dollars since 1989—while family incomes have increased only 16% — many colleges are pricing themselves out of the market. Most need to give massive discounts to enroll a class. This is not sustainable.” Remember the name; I’ll be quoting him again in future weeks.
JUST BECAUSE
And if you want to smile, watch one of the most out of shape men in baseball, ancient (over 40), overweight and a pitcher (who is not supposed to be able to hit) hit his first home run. Bartolo Colon pitched for many teams over the years, always smiling, always rubbing his ample mid-section in humor, and pretty consistently an excellent pitcher. But the home run (accompanied by the slowest trot ever) is a moment of pure joy, even if you’re not a baseball fan: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/5/7/2029366/-Today-Is-the-Fifth-Anniversary-of-the-Greatest-Thing-That-Has-Ever-Happened-Ever Thanks, Mark DiMaria.
Have a great week,
Glenn
FRIDAY’S COLLEGE ADMISSIONS MUSING:
It should not be surprising that the progeny of the wealthy are highly sought after—their parents build an ever more elaborate (one might argue absurdly overbuilt) physical plant. Equally unsurprising is that athletes occupy many of the spaces (nor is it surprising that football and basketball coaches typically are among the highest compensated employees of their institutions). Athletes will be destined for elite status because of a particular acumen or dedication toward success in sports. Sports is a national obsession, with alumni clamoring for greater athletic success from their institutions. But should we bestow this national elite status on someone whose greatest accomplishment is a dedication to lacrosse or tennis or field hockey? Now there is a groundswell to include more children from underserved communities that includes attacks on the system of “meritocracy.” Grades? Highly subjective. Test scores? Racially discriminatory. Poorly written essays? The result of failed schools. While these arguments may have some rational defense, those seeking to admit more kids from underserved communities are not using their best argument. It is not the qualifications of others candidates that are keeping kids out—rather, it is the institutionalized bias toward money, sports, and connections, coupled with one additional important factor: an imbalance of supply and demand.
And because the demand is so great, there is no certainty to the process. Students must apply large number of schools of the same caliber in order to get into one or two. As a result of the increasing number of applications, and the relative ease by which an applicant can add more schools to their list, the number of applicants for each slot at each school increases dramatically, furthering the “race to the bottom” of low acceptance rates. And U.S. News and World Report and other ratings groups are delighted.
Critics have been focusing on dividing up the pie in different ways—trying to reallocate the number of admissions among different groups and to impose different weighting factors to things like family background, economic need, ethnicity and personal hardship. But what if we think about this in a completely different way? What if we could solve the logjam through manipulation of the numerator and the denominator of a simple equation—one that creates the limits of, and the conflicts within, the system?
The numerator of this fraction is the number of students admitted. The denominator is the number of applications received. In a perfect world, only those students would apply who would meet standards adopted by the institution (the denominator) and all of those admitted would be the same (the numerator). Of course, it is impossible to create such a result, but we certainly should work toward a system that seems fairer and more predictable.
Here are a few ideas (together or separately) that could go a long way toward creating greater equity, create a larger pool of potential elites, and, at the same time, not exclude qualified students:
Admit more students. This seems the easiest possible solution. Instead of reducing the number of students who might otherwise qualify for admission under existing standards, why not simply require schools to increase their freshman class by 10%. I doubt the burden of a larger number of students will materially decrease the quality of the education or seriously overburden professors. Some may question how we can mandate that Harvard and Stanford increase the size of their entering class. Let’s remember, however, that these “non-profit” institutions exist pursuant to a public trust established by the government and these institutions are recipients of huge government contracts. A lot of this funded research could be done by one institution versus another—their scientists, facilities and methodologies are not so appreciably different. We have leverage to demand compliance and should use it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/harvard-and-its-peers-should-be-embarrassed-about-how-few-students-they-educate/2021/04/08/3c0be99c-97cb-11eb-b28d-bfa7bb5cb2a5_story.html
Reduce applications. There is an arms race going on, whereby schools are encouraging people to apply—people whom they know are unlikely candidates. Why? Because this drives up the denominator (and, therefore, reduces the percentage acceptances). Perhaps the government may want to withhold funding dollars to those that cannot explain acceptance levels below 10%.
Pick a number and full disclosure. Each university should state simply and forthrightly the number of slots that it intends to reserve for athletes and “special” relationships. We require truth in advertising everything else. Why not here too?