Coming Attraction--A Note and An Apology

Last week I was quoted in a Forbes article about Artificial Intelligence and its ability to write college essays.  As is often the case, the reporter picked up just one of the things I had said about the issue, which was that the essay examples the reporter had sampled using AI were “cliche” essays, hard to distinguish from student essays I’ve seen written with help from some essay consultants. Unfortunately I didn’t specify “some.”

The quote from the article appeared in this morning’s Today in College Admission, published by NACAC.  I was contacted shortly thereafter by Chris Reeves, counselor at St. Henry District High School in Kentucky and a former member of the NACAC Board of Directors. Chris pointed out that the quote appeared to disparage all Independent Educational Consultants.  That was not my intention, and I apologize if it came across that way.

I plan to write more fully about the AI issue in early January, but didn’t want to wait to clarify.

In Memoriam: The NACAC Assembly

Last week Vern Granger, Chair of the Board of Directors for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, better known as NACAC, announced the results of a special member vote to amend the organization’s bylaws.  By a margin of nearly 9-1, the membership of NACAC approved amendments that removed all references to the NACAC Assembly, the organization’s legislative body.

It was no surprise that the proposed amendments passed. The only suspense, in fact, was whether there would be a quorum (10 percent) of members voting. That may have something to do with why the deadline to cast votes was extended to November 30.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I was on the losing side of the vote, for reasons I will discuss later in this post.  I purposely waited to write on this topic until the vote results were reported out, because I didn’t want to appear like I was trying to tell anyone else how they should vote. But I think it’s appropriate to take a few minutes and eulogize the Assembly.

The NACAC Assembly succumbed around November 30 after having been in failing health for a number of years. Like many of us, the Assembly experienced a decline in strength and executive function in recent years. There are no immediate survivors, but the Assembly was preceded in death by its close relative, the NACAC Standing Committees. 

College admission and counseling professionals who remember the Assembly from its more vibrant days are saddened by the news.  Count me among them. 

The NACAC Assembly personified the strengths and weaknesses of representative democracy. At its worst it could be mundane. That wasn’t always a bad thing. As President of NACAC in 2010, I had to run both the Assembly and the General Membership meeting, and I was perfectly happy that no big, unexpected controversies reared their heads.  There were certainly a few delegates each year who opened their delegate handbooks for the first time as they were walking into the ballroom where the meeting was about to start.

It could be chaotic, with behind-the-scenes political maneuvering and chicanery.  At one time the Assembly met twice during the national conference, with a potential third session if needed following the Saturday afternoon business meeting. The expectation was that proposed motions would be put forth during the first session and then voted on in the second session, but in many years delegates played their cards close to the vest, waiting until the second meeting to spring motions requesting NACAC to address some problem in the profession.  I have helped other delegates wordsmith on the fly after they’ve offered a motion that wasn’t clear, well thought out, or even grammatically correct.

At one time the Assembly had three major responsibilities.  It approved NACAC’s budget before that responsibility was moved to the Board, and there were delegates who picked apart different line items, asking questions like whether NACAC was spending too much on pastries. (I might have been among them–former NACAC Treasurer Jim McCoy probably groaned whenever he saw me come to the microphone.) It elected the Association’s officers, a responsibility that was moved to the entire membership in 2021. And until the DOJ investigation of NACAC’s ethical rules, the Assembly was the body that amended the Statement of Principles of Good Practice (SPGP) and its successor, the Code of Ethics and Professional Practices.

At its best the Assembly was a forum for passionate debate on the great issues facing our profession.  I have been an Assembly delegate during discussions about need-blind admission, Early Decision/Early Action, the use of agents to recruit internationally, and a number of other issues that are fundamental and profound to those of us who love college counseling. In those years the energy on the Assembly floor was electrifying. I wonder where that debate will take place moving forward.

Serving as an Assembly delegate might have been the best elected position I ever held. The first time I ever spoke at a NACAC meeting was during the debate about need-blind admission during the Assembly in Pittsburgh in 1993 (yes I am that old–if you weren’t even born yet, or were still in elementary school, I don’t want to hear about it).  At that time the SPGP required colleges to be both need-blind in making admission decisions and also to meet the full need of applicants. Today, given the realities of funding higher education, it’s hard to fathom that was an issue. A number of good private institutions argued that confluence of policies wasn’t institutionally sustainable, and the debate within the Assembly was intense. I stood up during the debate, pointing out my previous life as an ethics professor, and argued that the ultimate principle was transparency about our practices.

Transparency in governance was one of the arguments made by NACAC for abolishing both the standing committees and the Assembly, along with inclusivity, alignment with peer associations, and industry best practices.  I am willing to grant that the changes might be necessary, and I support Angel Perez’s leadership and vision of the organization. 

But is NACAC being truly transparent about the changes? Not everyone thinks so. A friend and long-time leader within the profession told me that he “threw up in his mouth” after the third use of “transparency.”  I would characterize the governance changes, especially when defended as “industry best practices,” as translucent rather than transparent. What would be transparent would be for NACAC to admit that it can’t afford the old governance structure in the wake of revenue losses during COVID, or to come out and state that it is pivoting to being a different, inside-the-Beltway, professional association. 

In the past two years NACAC has radically changed its governance structure, abolishing standing committees and the Assembly. The demise of both those entities concentrates power in the Board of Directors and in the staff, an Executive Branch without checks and balances. 

Ethics is not only about what you do, but how you do it. The governance changes may be necessary, but have felt rushed, without a clear plan for engaging the membership in the leadership of the organization moving forward. 

Voting for officers has been extended to the entire membership, and that’s a good thing, but far fewer NACAC members will be active participants in the work of the Association.  The loss of the standing committees and the Assembly mean fewer opportunities to grow the next generation of leaders, although Vern Granger’s email indicated that the board has directed the staff to work with affiliate leaders to create a professional development program to develop newer leaders. I’m glad to hear that.

Not everyone will be sad to see the demise of the NACAC Assembly, but I hope all of us will take a moment to celebrate its life and mourn its death. RIP–you will be missed.

Too Early to Tell

When I am asked how I am or how my day is going, my standard response is “too early to tell.” That retort usually elicits a chuckle the first time I use it and quickly devolves into eye-roll territory with subsequent uses.

If my friends and colleagues wish I would use “too early to tell” less, I wish others would use it more, especially the pundits whose job it is to ascribe significance to events in real time. The 24-hour cable news cycle has created a need to fill time and space with analysis from panels of “contributors” who are labeled as “experts” but more resemble talking heads. Most of them are quick to draw conclusions in real time, and most of them are ultimately proved wrong.

“Too early to tell” is probably the correct reaction to most events in the news. With the exception of cataclysmic events like 9/11, we rarely have enough perspective to determine when history is being made. It is too soon to conclude whether an item in the news is an isolated incident or the beginning of a movement.

So it is with three recent announcements in the college admissions world. 

The first is Purdue’s recent announcement that it will resume requiring applicants to submit test scores beginning in the Fall of 2024. Is this a foreshadowing of the triumphant return of testing?

I’m thinking not. At a Board meeting at school last week, prior to the Purdue announcement, I was asked if I thought that many colleges would return to requiring test scores. I replied that the colleges and universities I was aware of that had returned to requiring testing had done so for reasons that may not translate to other institutions. MIT did so because it has a need to identify the kind of high-end math students it is seeking. Public universities in states like Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee have done so not at the behest of admissions offices but rather the political appointees on state governing boards who apparently consider test-optional policies part of the woke movement.

I could certainly be wrong, but I’m thinking that the test-optional movement is unlikely to go away. While some uber-selective (as opposed to Uber or Lyft selective) universities can require anything they want from applicants, most colleges run the risk of a decline in application numbers if they go back to requiring testing. That is especially true for colleges that rely on enrollment from California, given that the UC and Cal State systems are ending the use of test scores in admission altogether. I suspect that application numbers are an even more important metric than test scores for most institutions.  

The second news item is that several colleges and universities, including Washington & Jefferson, Colby-Sawyer, and Lasell, have recently announced tuition resets.  W&J is reducing its tuition by 44 percent, Colby-Sawyer by 62 percent, and Lasell by close to a third.

A Hechinger Report article (also published in the Washington Post) quoted a Vice President of NACUBO (National Association of College and University Business Officers) as predicting that as many as 100 colleges may move to lower their prices. I’d like to see that happen, because I’d like to see “counterprogramming” to the high tuition, high discount model that has prevailed in higher education. (I’d also like to see more “counterprogramming” with regard to a variety of admission practices.)

I wish those institutions well, but the history of tuition resets isn’t promising. Previous instances of colleges and universities hoping to lead a movement to lower prices (and lower the amount of aid they offer) have found themselves without followers, and there is a danger that lowering tuition may lead the public to see the lower price as a sign that the institution in question is in trouble. The broader issue, of course, is that we have to come to grips with growing public discontent about the cost of higher education. Those costs are spotlighted at a time when there is concern about inflation, especially given that the price of attending college has risen faster than any other sector over the past generation. Can we justify what we are charging for our product?

The most interesting story is that eleven law schools have announced that they will no longer participate in the U.S. News rankings. The group includes Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Penn, Georgetown, Michigan, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-Irvine, and the University of Washington.

The law schools all provided similar arguments for their decisions to no longer participate in the rankings.  They argue that the ranking metric–40 percent reputation, 26 percent, placement, 21 percent selectivity (including LSAT scores and college GPAs), and 13 percent faculty and library resources–discourages law schools from encouraging graduates to pursue careers in public service, and that the debt metric ignores loan forgiveness programs for students who bypass corporate law and earnings or who pursue other graduate degrees after law school.  They also suggest that the rankings metrics incentivize law schools to provide merit aid to students with high grades and test scores.

The larger question is whether the withdrawals portend the end of the influence of the U.S. News rankings, as suggested by articles in both Inside Higher Ed and The Nation, not only for law schools but perhaps for undergraduate institutions as well.  The answer depends on which sports announcing legend you choose to quote.

If you are an optimist or a baseball fan, you might prefer to channel legendary St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs (as well as several other teams) play-by-play announcer Harry Caray. While best known for his rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh inning stretch, his home run call began with “It might be, it could be.” If, however, your tastes run more to football or skepticism, you might turn to the wisdom of analyst and former college coach Lee Corso, fond of saying, “Not so fast, my friends.”

Is this the beginning of the end for U.S. News? It may be more appropriate to answer that question not with sports quotes, but rather with metaphors from the entertainment world. The rankings are, after all, far more about entertainment than they are about journalism. They attempt to make news rather than break news.

I wonder whether the law schools in question will discover that U.S. News’s rankings are the higher education equivalent of the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” where you can check out any time you want but you can never leave. In the past colleges that have attempted to withdraw from participation in the rankings, most prominently Reed College in Oregon, have not only been unable to opt out but have also been punished by U.S. News with a lower ranking. Will the withdrawing schools, many of which are universally considered top 14 law schools, face the same thing? Or will we see undergraduate institutions find the courage to follow in their footsteps and stop cooperating with the rankings?

U.S. News has already announced that it will continue to rank law schools out of “concern for students” rather than the revenue or publicity that the rankings brings to what once upon a time was a weekly newsmagazine. But are colleges obligated to help U.S. News with data collection when it could publish rankings based on publicly available information? As ECA has asked previously, how much does U.S. News vet the information it receives from colleges? And is U.S. News “too big to fail”? 

Will we see a Netflix documentary or a major motion picture “inspired by a true story” based on the clash between law schools and the rankings? I can envision Bob Morse as the evil genius in a suspense or horror movie who won’t die, coming back to life just when the heroes think they’ve finally vanquished the threat to civilization and we assume the closing credits are about to roll.

Might there be an Oscar in his future? It’s too early to tell, but you heard it here first.

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"We're Missing..."

In early November each year I experience a college admissions form of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I am recovering–physically, mentally, spiritually–from the October slog of writing recommendations for the huge number of my students applying early with deadlines of either October 15 or November 1. I warn those around me–students, colleagues, family members–that I am likely to be grumpy, or perhaps more accurately, grumpier than usual. T. S. Eliot described April as the “cruelest month.” He obviously never worked in a college counseling office. 

I tell my students that all it takes is one thing added to one’s plate to become overwhelmed instead of simply whelmed. That’s true for us as well. Over the past week or so there have been three admission practices that have gotten me exercised, perhaps even overwhelmed. What the three pet peeves have in common is that they get in the way of a college admissions process that is rational and easy to navigate.

The first is received-by deadlines.  There is nothing inherently wrong with having a received-by deadline, other than the fact that almost everyone else has a submit-by deadline. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” but having consistent definitions for what an admissions deadline means is anything but foolish. Students (and counselors) deserve consistency in admission requirements, and that includes deadlines. Colleges with received-by deadlines, if you want to stand out from the crowd, find a different way to do it. Or if received-by is necessary for some reason that none of us can fathom, make that case.

The second is the increasing trend on the part of a number of large public universities that require students to self-report grades, with a transcript required only after the student enrolls. While the college counseling dinosaur in me yearns nostalgically for the good old days when I (or, in the interest of truth, my administrative assistant) automatically sent a transcript, letter of recommendation, and school profile with every application, I actually think that putting the onus on students to report their grades makes sense. 

What I find objectionable is that there are too many different ways colleges have to self-report. Last year one of my students applied to four large public universities in the South that required applicants to self-report grades, and he had to self-report four different ways. One required submission of the Self-Reported Academic Record (SRAR), another required the grades to be reported on the Common App itself, another wanted an unofficial transcript uploaded to its student portal, and there was a fourth way I can’t remember. 

The Common Application, and later the Coalition Application, were established to make it relatively easy for a student to apply to multiple colleges. Having multiple ways to self-report grades is at odds with that principle. Can we please find a common method for self-reporting grades? I’ve never been one to ask, “Why doesn’t NACAC do something about this?”, but I’m tempted to make an exception in this case. 

Number one on my current list of pet peeves (subject to change at any moment) is emails sent to students telling them that certain documents are missing from their applications. Like the other examples listed above, these serve a valuable purpose in theory. They help an applicant make sure that his or her application is not incomplete, which is a valuable thing to know. The problem is how and when these reminders are sent, and the lack of sensitivity attached to them.

The “We’re missing…” email is not received by students and parents as a helpful reminder, but as a cause for panic. The first, and natural, thought is “my stupid school counselor didn’t even bother to send my transcript.” That can certainly happen, especially in these days when a student can apply without counselors even knowing and when some students prefer to communicate telepathically. We are certainly capable of making mistakes during the hectic days leading up to November 1.

What is annoying for counselors is when emails alleging that school materials are missing are sent when document platforms such as Naviance or SCOIR show the documents as not only having been sent but also received and uploaded by the college. My administrative assistant is wonderful about calling to check in the wake of the “We’re missing…” communications, and invariably the materials are there, either not yet logged onto student portals or in rare cases misfiled. I don’t blame colleges for either of those.

But sending those emails prematurely is another thing altogether, creating unnecessary stress and anxiety in students and parents, which creates unnecessary stress and anxiety in college counselors.  Students and parents assume that when something is sent electronically, it is received instantaneously. They don’t understand what goes on behind the scenes in a college admissions office to process applications.

What is especially problematic is colleges that aren’t transparent about the fact that it may take several days to reconcile documents and show them as received. At one point it seemed like some institutions sent the “We’re missing…” email as an acknowledgement that the application had been received. Thankfully that practice seems to be disappearing.

Recently a university in the Midwest that will remain unnamed (but is the alma mater of Tom Brady, Gerald Ford, James Earl Jones, and Madonna) caused a stir by sending notices of incomplete applications listing missing documents. What it failed to admit was that the admissions office was 10-12 days behind in processing documents submitted in the days immediately preceding November 1. Is it ethical to send a “We are missing…” notice when you have no way of knowing whether the documents in question are actually missing?

The Scottish philosopher W. D. Ross (not to be confused with WD-40) said that ethical obligations arise out of relationships. In any given ethical dilemma each relationship creates what Ross referred to as a prima facie (first glance) duty. For example, as a college counselor I have a relationship with my students, with my school, with my profession, and with myself as an ethical individual. Each of those relationships creates an obligation or duty. Ross believed that we could determine our actual duty in a given case by identifying and weighing the various prima facie duties present in any situation.

Colleges are in relationship with their applicants, and also with feeder schools and the counselors who reside in them. Those relationships create ethical obligations. First and foremost among those obligations would seem to be not scaring the begeezus out of any of them.

That seems to be something we’re missing.

Preferences On Trial

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admission Insider” on November 7, 2022)

You are likely aware that the Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in the twin cases, filed by Students for Fair Admissions, challenging the use of race-based preferences by Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill.  What is unclear is whether the five hours spent on the two cases, two hours longer than planned, was anything other than political theater. The consensus of those who followed the oral arguments is that the justices on the Court had most likely already made up their minds.

The consideration of race in college admission is only one of the things on trial in these cases.

If race-based preferences are on trial, that certainly opens the door to questioning other admission preferences as well. While I am not aware that Students For Fair Admissions has ever filed lawsuits challenging legacy, athletic, or donor preferences, perhaps suggesting that it thinks those are fair, those preferences will inevitably come under scrutiny as well.

During oral arguments, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked what would happen if athletic and donor preferences disappeared, concluding that “We would just have a crummy squash team and no art museum. Then what?” Then what, indeed. Are we willing to give up our climbing walls and lazy rivers as well?

Legacy preferences have already come under attack, most recently in a report issued a couple of weeks ago by James Murphy, Senior Policy Analyst at Education Reform Now. We’ll come back to legacy preferences.

What else is on trial? Judicial deference to institutions to determine what their student bodies look like. In past cases involving college admissions and race, previous Supreme Courts have deferred to institutions. It’s not clear that the current Court will follow stare decisis, the precedents established over the past 45 years going back to Bakke, the first case involving college admission and race.

That means that the Court itself is also on trial. On the heels of overturning Roe v. Wade as well as fifty years of what several justices described during their confirmation hearings as “settled law,” the Court is at risk of exposing itself as no longer impartial umpires calling balls and strikes, the metaphor used by Chief Justice John Roberts back in 2012, but rather ideological politicians who happen to wear robes.

It has been suggested that the leader of the current Court is not Roberts but rather Justice Clarence Thomas. After the decision overturning Roe, Thomas suggested that he would be open to repealing previous Court precedents on issues ranging from gay marriage to privacy in consensual sexual relationships. To no one’s surprise, he stopped short of arguing that Loving v. Virginia, the case prohibiting states from outlawing inter-racial marriage, should be overturned.

Justice Thomas has been a consistent opponent of race-based preferences, and to be fair to him, the issue is personal to him in a way that it isn’t for most of the other justices (with the exception of Justices Sonia Sotomayor, who has proudly admitted that she is a beneficiary of affirmative action, and of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson), or most of us. He wants (and has a right) to believe that he has earned his success on his merits rather than because of his race. Certainly he understands all too well the stigma attached to successful African-Americans that their success is a product of affirmative action. That’s misguided and unfair, especially since none of us can claim that our success is something we have earned without any help whatsoever.  

The other admission practice that is on trial is holistic admission. During oral arguments there were two statements that caught my attention.  The Washington Post reported that Patrick Strawbridge, the attorney for Students for Fair Admissions, argued that considering race alone in making admission decisions is not consistent with the Constitution.  In another exchange, Chief Justice Roberts told the attorneys for Harvard that they needed to establish whether granting a “credit” based “solely” on skin color is based on a stereotype.

I found both those comments odd. Surely they don’t believe that students are admitted to Harvard based solely on race (please avoid the “don’t call me Shirley” response). I think they are suggesting that holistic admission, especially in combination with uber-selectivity, provides cover for institutions to admit the classes they want to achieve institutional priorities, including racial diversity, without any way to criticize a particular admission decision. They think, or suspect, that race is not one among many factors in admissions decisions but a determinative one, or at least weighing more than other factors.

The irony, of course, is that it was Harvard’s amici curiae brief back in the Bakke case outlining a holistic process where race was but one among many factors that Justice Lewis Powell cited as exemplary in his majority opinion. Some on the current court are skeptical of that approach, with Justice Samuel Alito asking during oral arguments, “Did Harvard sell Justice Powell a bill of goods?”

As suggested by its title, Ethical College Admissions is less concerned with the legal and political implications of preferences than the ethical considerations (recognizing that there might be considerable overlap). One of the guiding principles in ethics is “Treat like cases alike.” Returning to legacy preferences in light of the current Supreme Court cases over racial preferences, do those two types of preferences constitute like cases? If we abolish one, must we abolish the other?

I would argue that they aren’t like cases. Legacy preferences and racial preferences present different kinds of ethical issues. But I have to conclude that legacy preferences are less defensible than racial preferences.

Legacy preferences serve as a means to preserve privilege.  The argument for legacy preferences is that a college or university is a kind of family, and that loyalty to the family is a good thing. (The other argument that I’m not capable of judging is that the pool of legacy applicants is stronger than the overall pool.) I don’t disagree with loyalty as a value, but should it outweigh other values? Should an applicant receive preference because of who his or her parents are rather than who he or she is? That turns admission into college into membership in a private club, passed down from generation to generation. Several years ago I described legacy admission, later quoted in a New York Times editorial, as a transfer of property.

Even if you accept the family metaphor, there is the question of what best serves or strengthens any family. I have been fortunate to work in a school with an exceptional sense of community that is almost family-like, but I have always believed that what best serves the family is expanding the family by bringing in new blood. A family that is too loyal becomes insular and inbred, like the royal families of Europe in the 19th century, and inbreeding inevitably produces genetic mutations that weaken and endanger the family.

The weakest argument for legacy preferences is tied to alumni philanthropy, the notion that alumni will support a college or university only if their children receive preference in admission. The experience of places like Johns Hopkins that have abandoned legacy preferences suggests that a decline in alumni support is not inevitable. But even if it is, is alumni giving in hopes of an admission quid pro quo really philanthropic or a subtle form of bribery? That’s exactly the argument that Rick Singer and his clients made to justify their criminal conduct. 

Racial preferences are different in that the goal is noble and laudable, to redress past discrimination and increase access to elite education. The ethical question is whether that end justifies the means. Does it matter how we achieve the goal of greater equality and access?

I think it does, although I don’t claim to have the answer for how to accomplish that. The Bakke case involved the medical school at the University of California at Davis setting aside a certain number of places for applicants of color, and the Supreme Court found that racial quotas were unacceptable. Critics of race-based preferences argue that the practices are similar today, only shrouded in appeals to holistic admission and diversity.

Ethics are about ideals, and an admissions process and a society where, to quote Martin Luther King, applicants are “judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” is ideal. But is it purely aspirational in 2022? Ethics must also be practical, and the practical consideration is that American society is still dealing with race as an issue. I wish that consideration of race wasn’t necessary, but we’re still dealing with 300 years of racial injustice, and forcing colleges to abandon all consideration of race isn’t a viable solution to that larger issue. 

At the same time, I’m not comfortable with the proposition that racial preferences must always be with us any more than I bought the idea that American forces must remain in Afghanistan for 75-100 years.  In the Grutter case Justice Sandra Day O’Connor talked about racial preferences remaining for 25 more years. We’re five years away from that timeline, and it’s not clear that five more years is enough. But we may not have five more years. 

Regardless of what the Supreme Court decides with regard to Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill, our profession needs to be thinking about an exit strategy for preferences of all kinds.   

Admission Without Application

Should a student be admitted to college without ever applying to college? Until recently that question would have seemed absurd, perhaps even a joke. But the idea of having to apply for admission has become the newest front in the debate about whether we need a new college admissions paradigm.

Back in the summer I wrote a column suggesting that it may be time to re-think some of the conventions of the admissions process, many of which date back nearly a century.  There has already been considerable debate about the role of standardized admission tests, with the pandemic strengthening and emboldening the test-optional movement and some colleges, such as the University of California system, abandoning the consideration of test scores altogether. It seems unlikely that college admission offices will ever worship at the altar of standardized testing the way they once did.

While testing has received the most attention, it is not the only piece in the admissions process that is receiving scrutiny. The legality of race-based admission preferences to achieve diversity will be determined by the Supreme Court later this year.  Last spring there were several voices arguing that reliance on letters of recommendation needs to be re-thought, as they advantage students who are already advantaged by attending schools with low student-counselor ratios and cultures where college advising is the primary responsibility for counselors, rather than an afterthought. I have to admit that during the month of October I find the idea of getting rid of recommendation letters particularly appealing. More recently, a report argued that colleges should give less credence to calculus as an expectation for applicants. 

Is the next big thing making “applicants” an outdated term?  Probably not, but there is a movement afoot to change the relationship, and maybe even the power dynamics, between colleges and prospective students.

Several weeks ago, during the National Association for College Admission Counseling conference in Houston, the marketing and enrollment services vendor EAB announced that it had acquired Concourse. Concourse is one of several players trying to develop a direct admissions process where students wouldn’t apply to college but would rather post academic and personal profiles that would be reviewed by admission officers at partner colleges, resulting in admission and financial-aid offers. Concourse aims to be “flipping the script on traditional admissions.” EAB’s purchase of Concourse suggests that direct admission is not a whim and that there is money to be made.  

In 2021, EAB and Concourse worked together on a pilot program, Greenlight Match, where first-generation and low-income students in the Chicago area created free profiles on the Concourse platform, generating offers of admission and aid from eight partner colleges. An EAB press release about the acquisition of Concourse reported that more than 650 students received nearly 2000 admission offers and more than $135 million in scholarships and financial aid.  The plan is to expand Greenlight Match to benefit 13,000 students next year by adding six other cities–Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, and Philadelphia.  Concourse has also had a similar arrangement for international students.

Is this the future of college admission? It’s hard to imagine that elite, selective colleges will abandon requiring students to complete applications for admission. But direct admission is an interesting idea that may work for students lacking access to savvy college counseling and colleges struggling to expand their outreach.

But is it a good idea? Answering that question requires determining what the college admissions process should represent.

I have always believed that the college search and application processes should be part of a larger journey of self-understanding and discernment, where a student has the opportunity and obligation to determine who they are and what they want from life.  The student is going to live with the consequences of college choice, so they should be the ones taking ownership of the decision.

I recognize that may be aspirational, and perhaps even delusional.  Several loyal ECA readers have argued that it is ridiculous to expect teenagers to determine the right college fit, that they lack the maturity, self-knowledge, and experience to do so. I don’t want to believe that, but will also be the first to admit that I may be either a Pollyanna or a dinosaur. I also recognize that I have worked mostly with students from privileged backgrounds and that a different kind of admissions process may better serve students from families where going to college is not easy or even expected.

Is this truly a radical change, or is it an instance of college admission catching up with changes in technology? I remember when we moved in a very short period of time from paper to online applications and how strange that felt. Now I wouldn’t know how to deal with a paper application. We now have apps that have changed how dating and job-hunting take place.  Should admission be any different?

Is dating an appropriate metaphor for the college admissions process?  We can certainly argue that applying for college is similar to dating.  Curated applications resemble dating profiles designed to create an image that may be an idealized portrayal of reality to impress colleges with more suitors than spaces on their dance card. The vast majority of colleges that are not highly rejective spend millions of dollars on marketing and tuition discounts to get students to “swipe right.”  Will platforms like Concourse make that mating dance simpler and less costly for all involved?

I will be interested in seeing how well Concourse and its competitors work as they move beyond pilot programs.  The promise is that direct admission is also more equitable admission, but it is too early to tell whether tuition-driven colleges struggling for survival will seek out students from economically-deprived backgrounds or make direct admission offers primarily to students who help them meet their revenue objectives.  I hope the latter is not the case.  If platforms like Concourse can connect students with colleges more effectively and equitably than the current admissions process, that would be a welcome change, or at least addition.

Is it time to flip the admissions script? I have always believed that applying to college and college admission should be “Goldilocks” processes, neither too hard nor too easy.  The current application process seems too hard and unwieldy, but direct admission seems too easy.  Can we devise an application process that’s “just right”?

Admission By Major

Last week’s “Admissions Insider” in Inside Higher Ed contained an interesting article about colleges and universities that admit by major.  The article was inspired by and a summation of a session at the recent NACAC conference in Houston organized by my friend Phil Trout, a past NACAC President and college counselor at Minnetonka High School in Minnesota.  I first met Phil many years ago when he spent a year embedded in the Admissions Office at the College of William and Mary. 

The session brought together admissions officers from three Big Ten (which somehow includes 14 members, with at least two more to follow) universities, Purdue, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. All admit their freshman classes by major.

One of the objectives of the session was to illustrate that published admit rates for a university may vary dramatically by school or by major, thus rendering the published admit rate for the university as a whole meaningless, or at least unhelpful.

At Illinois, for example, 45 percent of the more than 63,000 applicants were admitted last year. But that number tells you little or nothing about an admissions process that is much more complex. If you are among the 16 percent of applicants who apply for Computer Science, the admit rate is 7 percent.  For Business the admit rate is 28 percent; Education 52 percent; Agriculture and Environmental Studies 43 percent; and for Liberal Arts and Sciences, 50 percent (the article points out that there is considerable variance among majors within that category).

The article didn’t provide as much data for the other two universities, but at Minnesota the overall admit rate is 74 percent, but only 30 percent for Nursing and 33 percent for Business. Purdue admitted 53 percent of its more than 68,000 applicants, but the number was lower for signature programs like Engineering (41 percent), Computer Science (33 percent), and Aviation (28 percent).

The session and the article raise two important questions. The first is whether colleges and universities should be more forthcoming with this kind of information.  I think the answer is a clear yes.  Transparency should be one of the ethical principles guiding college admission. Students should make decisions based on information and knowledge rather than hope. They deserve to know how factors such as major, in-state/out-of-state, and applying early action/decision vs. regular affect one’s chances of admission.

Following the appearance of the article, I reached out on a whim to a flagship public university that admits by major and has been accused of wanting its admission decisions to be unpredictable (a discussion for a different day). I asked if the institution would consider making similar information available.  

Within fifteen minutes the Director of Admissions (actual title “Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment and Degree Management and Director of Admissions”) called and let me know that admit rate information by major was available on the university website, but wasn’t easy to find. I really appreciated his call and the fact that the information was accessible. One of my pet peeves is college websites that are marketing pieces with lots of graphics but where information, even basic information, can be challenging or impossible to find. I’d like to see admit rates for majors and other relevant admission distinctions be as easy to find and navigate as Net Price Calculators are (at least in theory).

The only argument I can think of against transparency is that having that kind of information available may empower and embolden those who want to game the system. We shouldn’t make that easy, but increasing knowledge about the process at any given institution outweighs that concern.

The second, more fundamental, question is whether universities should admit by major at all. The article makes a strong case that admission by major is an enrollment management tool for those universities.  It quotes Andy Borst, the Director of Undergraduate Admissions at Illinois, arguing that the practice allows the university to align faculty hiring with the needs in various academic departments, which guarantees that students can get the classes they need and earn degrees in an efficient way. He also states that admitting by major allows Illinois to enroll 30 percent more Hispanic and African American students than it would otherwise.  I’m not clear why that’s the case.

Those purported benefits are outweighed by a single data point reported by the National Center for Education Statistics.  80 percent of college students change their major at least once. The average student changes three times.

Those stats suggest that admission by major ignores the fact that the great majority of students applying to college aren’t developmentally ready to declare a major at the same time they are applying to college. How many of us knew what we wanted to major in and what we wanted to do with our lives when we were freshmen in college? Fifty years later, I joke that I still don’t. I know all things I don’t want to do, but am still figuring out what I want to do, although it may be getting late on that front. I feel fortunate that I fell into a profession that is a great fit for my talents and values.

What happens to the students who are admitted to a particular major and then want to change? How easy is that to do, and does it result in students paying more because they can’t graduate in four years?

Clearly there are fields where college major is important, even essential. And there are people who at an early age know exactly who they are and how they want to spend their lives. If you are one of them, perhaps you can give the rest of us pointers. But if 80 percent of college students change their major at least once, admission by major might serve an institution well but students poorly.

And that would seem to be a major problem.

Ten Years of ECA

This week marks the tenth anniversary of this blog–hard to believe.

Ten years ago I began exploring the intersection of ethics and college admission.  At the time I wondered whether I had the discipline to write on a regular basis, whether I had anything worth saying, and whether anyone would read it.  

Thankfully none of those proved problematic.  I have written close to 350 posts during that time, and the blog has led to a number of interesting opportunities, including a collaboration with Scott Jaschik and Inside Higher Ed.  One highlight was reading a lead editorial in the Sunday New York Times and suddenly realizing that the blog was being quoted.

It’s been a good run.  I am grateful to all of you who read the blog and those of you who reach out by email or in person.  Thanks for your support. I hope to run into many of you in Houston later this week.

Shortcuts

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider”)

Is taking calculus overrated, or at least overvalued, by college admissions offices?

That question is at the heart of two reports issued this year by the non-profit group Just Equations in conjunction with the National Association for College Admissions Counseling.  Just Equations “reconceptualizes the role of math in ensuring educational equity.”  

The first report, “A New Calculus for College Admissions: How Policy, Practice, and Perceptions of High School Math Education Limit Equitable Access to College,” was issued in January, and examined the value that admissions officers place on a student taking calculus in high school.  The second report, issued a couple of weeks ago, was a companion looking at how school and independent counselors view the same issue. In last week’s “Admissions Insider,” the co-authors of the two reports, Just Equations Executive Director Pamela Burdman and research associate Veronica Anderson, wrote an op-ed arguing that calculus acts as a gatekeeper for many admissions offices.

The Just Equations reports suggest that the love affair admissions offices have with calculus as a high school course is misplaced, serving as a barrier to students who attend the 50 percent of American high schools where calculus is not offered. It also argues that many students not planning to major in STEM fields would be better served by taking a course in statistics or data science rather than being herded into calculus. 

The debate over the role that calculus plays in admission to college and  preparation for college is a new battleground in the larger re-examination of college admission conventions and how they may impede equity. During the summer I wrote a column asking if it is time to re-think the admissions process, given that college admission may be a major contagion in teen mental health.  We are in the midst of a potentially seismic shift in the role that admission tests play in the process.  We have also seen recommendation letters questioned as an admission tool, and of course both legacy admission and race-based affirmative action are under attack.

The reports reveal a discrepancy in perceptions among high school counselors and college admission officers on the benefit of having taken calculus in the admissions process.  93 percent of the counselors surveyed believe that calculus improves a student’s chances of being admitted, compared with 53 percent of admission officers. At the same time 79 percent of admission officers believe that having had calculus in high school makes a student more likely to succeed in college.

The Just Equations reports argue that the reliance on calculus is an equity issue, given that only 16 percent of high school graduates in 2019 had calculus on their high school transcripts.  Broken down by race, 46 percent of Asian-Americans and 18 percent of white students had calculus, compared with only 6 percent of Black students and 9 percent of Latinx students.  The reports also point out that places like Harvard and Stanford don’t explicitly require calculus, and that back in 2012 the Mathematics Association of America and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics issued a joint position statement that taking calculus should not be the “ultimate goal” of the K-12 math curriculum.

ECA is always interested in probing broader underlying issues, and I think there are several in this debate.

The first is what mathematical preparation students need today to be educated citizens.  Calculus has been the gold standard in the math curriculum, but does it promote mathematical literacy? Do today’s students need more training in data analysis and understanding how algorithms work? Is this an issue where what a student needs to be educated is not the same thing he or she needs to get into a competitive college?  

Is the issue calculus (or “the calculus,” as it was called by Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who independently developed it), or is the issue the value of rigor? The 79 percent of admission officers who believe that having had calculus in high school makes college success more likely suggests it is the latter.  

I reached out to Dr. Richard Light at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to ask about a statement I remember (or think I remember) from years ago that indicated that math professors at Harvard find that students have had calculus but don’t particularly have a good grasp of algebra.  Does anyone else remember something like that? I thought it might have come from his book, Making the Most of College.  He didn’t recall that or think it is true.  He is a statistician by training, but he commented that a student taking calculus is a “proxy for being willing to tackle tough challenges.” He also observed that nearly all entering Harvard students have taken calculus.

Colleges may not require calculus, but that doesn’t mean they don’t prefer it. Calculus may not be as valuable for its own sake as it is as a reflection of strength of schedule.  Is this an issue where what is equitable and what is predictive for success in college come into conflict? 

On the equity front, the operative ethical principle in this instance is that you should never penalize someone for something they don’t have the ability to choose.  Students who attend high schools where calculus is not offered can’t be held responsible for not having taken calculus. It is also the case that the path to being able to take calculus is often determined as early as middle school.  We know that there are students who may not be developmentally ready to tackle Algebra 1 in middle school but may be able to handle complex math a couple of years later.

But what about students who attend schools where calculus is offered but haven’t taken it? I would be doing a disservice to my students who are able to handle calculus and aspire to a selective college if I advised them that they don’t need to take it. My flagship state university, one of the nation’s preeminent public universities, rarely admits one of my students who hasn’t made it to the second year of Advanced Placement Calculus.

One of the reasons for the perceived value of calculus may be the lack of viable alternatives.  How many of us would argue that AP Statistics>AP Calculus or even that AP Statistics=AP Calculus? The most recent report indicated that only 5 percent of counselors recommend statistics as equal, although many said they wish they could. The growth of data science as a field is an encouraging step.  Can we develop a data science or statistics course as rigorous and predictive of success as calculus?

The most interesting thing I found in the two reports was a quote from an unnamed dean of admissions at a selective, private university.  He said that “Calculus is the gold standard that people in this business use as a shortcut.”

That led me to think about other admission shortcuts. One that rears its head annually at this time of year is the U.S. News college rankings.  The rankings exist as a shortcut from a thoughtful comparison of the experience a student will receive at different places.  The rankings aren’t about experience or fit, but rather random metrics that may or may not tell us something about the kind of education a student will receive. Some of those metrics, such as alumni giving, are themselves shortcuts for alumni satisfaction.  Do alumni giving rates tell us about the quality of an institution or the sophistication of its advancement arm?

While on the subject of rankings, the big story last week was Columbia’s drop in ranking from 2nd to 18th following acknowledgement that the university had provided inaccurate data.  That is clearly wrong on Columbia’s part, but does the corrected data justify the dramatic drop given that Columbia has ranked in the top ten for more than 20 years? Is U.S News arbitrarily punishing Columbia, or does this indicate that the distinctions among top 25 universities are miniscule? Does anyone think there are 17 national universities better than Columbia? If Bob Morse would care to take me through the math, I’d be happy to do a column making transparent how the Columbia fall happened.

Test scores are shortcuts. So is the AP brand, providing a shortcut for evaluating strength of curriculum. Selective colleges want us to believe that admit rates are a shortcut for educational quality, and graduates’ earnings are used as a shortcut for return on investment, despite the fact that the most important benefits of a college education are intangible.  Are there other college admission related shortcuts?

Do we need to get rid of the reliance on calculus or do we need to get rid of admission shortcuts?

Air Travel, College Rankings, and Class Action Lawsuits Against Columbia

I spent last week in Maine visiting a couple of college counseling friends who either live or are spending the summer there.  In doing so I got off the college admissions grid as much as I ever do (I am nerdy enough–or neurotic enough–that I check email even when supposedly on vacation).

I really wanted to go, but figuring out how to get there was the obstacle.  It’s a long drive, and I didn’t trust my car with 180,000 miles to survive that kind of trip.  Renting a car was prohibitively and equally expensive, whether for the entire trip or flying into Boston and then renting. And there have been almost daily stories about the horrors of air travel this summer.  I ultimately decided to take an early, direct flight into Boston and then take Amtrak’s Downeaster to Maine.

It was a fun, relaxing, and rewarding week–until I tried to return home. My return flight was late Friday night, and it was the part of the trip I most dreaded. That turned out to be appropriate anxiety. My train arrived back in Boston around 6, and as I arrived I received a notification that my 10:40 flight was delayed until 11:15.  That didn’t concern me, as I had been tracking the same flight for a couple of weeks and that delay was typical. However, there were storms up and down the East Coast.

I arrived at the gate in time to see an earlier flight to Richmond board and take off.  Over the next several hours my flight was delayed even later, as were a number of other flights.  Those flights ultimately took off, leaving mine scheduled to depart at 2 a.m.  Those of us waiting patiently but anxiously were assured multiple times that our crew was at the airport and that our flight would definitely go as soon as an aircraft arrived from LaGuardia.  That plane arrived, but at 3 a.m. we were told that the flight was canceled, leading to a rush downstairs to try to rebook.

The JetBlue help desk wasn’t particularly helpful.  I was told that the best they could do was put me on a flight nearly two days later connecting through Fort Lauderdale, a little out of the way. They weren’t willing to provide lodging or help with booking through other airlines. So at 4 a.m. I went to a quiet corner of Logan Airport, pulled out my phone, and was able to book an 8:30 a.m. train home.  It was a 12-hour trip, but I like traveling by train, and it was good to get home on Saturday night rather than spend 36 hours in the airport.

While I was in Maine one piece of breaking news in the college admissions world was that two class action lawsuits had been filed against Columbia University seeking damages in the wake of questions about the accuracy of Columbia’s reported data for the U.S. News rankings. Columbia mathematics professor Michael Thaddeus raised questions about the validity of the data back in February, especially with regard to metrics such as class sizes and spending on instruction. At the end of June Columbia announced that it was withdrawing from this year’s rankings, where it was slated to earn a ranking of #2, while it conducted an internal investigation. To add insult to injury, U.S. News subsequently placed Columbia in the rankings equivalent of “timeout.”

So what are we to make of the lawsuits? Has the kerfuffle about Columbia’s ranking damaged the two plaintiffs, both former students at Columbia, as well as others who might sign on to the class action, or is this an example of a frivolous lawsuit looking to make a buck off of this situation? You may remember that immediately following the public announcement of the criminal complaints in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal, several Stanford students instigated lawsuits claiming that the value of their degrees had been damaged by the revelations about Stanford’s sailing coach being involved in the scandal.  As far as I know, those lawsuits went nowhere. 

The two lawsuits against Columbia are remarkably similar, in fact word-for-word similar except for the different plaintiffs.  That may be because both plaintiffs are represented by the same attorney.

I am not a lawyer, nor have I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express recently, but here is the essence of the suit.

• The misrepresented data violates Section 349 of New York’s General Business Law.

• The violations were “immoral, unethical, and unscrupulous.”

• Columbia breached its agreement with the Plaintiffs and each Class member by representing to U.S. News that it possessed “certain characteristics, qualifications, requirements, benefits, and levels of attainment that it did not actually possess.”

• The misreporting was necessary for Columbia to retain its “extremely high ranking.”

• The U.S. News ranking enabled Columbia to increase its enrollment.  

• The Plaintiffs and other students enrolled at Columbia “largely due to the prestige associated with Columbia’s extremely high USNWR ranking.”

• The Plaintiffs would not have applied to Columbia if aware of the data misreporting.

• The misreporting raises “grave concerns” about the value and legitimacy of a Columbia degree.

Let’s try to evaluate some of these claims and look at the larger underlying issues.

First of all, misrepresenting data is indefensible.  The college admission profession should stand for truth and transparency.  It is too early to know whether the misrepresentation is an error or intentional, and obviously the second would make the offense worse.

It is not only Columbia that is on trial here.  The U.S. News rankings are on trial as well.  Are the rankings designed to be a source of news, or a source of entertainment in the same way that professional wrestling is sports entertainment rather than a sport? 

The rankings purport to be newsworthy, and yet U.S. News makes little attempt to verify the data reported by colleges, relying instead on an honor system.  That would by itself be questionable, but given the numerous examples of colleges fudging data through the years it is inexcusable. Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice… Either U.S. News is negligent in ranking colleges based on unverified information or it should admit that its rankings are for entertainment purposes only.

It may have already admitted the latter.  At a conference years ago, U.S. News’s ranking guru Bob Morse described the ranking as a “good product.” He bristled when I asked if it was good journalism. But that remains an essential question, and is central to the claims made in the lawsuit. 

There is one claim in the lawsuit that seems false, misunderstanding selective admission.  It is not the case that Columbia has increased its enrollment due to the rankings.  It has instead increased its number of applications and its ability to be “rejective.”  Columbia has the largest percentage increase in applications since 1989, increasing its applicant pool sixfold. During that period its admit rate has dropped from 27% to 6%.

That raises another, “chicken or egg,” question.  Does Columbia’s prestige arise from its ranking or does Columbia’s ranking arise from its prestige? 

That question is relevant to several other claims made in the lawsuit, including that the misreporting was necessary for Columbia to maintain its high ranking, that the “value and legitimacy” of a Columbia degree is called into question by the concern about the information, and that the plaintiffs wouldn’t have enrolled at Columbia if they had been aware of the misrepresentation.

How much would the corrected information change Columbia’s ranking?  It had been ranked third the previous couple of years, and had been ranked in the top 10 among National Universities for more than 30 years. Is its ranking likely to drop that much with corrected data? And how much difference is there really between being ranked second and being ranked tenth? Does this situation change anything about the value or substance of a Columbia education?

I am skeptical that this situation renders Columbia’s degree any less valuable or legitimate, just as I am skeptical that the plaintiffs wouldn’t have enrolled at Columbia. When my flight was canceled at 3 a.m. last Saturday morning, I would have signed on to a class action lawsuit in a second, but I wasn’t harmed as much as inconvenienced.  I’m not sure there is any difference with Columbia’s rankings problems.

The College Board's "Streamlined Reporting"--Euphemism or Doublespeak?

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider” on August 1, 2022)

What’s the difference between euphemism and doublespeak? There’s probably a fine line between the two, and the dividing line is intent.  

One uses euphemisms as a polite way to hint at things others may find unpleasant. We say that someone is “under the weather” rather than “sick,” but in truth we are all under, or at least surrounded by, the weather.  When we say that a student has passed, that’s a good thing, whereas when someone my age has “passed,” it’s not nearly as positive, akin to “swimming with the fishes.” And does anyone (other than coke addicts) actually “powder their nose” when they excuse themselves for that purpose?

Doublespeak, in contrast, is language designed to deceive, and is usually associated with governmental and corporate entities. In 2017 United Airlines forcibly removed a passenger from an overbooked flight.  The only thing worse than the action itself was United’s description of the event as “re-accommodating” the passenger. That same year White House senior advisor Kellyanne Conway was the recipient of the Doublespeak Award presented by the National Council of Teachers of English for her reference to “alternative facts” to defend Donald Trump’s false claims about crowd sizes at his inauguration. That claim, made on the first day of the Trump presidency, turned out to be prophetic about the Trumpian attitude to truth and facts both during and since his term in office.

Recently an Inside Higher Ed article pointed out that the College Board is no longer making public data about the performance on Advanced Placement exams by different racial groups. The article quoted Jon Boeckenstedt, Vice Provost for Enrollment Management at Oregon State University, who on Twitter wrote that what the College Board is calling “streamlined reporting” is actually withholding data.

The CB’s action raises several questions.  Since we’re referring to the College Board, let’s pose the first of those questions in a College Board-friendly format.

In the passage above, the term “streamlined reporting” is:

1. a euphemism 

2. Doublespeak

3. Both of the Above

4. None of the Above

Jon Boeckenstedt’s answer would seem to be b), as his tweet described the CB’s change to “streamlined reporting” as “the most 1984-esque example of College Board-speak I’ve seen in a while.”  If I had to answer that question on a standardized test I’d probably skip the question until I could answer some additional questions.  Given the College Board’s willingness and haste to answer questions about “streamlined reporting,” I’d probably need to qualify for unlimited additional time.

There are far more interesting and important questions than whether “streamlined reporting” qualifies linguistically as euphemism or doublespeak.

The first is why stop reporting the data.  What has changed that makes the data no longer relevant or publicly available? It is true that the 2020 AP exams were a different instrument, only 45 minutes in length and taken online, and the general perception was that those scores were higher. It is also the case that the College Board argued to both students and colleges that the scores for the 2020 tests were just as valid as the three-hour exams given in previous years.  

I don’t fault the CB for the changed format in the middle of the pandemic, but I wonder about the claim that an exam that lasts only a quarter as long produces equally valid results.  If that is the case, why revert to the longer, traditional format? 

The conspiracy theorists among us will probably jump to a conclusion that the “streamlined reporting” is all about hiding data related to race or ethnicity that the CB finds embarrassing or fears may harm its business model, given that it is more reliant on the AP program for revenue now that the test-optional movement has reduced the revenue it receives from the SAT.  But the racial/ethnic score discrepancies are not a new phenomenon.

One of the challenges for the testing industry has always been the disparity in scores among different segments of the population.  Critics of testing such as Ibram Kendi have argued that the disparity in scores among different racial and ethnic groups serves as evidence that the tests are biased.  Others argue that the disparities merely reflect larger issues of inequality in our society, and that differences in scores are correlated more with income than racial or ethnic background.

I sympathize with the College Board if they fear that releasing the data will embolden the political forces looking to turn back the clock on attempts to make America a multicultural society and to increase opportunity for historically underrepresented populations.  But as a college counselor I have always believed in reality therapy, that students, parents, and counselors should make decisions based on good information rather than hope.  If standardized test scores are lower for some groups, then we are better off knowing what we’re dealing with. We need to figure out what the score discrepancies mean rather than pretend they don’t exist. By removing the data the College Board opens itself to criticism that it is “woke” or “politically correct” (both terms I abhor).

Perhaps there is a good reason for the decision, and I reached out to the College Board for an explanation.  I received a response that the Communications Office would find out the answer and get back to me, but there has been no followup response. I’m glad I wasn’t holding my breath.

Even if there was a good reason for not reporting data for the past couple of years, why scrub the historical data from the website? That’s harder to defend, given that the data was public.

The operative ethical principle here is transparency.  Those of us in the college admissions counseling profession (which includes the testing industry) should be transparent about what we do and why we do it.  Underlying that is respect for students, parents, and the public to be able to handle the truth, whereas withholding information reflects either paternalism or arrogance. College Board President David Coleman has been quoted as saying “We prefer transparency.” Just not in this case, apparently.

The other question here is existential. Is the College Board a corporate entity or a membership organization? The “streamlined reporting” suggests that the CB considers the data proprietary, which is an attitude that is corporate.  The College Board is nominally a non-profit membership organization (although a very lucrative one), but did it consult members about this change?

“Streamlined reporting” feels like a euphemism for “executive privilege,” where the concern is not national security but rather embarrassment.  Whatever the rationale, it doesn’t pass the smell test. Please excuse me while I powder my nose.  

Keystone Keynote, Part 2: Is Professional Ethics An Endangered Species?

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider on July 11, 2022.)

Is professional ethics an endangered species?  That was the focus of my keynote address at the Pennsylvania Association for College Admission Counseling conference on June 20 in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

The speech was focused more specifically on the ethics of the college admission counseling profession.  Is ethics an endangered species now that the National Association for College Admission Counseling no longer polices its ethical standards following a consent decree with the Antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice?

That question begs a more fundamental question.  Does college admission counseling qualify as a profession?

Those of us who work in college admissions and college counseling have historically thought of ourselves as a profession.  That suggests a higher calling than mere fealty to our employers, serving not only institutional interest but also the public interest.  Is that still the case given the increasing commercialization of college admission/enrollment management?

The concept of professional ethical standards is embedded in the definition of professions. In his Pulitzer Prize winning history of the American medical profession, Paul Starr identified three defining characteristics of professions.

• Professions claim authority based on technical, specialized knowledge

• Professions are oriented toward service rather than profit

• Professions are self-regulating, with standards of good practice and a code of ethics 

How does college admission measure up to Starr’s definition?

Of the three tenets of professionalism, the claim to technical, specialized knowledge is the weakest for college admission.   Despite numerous attempts to institutionalize credentialing for college admission officers and school counselors, there is not a clear path for entry into the admission field, and we are still fighting the school counseling establishment to acknowledge that courses in college counseling should be a required part of graduate programs. 

Once in the field, training and professional development are haphazard.  The practice of college admission and college counseling remains more art than science, and it’s never been rocket science.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  

That might also be changing. Both college admission and college counseling require far more knowledge and skill than when I started my career.

Is college admission oriented toward service rather than profit?  That’s a harder question to answer, and it might not be an either/or question.  There is no question that higher education is an industry, with the admissions office functioning as the sales/marketing division.  Admissions offices help colleges and universities achieve institutional goals ranging from revenue to diversity to mix of students.

I hope we are more than that.  Saying that we are a profession means that we have a higher calling, that we serve not only our institutions but society at large. We help students make life-changing decisions about their futures, and that is noble work. We are educators rather than salespersons, colleagues rather than competitors.

The value of being a profession became clear over the past couple of years as COVID forced us to retreat into our homes and offices.  College admission and college counseling can be lonely jobs.  No one on your campus or in your building knows exactly what you do, but they all think they do.  More than anyone else at my school, I have a network of colleagues on both sides of the desk that extends not just locally but nationally.  I can reach out to those colleagues with a question or to vent and they will understand.

I worry that may be endangered.  Are we one profession with two sides of the desk or are college admission and college counseling becoming two different professions?  I hope that Angel Perez and NACAC will give attention to that issue.

The third tenet of Starr’s definition of professions is being self-regulating, with standards of practice and a code of ethics.  For decades NACAC’s foundation was its commitment to and enforcement of ethical standards for college admission.  In fact, one of the reasons NACAC was founded 85 years ago was to ensure that admissions officers were not compensated on a per head basis.

But what happens when a professional organization can’t enforce ethical standards?  In 2016 NACAC appointed a Steering Committee to take a fresh look at its Statement of Principles of Good Practice (SPGP) first adopted in 1960.  The SPGP was a set of rules rather than a statement of principles, amended annually (sometimes on the fly) in response to colleges pushing the envelope on recruiting practices.

I was a member of the Steering Committee, and I consider its work an example of NACAC at its best–thoughtful, deliberative, with lots of input from the membership.  The result was a new document, the Code of Ethics and Professional Practice (CEPP).  The CEPP was passed unanimously by both the NACAC Assembly and the membership.  Anyone who has spent any time in NACAC knows that is rare, maybe even unprecedented.

Not long after the CEPP was passed, NACAC was the target of an inquiry, and later an investigation, from the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.  The DOJ alleged that NACAC’s ethical rules prohibiting incentives for Early Decision and prohibiting poaching of students already enrolled at another institution unfairly restricted colleges from recruiting.

I would argue that the issue was not as much those prohibitions as the fact that NACAC was policing and enforcing its ethical standards.  One of the first issues discussed by the Steering Committee was enforcement, and the consensus of the group, propelled by several members who had chaired NACAC’s Admission Practices Committee, was that mandatory ethical rules enforced by the organization were important.  At the time NACAC was one of the few professional organizations enforcing ethical rules.

In retrospect it is clear that NACAC and the DOJ were operating from different assumptions and interpretations.  NACAC saw its ethical code as protecting students from coercion and manipulation, while the DOJ saw NACAC as hurting students by limiting institutions’ recruiting practices, which in turn would result in students paying less for college.  The DOJ seemed to see NACAC as a cartel controlling college admissions rather than a voluntary membership organization.  NACAC’s enforcement of its ethical code rarely if ever resulted in penalties to institutions, as most AP inquiries were resolved amiably.

Nevertheless, the DOJ investigation shook NACAC to its core.  The NACAC leadership determined that fighting DOJ could jeopardize the organization’s existence, and entered into a Consent Decree.  There is now a successor document to the CEPP, the “Guide to Ethical Practice in College Admission.” It does not differ dramatically from the CEPP, but has made the various tenets Best Practices, removing any reference to monitoring or compliance.

So is professional ethics an endangered species post-DOJ and post-Operations Varsity Blues?  I would argue that a commitment to ethics is more important than ever before.

Changing from mandatory to best practices doesn’t have to change the way we conduct ourselves.  “Best practices” are just that, and whether or not the rules are policed, the ethical principles underlying them are still compelling, calling us to act honorably and truthfully in our professional work.  Just because something is permissible doesn’t make it a good idea.

Ethics comes from the Greek word ethos, meaning distinguishing character or guiding principles.  Ethics is about ideals, and is normative or prescriptive, asking “How should we act?”

So what are the ideals guiding the college admission/counseling profession?

• Commitment to truth and transparency

• Commitment to equity and access

• Respect for every individual, recognizing their worth and dignity, and treating them as subjects not objects.

• Honesty and integrity, inspiring trust that we are honest brokers acting out of concern for students’ best interests.

That last one has been imperiled by the revelations coming out of the Operation Varsity Blues scandal.  Even though no admission officers were implicated, the colleges involved looked less like victims than unindicted co-conspirators.  OVB reinforced the idea that the college admissions process rewards the already privileged.  Are we okay with that?

The good news is that a majority of those in our profession are committed to acting ethically and professionally.  But we can’t take the health of our profession for granted.  Ethical common ground is more like a beach than a rock.  All it takes is one major storm to do permanent damage.

We need to be ethical conservationists, and we need to voluntarily keep our house in order.  Failure to do so may further erode public trust in what we do.  In my speech last week I quoted a famous Pennsylvanian, perhaps the most famous Pennsylvanian.  In discussions preceding the Declaration of Independence, he said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately.”

Words for our profession to live by.  

ECA will be on summer hiatus until late August unless provoked by some news story that requires comment.

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally

“Think globally, act locally.” That quote is most commonly associated with climate change, suggesting that even if we as individuals don’t have the ability to change the world, we have the ability, and maybe even the obligation, to change our little corner of the world. But might it apply to “climates” of all kinds, and especially the current political climate?

The philosopher William James argued that each of us is an ethical laboratory experiment.  Each of our lives, and the choices we make, are hypotheses about what is “right” and “good.” We will never know for sure that our hypotheses are correct, better than alternative hypotheses, but we must be comfortable with the uncertainty. James believed that the aggregate of those lab experiments in ethics would produce “truth” or “good.”

Two recent events have led me to ponder the quote, “Think globally, act locally.”

The first was a conversation several weeks ago with a friend who lives in Florida who was observing the attempts by Republicans in the state of Texas to repeal the 21st century (and maybe even the 20th) on issues including:

• overturning certified elections 

• protecting Confederate monuments  

• declaring homosexuality an “abnormal” life choice 

• opposing “red flag” laws as impinging on the God-given right of individuals who are mentally ill to purchase semi-automatic weapons  

• secession from the United States. 

I responded by asking if developments in Texas had made him appreciate how moderate the Republican leaders in Florida are.  He, like so many before him, wasn’t amused by my feeble attempt at humor.  

The second was a June 25th tweet from Jon Boeckenstedt stating that he wasn’t sure he will attend the NACAC Conference in Houston even though he has already registered.  He stated, “Not sure I’ll ever go to a conference in any of those states again.”

I’ve considered the same thing.  I don’t have the ability to act globally, to influence a state political climate with policies I find reprehensible, especially since I am not a Texas resident. I can act locally, deciding whether I want to protest those policies by boycotting a conference that benefits that state’s economy. I’m struggling with those options.

Let me make it clear that I am not suggesting that NACAC abandon Houston.  Contracts have been signed, and moving the conference would imperil the organization.  I also am not presuming to tell anyone else what decision they should make about attending or not.

I reached out to both NACAC CEO Angel Perez and Ffiona Rees, Chair of NACAC’s Board of Directors, to share my concern about whether I want to support the economy of a state that’s gone batshit crazy. Both responded quickly and thoughtfully with similar themes.  

Here is Angel’s response:

“This is a very difficult situation, and I am not taking it lightly.  I am deeply disturbed by what is happening in Texas and how it has reverberated across the nation.  Not only am I disgusted with policies against women, but as a person who has close trans friends, I feel the need to support the community now even more than ever.  But I will admit that my perspective has also been informed by the high school counselors in Texas who are writing me and asking me to still host the conference in Texas.  They want their students to have a national college fair.  They want their students to get the support they need from NACAC, and they also want the opportunity to engage with colleagues on how to stand up and fight their state on these issues.  I tend to be someone who wants to stand and fight, and this is one of the (many) reasons we have decided to stay the course in Texas.  As one counselor told me last week ‘this isn't the Texas I can be proud of right now, but I hope my colleagues will come and support us in fighting against these terrible policies.’

“I also think of all the marginalized workers that we would unintentionally harm if we do not stay the course and host the conference in Texas.  If I learned anything in Seattle this year is that the people we help the most are the low-income workers in the city who have jobs because NACAC is hosting a major event in town.”

Angel also sent a link to an article he had written on this topic last November.

The nature of ethical dilemmas is that there is no clear, easy answer. We must weigh conflicting ethical principles.  That is certainly true in this case. Does going to Texas provide global support and sustenance for the extremists running the government, or is going to Texas a statement of solidarity for students and service workers who are just trying to live their lives?

Ethical College Admissions has always been more about raising questions than presuming to provide answers.  I have been told that’s my specialty. If you are looking for “the” answer here, you won’t find it.  Both Angel and Ffiona acknowledged the deeply personal and difficult nature of the decision.

I think there are two ethical principles that are particularly relevant in this case. The first is the Hippocratic mantra, “Do no harm.”  If we can’t fix the problem or make it better, we can at least avoid making it worse. We may not agree on what action that dictates.

The second is the Principle of Double Effect, which recognizes that pursuing an act with good intent may also have unanticipated (or anticipated) consequences that are harmful.  Is it ethical protesting governmental policies if it also ends up harming innocent Texans or even NACAC?

It’s hard to think globally, and much harder to act locally.

Test Free, Not Test Blind?

“School’s Out for Summer”

                        Alice Cooper

During the nearly ten years that I have been writing Ethical College Admissions, it has generally been my plan to go on hiatus during the summer, thinking there would be no news and no readers during the summer months.  The exception was the three years that I wrote a weekly column for Inside Higher Ed, and to my surprise I found there was plenty to write about.

A couple of weeks ago I planned to write one more post and then shut down for the summer, but didn’t have a topic in mind.  One of the interesting things about writing this blog is the ebb and flow of topics.  One day I have nothing, and the next day too many possible topics.  That happened in this case.

Following my keynote address at the Pennsylvania Association for College Admission Counseling conference in Hershey on June 20,  my friend and loyal ECA reader Barbara Conner, Director of College Counseling at Foxcroft School, asked if I planned to turn the keynote into a blog post.  My initial reaction was no, but a couple of days later I rethought that, and ended up producing two posts based on the speech.  One appeared last week in Inside Higher Ed, and I believe the other will appear next week as my final post before taking the rest of the summer off (unless a major issue comes up that I can’t avoid addressing).

Within a day of the publication of last week’s post, several readers contacted me with suggestions for possible topics.  I’m going to respond with two shorter posts this week, and save the other for the fall. 

*****************************************************************************

Here’s the first:

In the last post I asked whether it is time to rethink the college admissions process, and I used the rise of test-optional and test-blind admission as an example of an area where old assumptions are being questioned.  Afterward I received an email from ECA reader and occasional correspondent Jay Rosner, the Executive Director of the Princeton Review Foundation.

Jay wrote to suggest that the term “test blind” be replaced with “test free.”  He pointed out that the University of California system started using “test blind” as an analog to the financial aid use of “need blind,” but that UC Berkeley has moved to use “test free” to describe its policy.  He argued that “test free” more accurately captures the spirit of the policy, in that “test blind implies that the test scores are there and available for admissions and just not ‘seen,’ while some test-free colleges request that scores not be submitted at all.”

He added, “I happen to prefer the liberation implication for test free. Tests have constricted and skewed the admissions process for a long time, and their absence in admissions frees admissions officers to focus upon the broader band of skills, experiences, and other factors beyond those required to fill bubbles quickly and accurately, and not get distracted by a problematic sense of contrived linear comparability.”

I like the substitution of “test free” for “test blind.”  I think it’s a better description of the change in testing policies.  I also happen to have an affinity for the word “free,” especially at a time when “free to be you and me” is endangered by those who decry judicial activism except when it serves their purposes. (Forgive the political commentary.)

Jay Rosner also offered several other arguments for the substitution in his email and a followup email.

One is sensitivity for how the term “test blind” might be perceived by the sight-impaired community.  “In checking with the sight-impaired community,” he wrote, “I found that some were bothered by test blind, while others were not, but there’s no need to make the former uncomfortable even if it is a minority position in that community.”

I think he’s right.  I might disagree if “test blind” was the only, or even the best, language to describe the testing policy adopted by the UC system, but it’s not.

Jay’s second point has to do with the origins of college admissions testing, particularly the SAT.  He stated, “The SAT, the grandparent of all the admissions tests, was developed by Carl Brigham, a eugenicist, specifically as an instrument to prove the superiority of the white race.  Test developers disclaim this heritage in eugenics, but bubble-test results tedn today to parallel past results.”

He stated that he would likely have a friendly quibble or two with what I write.  I’m going to have a friendly quibble with him on this point.

His interpretation of the intent of the origins of testing is certainly plausible, but I am not convinced.  Brigham and many of his contemporaries in lots of fields were eugenicists, and today they look profoundly ignorant.  But I think that the connection between the eugenicist beliefs of Brigham and his contemporaries and the origins of admissions testing is more tenuous, more complex, based on two separate flawed assumptions.

The first flaw is the belief that it is possible to devise a multiple-choice test that can measure intelligence.  Today we know that intelligence is a complex concept, with many varieties.  At best admissions tests measure imprecisely one kind of intelligence, and what they can’t begin to measure are qualities such as motivation and perseverance that are far more important to an individual’s success.

The second flaw was a belief in a form of the “rational person fallacy.”  All of us are prone to that fallacy.  In its simplest form it says that if I believe something, then surely any rational person would believe the same thing.  That’s obviously a dangerous belief.  

The more odious form of that fallacy is that our belief system or cultural norms should be normative, that it is our duty to make those different from us resemble us because we are “right” or the model of God’s creation.  The best example of that is Christian missionaries trying to convert those they considered “savages.” That same intellectual arrogance was at the root of eugenics, the belief that it is possible to create a race of pure and perfect human beings–that coincidentally look a lot like us.  There is no such thing as either pure or perfect when it comes to human beings.

Jay Rosner’s final point was that the term “test free” has an unanticipated and ironic consequence.  He wrote, “The mere existence of test free has led to high-level reps from both the College Board and ACT recently actually being quoted as favoring test-optional admissions!  Who would have thought?...Self interest just might have something to do with their dramatic shift in position.”

I suspect he’s right.  Test-optional policies are a threat to a world where admissions tests are ubiquitous and worshiped, but if your livelihood depends on the testing industry, then a world that is test-optional sounds pretty good compared with one that is test-free.

I appreciate Jay Rosner’s thoughts and correspondence. And unless I forget and revert back to being a creature of habit, out with test blind and in with test free.

Keystone Keynote, Part 1--Time for a New Admissions Paradigm?

(This is the first of a two-part post based on a keynote address I gave last Monday at the Pennsylvania Association for College Admission Counseling conference in Hershey. It originally appeared in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider” this morning. Thanks to loyal ECA reader Barbara Conner for suggesting that I turn the speech into a blog post.)

Last week I had the opportunity to serve as keynote speaker at the Pennsylvania Association for College Admission Counseling conference in Hershey.  It was the first time in three years that PACAC had been able to meet in person, and it was more like a homecoming or family reunion than a conference.  It was good to see old friends and make new ones.

My keynote address was titled, “Professional Ethics: Endangered Species?”, and I explored some themes I have previously written about and presented on.  Quite frankly, after nearly ten years of writing ECA I often worry that I am rehashing previous posts.

While researching my presentation I realized that I had done the keynote eleven years ago at a different PACAC event, the August Admission Workshop. For that meeting I was asked to talk about the future of our profession, and I mentioned five big issues:

• Demographic Change

• Economic Uncertainty

• Delivery of College Counseling

• Changing Admission Landscape

• The Future of College Admissions and College Counseling as a Profession

All of those issues are still relevant, but what is more noteworthy is what I didn’t (and probably couldn’t) anticipate.  I couldn’t have dreamed that NACAC would be investigated by the DOJ for potential antitrust violations.  I didn’t foresee the Operation Varsity Blues scandal.  It never occurred to me that within ten years we would live through a global pandemic.  And I didn’t anticipate the political climate and social unrest that led on one hand to the Black Lives Matter movement and on the other to red state attempts to return to the 1950s.

During my speech I talked primarily about professional ethics, but I also talked about how COVID has highlighted the urgent need for attention to mental health and wellness.  I suspect that we will be dealing with the fallout for at least a decade as students who lost opportunities for learning and for normal emotional development during the pandemic cycle through the educational system.  That is both a college counseling issue and also an issue for colleges once students enroll.

The question for the college admissions profession is whether the college admissions process as presently constituted contributes to the stress and mental health issues felt by today’s students.  

The admission process we have today is nearly 100 years old.  In his history of admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, The Chosen, sociologist Jerome Karabel talks about college admission “paradigms” (my word, not his).  

A century ago colleges looked for the “best student.”  Admission was based on purely academic preparation, with the old College Board exams resembling today’s Advanced Placement exams, measuring what content a student knew.

In the 1920s colleges moved to a second admissions paradigm, “best graduate.”  Karabel argues that the rationale for the change was that the “best student” paradigm produced too many Jewish students.  Today one of the arguments made by Students for Fair Admissions in its lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is that Asian-American students are discriminated against in the way Jewish students were a century ago.  

The “best graduate” paradigm led to many of the admissions conventions we rely on today. Admission became “holistic” rather than purely academic, with essays, activities, and recommendation letters becoming part of the admissions process. While I believe in the concept of holistic admission, the addition of those factors made applying to college resemble applying to a private club. At the same time the SAT supplanted the old College Board exams, purported at the time to be a measure of aptitude, as venerable Northeast colleges and universities sought to become more national in their student bodies and find “diamonds in the rough.” 

The third, current paradigm is what might be called “best class.” Whereas once upon a time colleges admitted well-rounded students, today they are looking for a well-rounded class.  Highly-selective colleges are crafting a class rather than admitting deserving individuals, and students are admitted based on how they help the institution meet its strategic goals.  We give lip service to student-centered admission, but what we have is really institution-centered admission.

Given what we know about adolescent growth and development and concerns about access and mental health, is it time for a fourth paradigm?

There has already been considerable debate about the future role of standardized admission testing.  The admissions world has become largely test optional, and in some cases test-blind.  Is that a temporary change or the new normal?  Was MIT’s resumption of requiring testing a harbinger or an outlier?  

I suspect the latter. I may be wrong (it wouldn’t be the first time), but I don’t see the testing industry rebounding to be as important as it once was.  The Ivies and near-Ivies that admit fewer than 10% of applicants can get away with requiring testing, but will students bother to apply to colleges with test requirements when there are lots of test-optional choices?  That is particularly true for colleges that recruit heavily in California, where both the UC and the Cal State systems are no longer considering test scores as part of their admissions processes.  Are colleges willing to see a decline in applications in exchange for requiring test scores? 

The testing debate raises broader philosophical questions about the value of test scores.  How much predictive value does testing add to a student’s transcript? Are standardized tests engines of equity and access, as argued by test advocates, or do they measure economic privilege rather than academic readiness? How do we account for test prep, the existence of which makes identical scores mean not the same thing? Do we worship the false precision of test scores? And do we measure what we value or value what we can measure?

Testing may not be the only part of the admissions process up for debate and reconsideration.  An Inside Higher Ed article earlier this year asked whether letters of recommendation were fair or even outdated given the inequality in school college-going cultures and counseling loads.

So what might a fourth college admissions paradigm look like?  At the risk of showing once again my command of the obvious, here are some guiding principles to consider.

1. The college admissions process should measure readiness for the college experience.

Anything that we ask students to do should be predictive of success in college, and we should evaluate carefully the hurdles we expect applicants to clear.  What information is essential to admission? Earlier this week a college dean admitted that some of the information requested on the application is relevant for students once they enroll rather than for admission.

1. The college search should encourage discernment and self-understanding.

Thinking about and applying to college are part of a larger journey for students, a journey that should produce a better understanding of who they are, what they care about, and what they want from their lives.

1. Applying to college should be a “Goldilocks” process.

Not too easy, not too hard, just right.

1. The admission process should be student-centered rather than institution-centered.

There is one more guiding principle that will be much more difficult to achieve.  That is the idea that the admissions process should serve as a bridge from adolescence to adulthood, a rite of passage.  Taking the SAT and ACT and writing personal essays does not quite compare to rites of passage in other cultures such as young Maasai warriors killing a lion (although that rite of passage seems to have evolved due to a shortage of lions in the Serengeti, from 200,000 a century ago to fewer than 30,000 today).  The psychologist Michael Thompson has called the college admissions process a “failed” rite of passage, in that it provides the ordeal without the catharsis. 

The bridge to adulthood goal may be a pipedream.  Given what we know about brain development, it may be unrealistic to expect high school students to have the self-knowledge or life skills that I wish the college process required.  I’m not ready to concede that point, and that doesn’t mean that the aspiration is not valid.

Is it time to rethink the college admissions process we have? Can we develop a better paradigm? 

Preferential Recruiting

The last ECA post commented on some issues arising out of the brief filed with the United States Supreme Court on May 2 by Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA) in its case alleging discrimination against Asian-American applicants to Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill.  There was one other issue from that brief that I intended to address, but inadvertently left out when I put the finishing touches on the post, trying to keep it from turning into a tome.

Beginning on page 20 of the SFFA brief there is a section that argues that “Harvard uses race at every stage of the admissions process.”  That includes recruiting students differently based on race.

The brief states that “African-American and Hispanic students with PSAT scores of 1100 and up are invited to apply to Harvard, but white and Asian-American students must score at least 1310 to get an invitation.”  It continues, “In some states (which Harvard calls ‘sparse country’), Asian-American students must score higher [italics theirs] than all other racial groups, including whites, to be recruited by Harvard.”

I think those couple of sentences raise some interesting questions about affirmative action in college admissions.  Previous court cases involving the use of race in admission have focused on how admissions decisions are made.  

The Bakke case in the 1970s involved a program at the University of California at Davis medical school whereby 16 of the 100 places in the entering class were set aside for “qualified” minority applicants.  The Supreme Court in a divided vote concluded that the UC-Davis program was a quota system and that the medical school was conducting two separate admissions processes, one for minority applicants and one for the rest of the applicant pool.

The Gratz case, decided at the same time as the Grutter case that is now being challenged by Students For Fair Admissions, involved the University of Michigan’s practice of giving applicants from underrepresented minority groups an additional 20 points toward the 100 needed for undergraduate admission.  By a 6-3 margin the Court found that the thumb on the scales approach wasn’t constitutional.

The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that it is appropriate to consider race as one of many factors in a holistic admissions process.  That interpretation has its origins in an amicus curiae filed in the Bakke case by none other than Harvard.  Critics of affirmative action in college admission question whether race is indeed one of many factors, or whether colleges have simply found more subtle ways to consider race than the quota system outlawed in Bakke.  

While most of the discussion of affirmative action in college admission focuses on how decisions are made, what about recruitment?  Is it wrong to use different techniques to recruit students from different ethnic or demographic groups?

To be fair, the Students For Fair Admissions brief doesn’t argue that differential recruiting is wrong.  It includes the mention of different cutoffs for different groups primarily to argue that Harvard is conscious of race in all parts of its admissions process.  But is Harvard discriminating by using different cutoff scores in recruiting?

The reference to scores refers to the score parameters that colleges can use when they use the College Board’s Student Search Service.  Student Search gives colleges the ability to reach out to desired groups of students based on factors ranging from their scores on the PSAT or SAT to planned major to zip code.  

We might question whether a university that already rejects 97% of applicants, many of them superbly qualified, needs to be actively recruiting students most of whom won’t have a chance of admission, but the practice of using Student Search to target particular groups of students is a mainstream practice. White and Asian-American students with a score below 1310 aren’t in any way prohibited from applying to Harvard because they don’t get an “invitation,” and this past year close to 60,000 somehow found a way to apply without being actively recruited. 

One of the original definitions of affirmative action was finding ways to expand the pool of candidates to open up opportunities to those who had been excluded by traditional processes.  That was particularly true for institutions like trade unions or public sector jobs such as police and firefighters that were at one time largely closed shops.  It was considered appropriate (and necessary) to expand the pool of candidates from traditionally underrepresented groups by targeted recruitment efforts for those groups.

I think the same is true for colleges.  For a college looking to broaden its diversity, whether ethnic, gender, geographical, or other, it is entirely appropriate to develop recruitment initiatives that reach a broader array of students from underrepresented populations.

There is a clear difference between preferential recruitment and preferential admission.  Colleges have an obligation to give fair consideration of the credentials of every single applicant.  They don’t have an obligation to “invite” every student whose PSAT scores are at a certain level to apply. 

If test scores were perfect predictive tools, it might be appropriate to expect the same test score parameters for every group of students.  But they are not. We know that test scores correlate with family income, and that they disadvantage, or at least don’t predict success, for all segments of an applicant pool.  Different recruiting standards is not the same thing as different admission standards. 

Isn't It Ironic, or Students for Fair Admissions Seeks to Get Out of (the) Grutter

“Define irony,”  convict Garland Greene (played by Steve Buscemi) says in the movie Con Air as convicts celebrate commandeering a plane.  His definition is “Bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.”

On May 2 we may have found another example.  On the very same day that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade was leaked, Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) filed its brief before the Supreme Court in its case against Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s consideration of race in admissions. Define irony.

There are several levels of irony in the interplay between the SFFA filing and Alito’s opinion.  The first is the apparent coincidence of the Roe draft leak and the SFFA brief coming out the same day.  The second is that both attempt to overturn 40-50 years of previous court decisions, abandoning stare decisis, or court reverence for precedent. And both claim to be descendents of Brown v Board of Education.

ECA has read through the SFFA petition to save readers from having to slog through it.  Much of it rehashes arguments that weren’t successful in lower court attempts against the two institutions.  Students for Fair Admissions alleges that both Harvard and UNC discriminate against Asian-American applicants because of their use of race-conscious admission practices to achieve racial diversity.  

The primary evidence cited against Harvard is the lower personal ratings that Asian-American applicants receive, a rating that SFFA alleges lowers inappropriately and illegally the percentage of Asian-American students in each entering class.  With UNC the primary argument is that the university does not consider Asian-Americans as an underrepresented minority as it does with African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

There is one interesting (and I think new) argument in the SFFA filing. It asks the Supreme Court to overturn the 2003 case Grutter v Bollinger.

Grutter was one of two challenges to affirmative action in admissions at the University of Michigan decided at the same time.  The other, Gratz v Bollinger, involved the university’s undergraduate admissions program that gave underrepresented minority applicants additional points equal to 20% of those needed for admission, and the Supreme Court decided by a 6-3 vote that that practice was unconstitutional.  

Grutter v Bollinger involved a challenge to the admissions process used by Michigan’s law school.  In that case the Supreme Court decided by a 5-4 vote that Michigan’s process to obtain “a critical mass of underrepresented minority students” constituted neither a quota nor racial balancing and was therefore constitutionally permitted.

So why is Grutter in SFFA’s sights in this case?  Because in both of the most recent challenges to race-based admission before the Supreme Court, Fisher 1  and Fisher 2, the Court based part of its opinion exonerating the University of Texas by referring to the Grutter opinion, and stressed that no party had asked it to reconsider Grutter.

Now SFFA is asking for that reconsideration, at least partly because it thinks it has a Supreme Court willing to overturn precedent.  But it is also making the claim that its request to end all race-based admission policies is in keeping with the Court’s Brown v Board of Education decision denying the use of race as a factor in determining educational opportunities.  By extension Grutter, which concluded that diversity was a compelling interest sustaining race-based admission, must be a descendent of Plessy v Ferguson, the 1896 decision allowing separate but equal schools. The SFFA petition argues that universities ignore Grutter’s conclusion that the use of race must be narrowly-tailored, and that they “resort to camouflage,” using “winks, nods, and disguises” to achieve racial balancing and secret racial quotas.  It concludes that “Because Brown is our law, Grutter cannot be.”   

It’s an interesting and creative argument, but not one I find compelling.  The Brown v Board of Education decision was intended to prevent educational opportunities from being limited or prevented on account of race.  Race-conscious admission is intended to increase opportunities for underrepresented groups.  Race-conscious admission is certainly controversial, but not the same thing as separate but equal, unless you extend the argument to claim that any use of race that benefits one group automatically disadvantages another group, which is what Students for Fair Admissions is claiming with regard to Asian-Americans.

So what are the bigger issues here?

The first is what constitutes “fair” admission.  Students For Fair Admissions claims that the use of race-based affirmative action is unfair, but there are other admissions preferences–for legacies and for athletes–that benefit those who are already privileged.  Why is SFFA not challenging those in court?  It is also the case that “rejectivity” is the enemy of fairness.  When Harvard is admitting 3% of its applicants and could admit 3-4 different freshman classes that wouldn’t look all that different, it is hard to argue that any applicant is wronged when not admitted.

There is also the fundamental question of how to compare the credentials of two applicants.  If you and I both apply to Harvard and are both qualified for and deserving of admission, is it possible to determine that one of us is more qualified and deserving?  Even if I have better grades and test scores, I may have the advantage of coming from a wealthy family, a better-resourced school (or one with more grade inflation), and I may have spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on test prep.  Which of us is more deserving? Grades and test scores are meaningless without context.

As pointed out in the lower court decision in Harvard’s favor, the discrepancy in personal rating scores between Asian-Americans and other groups is problematic.  If comparing academic credentials or extracurricular activities is difficult, how does Harvard begin to measure and compare qualities like leadership, self-confidence, likeability, and kindness?  And does the personal rating advantage certain kinds of students and disadvantage others?

A second issue is what constitutes “underrepresented”?  Students For Fair Admissions argues that Asian-American applicants are being discriminated against because the percentage enrolled would be higher if only academic credentials were considered, but the percentage at both Harvard and UNC exceeds the percentage in the population at large.  Is that underrepresented?

The third issue has to do with burden of proof.  In previous cases dealing with race-based affirmative action, the Court has given deference to universities to decide what admissions policies support their missions.  Students For Fair Admissions is arguing that the burden of proof should be on universities to defend their use of race rather than on those questioning those practices.

There is one other important issue raised by the decision in Grutter.  That decision included the expectation that affirmative action would no longer be needed in 25 years.  We are nearly 20 years in, and I am not aware of anyone on the admissions side of the house that thinks that deadline is achievable.  We certainly have a better understanding today that racial inequality in our country continues to be pervasive and deep. 

Do we (and should we) have an exit strategy for racial preferences in college admission?  I remember when we were told that America would only need to stay in Afghanistan for 75 more years.  Is the need for race-based preferences in admission similar?

That’s a difficult conversation to have, and I don’t pretend to have the right answer.  The alternative is hoping that a Supreme Court that has already shown a willingness to ignore precedent and turn back the clock will uphold Grutter and the current use of race in college admission.  Define irony.   

MIT, Diamonds in the Rough, and the Testing Culture Wars

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider” on May 2, 2022)

Someone once said (okay, it might have been me) that when Harvard itches, everyone else in higher education scratches.  Is the same true of MIT?

We may soon have an answer to that question. MIT’s announcement that it will reinstate its requirement that applicants submit test scores next year has already generated responses from those who believe that it is time for admission tests to disappear altogether as well as from apologists for the testing industry.  

Is MIT’s decision the beginning of a trend, an anomaly, or neither? We probably already have the answer, at least in one regard.  MIT’s announcement has not opened the floodgates to other institutions reversing their test-optional policies.  MIT’s decision was thoughtful and mission-appropriate, even if test skeptics may disagree with the decision, the rationale, or MIT’s interpretation of the evidence.  But MIT’s decision doesn’t translate to lots and lots of other colleges and universities.  This is not the beginning of the end of test-optional.

There are, of course, some global reasons why test-optional policies will not go away.  One is the decision by the University of California and Cal State systems to no longer use test scores in their admission processes.  As a result colleges that recruit heavily in California will have a hard time reinstating test score requirements.  But students outside of California may also rebel against colleges that return to requiring test scores.  The Ivies may be able to get away with it, but two years ago, when the pandemic accelerated the number of colleges going the test-optional route, an admissions dean friend postulated that colleges farther down the food chain may find that students may simply refuse to apply to colleges that aren’t test-optional.

Then there is the elephant in the room.  Perhaps the only force more powerful than the desire to use test scores as an insurance policy in evaluating students’ academic preparation is the pressure on colleges to increase applications and lower admit rates.  Can colleges afford to lose application numbers in a climate where selectivity is worshiped as a proxy for quality?

I’m not particularly interested in weighing in on the testing culture wars.  I don’t think admission tests are evil, just flawed.  But I also am bothered by the worship and misuse of test scores.

ECA is always on the lookout for bigger picture issues, and there are a couple I want to examine.

One is the notion that test scores are an engine of diversity.  I have seen that argument made by defenders of admissions tests multiple times, and I wonder if there is evidence for that or if it is a suburban legend.

One argument I saw for the use of test scores argued that without test scores things like legacy preferences become more powerful.  Maybe, but that’s not evidence for the power of test scores to increase diversity.

The more common articulation is the “diamond in the rough” argument, which says that test scores identify students with ability who come from different backgrounds and would otherwise be overlooked.  The “diamond in the rough” argument was one of the justifications for the move from College Board exams to the SAT nearly 100 years ago, at a time when the Ivies and other elite Northeastern colleges were looking to broaden their student bodies geographically and enroll more public school students.  That was also at a time when the SAT was seen as an objective measure of intelligence.

Today we understand that test scores correlate strongly with family income and that what tests measure is far from clear.  But the “diamond in the rough” argument persists.   

So is there any evidence that the “diamond in the rough” is a real phenomenon?  I reached out to Jon Boeckenstedt at Oregon State, who has been known to call out the “diamond in the rough” argument on Twitter and is also a guru when it comes to aggregating and analyzing data about college admission and higher education in general.  Jon wasn’t aware of any data to support the “diamond in the rough” hypothesis, but also suggested that it was at some level tautological, that “diamonds in the rough” with high test scores are the only diamonds that highly-rejective colleges tend to take a chance on.

I also reached out to Stuart Schmill, MIT’s Dean of Admissions, to ask if he had data on how many MIT students qualify as “diamonds in the rough.”  He was gracious to respond and gracious to admit that he is a regular ECA reader.  He stated that he couldn’t name a specific number, but that he was convinced that there are students whose test scores help MIT to admit them.  He also stated that a number of MIT alums have expressed their belief that they fell into that category. 

His response made me wonder if all of us have the same definition of “diamond in the rough.”  In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Bob Schaeffer, the executive director of FairTest (National Center for Fair and Open Testing) defined “diamonds in the rough” as “applicants with modest high school records but high SAT scores,” pointing that those students are more often than not affluent Asian or white males.  MIT is clearly not admitting those students, leading me to think it is using a different definition (the use of the term “diamond in the rough” was probably mine, not Stu Schmill’s).  His answer suggests that MIT is using test scores to identify not students with modest academic records but high test scores, but rather as confirmation for students with superb records from academic environments without lots of Advanced Placement or high-level mathematics courses.  

I’d love to know if anyone can point me to evidence that “diamonds in the rough” really exist. 

There is one other question I want to consider.  Under what conditions should colleges use test scores? I suspect my command of the obvious will become apparent in my answers.

1. Make sure test scores add predictive validity to admission decisions.  The test-optional movement has shown us that it is possible to make decisions without test scores even as there is concern about grade inflation both in the wake of COVID and long-term.  There are numerous colleges for whom test scores have been an insurance policy rather than adding value in making decisions, and one article I saw suggested that only about half of institutions that require test scores actually have validity study research supporting their use.  Test scores at best provide a small increase in predictive value compared with high school transcript alone, and that value is for predicting freshman-year GPA alone.  Shouldn’t we look for tools that predict success through college and even beyond?

2. Don’t fall for the false precision that test scores imply. Test scores are too often treated as precise measures, which they are not. Do we measure the things we value, or value the things we can measure? The standard error of measurement for each section of the SAT is more than 30 points, such that there is not a meaningful difference between a 600 and a 630.  Test score cutoffs for institutional scholarship consideration or for National Merit Scholarship eligibility (even though the College Board is a National Merit partner) are inappropriate uses of testing.

1. Consider test scores in context.  Take into account that, even if valid, test scores may not predict equally well for different cohorts of students. The 2008 NACAC Testing Commission Report pointed to research that suggested that test scores over-predict first-year SAT scores for some minority students and may under-predict first-year GPA for some female students.  Then there is the impact of test preparation.  If two students have identical test scores and one has had hours of expensive test preparation and the other hasn’t, those scores don’t mean the same thing.  We should especially guard against test scores becoming barriers to access for students whose high school records otherwise suggest promise.  A year ago I heard about (and wrote about) a public flagship that had denied students from less privileged backgrounds it wanted to admit because they had submitted test scores, not realizing that submitting scores was optional.  In my opinion there is no excuse for institutions not admitting applicants based on test scores alone. 

I don’t have test scores to use as (debatable) predictive tools, but that won’t stop me from predicting that MIT’s decision will not end the testing culture wars. 

Should Colleges Withhold Admit Rate Information?

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider April 4, 2022)

Last Thursday the Ivy League universities released regular admission decisions for the incoming Class of 2026.  It’s not among my favorite days as a college counselor, although I’m appreciative that they released on March 31 and not a day later. That would be a cruel and humorless April Fools’ joke for many applicants.

I’ve always believed that if you set your expectations low enough you’ll rarely be disappointed (does that make me a pessimist or a realist?), and I find myself practicing that mantra at this time of year.  I have been doing college counseling long enough that the emotion I experience when my students get good news is relief rather than joy.  I’m ecstatic for those with good news, but that is more than counterbalanced by the disappointment and empathy I feel for my students who have done everything right and yet get denied or wait-listed at the nation’s most rejective college and universities.  

I often tell my students that they have a right to be disappointed but shouldn’t be shocked by decisions.  I’m rarely shocked, but often disappointed.

A number of years ago I remember an admissions dean at an Ivy or Little Ivy commenting that if a student is a legitimate candidate for the nation’s “elite” colleges and applies to enough of them they would likely be admitted to one, but perhaps not the one they hoped for.  That stopped being the case long ago. I also remember the legendary admissions dean Fred Hargadon telling me that when he was at Stanford he had the flexibility to admit a great kid who had gotten shut out from the most competitive colleges.  By the time he ended his career at Princeton that flexibility had gone out the window, and that was at a time when places like Princeton were admitting 15-20% of applicants rather than 3-4%.  To borrow a phrase from journalist Linda Ellerbee, “And so it goes.”

Last Thursday morning the Wall Street Journal published an article reporting that three Ivies–Princeton, Penn, and Cornell–would forgo announcing their acceptance rates.  They follow in the footsteps of Stanford, which stopped releasing admit rate data at the time of admission back in 2018.

The rationale behind the decision to withhold the information is that publishing the absurdly low admit rates is, according to admission officers referenced (but not quoted) by the WSJ, “doing more harm than good, ratcheting up panic among high-school students and their parents and perpetuating a myth that it is nearly impossible to get into a good college.”

A statement on the Princeton admissions website states that its decision is part of its “student-centered approach to the admission process.”  It goes on to say, “data points such as overall admissions rates and average SAT scores shouldn’t influence a prospective student’s decision about whether to apply to Princeton.  We know this information raises the anxiety level of prospective students and their families and, unfortunately, may discourage some prospective students from applying.” 

I’d like to scrutinize both rationales more closely.  The decision to not report admit rates may be preferable to the celebratory “best year ever” press releases that too often seemed to be crowing “We’re so glad that we could turn down so many of your students,” but I wonder whether withholding the information serves students or serves institutions.

Does publishing admit rates harm students?  Does the panic felt by students and parents arise from the data, or the reality reflected by that data?  Or is the source of stress the focus on prestige, the belief that the harder a place is to get into, the better it must be? I would argue that it is the worship of selectivity, both by institutions and by students and parents, that produces panic and harms students.

Is the perception that it is nearly impossible to get into a good college a myth?  That depends on how you define the terms “good college” and “nearly impossible.”  There are certainly plenty of good colleges in America, perhaps even a plethora, and many of them admit the majority of applicants.  But if your definition of “good college” includes Ivy-like admit rates, then having a 3-4% chance of admission (lower for the average applicant) would seem to qualify as “nearly impossible.”  Ask the 96-97% of applicants who aren’t admitted (along with their counselors) if it is a myth that it is nearly impossible to get into a “good” college.

As for Princeton’s statement, it presents two different arguments.  One has to do with increasing anxiety in students, and the other has to do with discouraging applications. We have already addressed the first contention, that publishing the data increases anxiety and panic.  The second argument, that the information may discourage some students from applying, seems less student-centered than institution-centered.

I think there are two ethical principles at stake here.  The first is transparency.  The college admissions process can seem mysterious, and it is the responsibility of all of us to make that less the case.  Decisions about applying to college should be based on accurate information rather than speculation or guesswork. Having an idea of your chances of admission would seem to be relevant information in choosing where to apply.  While it is true that a student can find the information if they know about the Common Data Set, it is also the case that if we are reluctant to be transparent about our practices, that may tell us something about those practices.

The second principle is respect.  Colleges have a relationship with the students who apply, and that relationship creates certain obligations.  The argument not to report the reality of low admit rates resembles Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” telling Tom Cruise, “You can’t handle the truth.”

If we respect those with whom we are in relationship, we should also trust that they can handle the truth.  If we believe that students entering college should be treated like adults, then we should trust them to be able to handle the truth, because being able to deal with reality, even unpleasant reality, is essential to being an adult. Withholding information is the worst form of paternalism.

The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is generally a good ethical principle, and it may also be applicable in this case. Would colleges, and college admission offices, prefer to have accurate information hidden from them out of concern for their well-being? I’m guessing not.

I respect the institutions’ concern for alleviating student anxiety. I just don’t think that withholding the truth is the way to do it.

Black Enrollment in Liberal Arts Colleges

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education recently published its annual survey of Black first-year enrollment in leading national liberal arts colleges.  The JBHE has tracked that information for the past 28 years.

For those of us who love data, there are some interesting nuggets in the report.  The biggest story is that Amherst has set a new standard for enrollment of Black students, with 100 Black students in this year’s entering class, or a percentage of 19.5.  Amherst has topped the list 13 times, more than any other college, with Wesleyan second topping the list six times.

Amherst is one of two liberal arts colleges enrolling 100 or more Black students in its first-year class.  The other is Barnard, which enrolled 118.  That is 15.3% of the entering class, placing it third by percentage.  Number two is Harvey Mudd, with 17.7%, or 41 students.  That is particularly impressive given that Harvey Mudd is focused on engineering, math, and science.  Harvey Mudd is a great place with an even better name, but I don’t necessarily think of it as a liberal arts college.

In all, there are nine liberal arts colleges on the list with a Black first-year enrollment of 10% or more.  In addition to the ones already mentioned, Swarthmore, Pomona, Haverford, Middlebury, and Bates fall into that category, with Bowdoin and Macalester just missing the 10% threshold by one student.  In 2009, there were only three colleges on the list surveyed by JBHE with a Black first-year enrollment of 10% or more.

In contrast, there were six colleges in the JBHE survey which had entering classes with a Black enrollment below 6%--Lafayette, Grinnell, Smith, Bucknell, Scripps, and Mount Holyoke.  Four of those schools–Smith, Scripps, Bucknell, and Mount Holyoke–saw declines in Black first-year enrollment from 2020, with Mount Holyoke’s being halved from 36 to 18.  Lafayette actually saw a 65% increase in Black first-year enrollment from 26 to 43, while Grinnell’s 5.1% Black first-year enrollment outpaces the state of Iowa’s 3.7% Black population.

The Journal cautions not to draw too many conclusions from those statistics, as the numbers may say more about the way the data is reported than actual significant changes.  Some colleges may be reporting figures that correspond with recent methodology changes put in place by the U.S. Department of Education.  An Inside Higher Ed article about the JBHE survey points out that the DOE guidelines separate Black students from those who self-report as multi-racial or bi-racial and also exclude Black international students.  The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education survey has always counted any student identifying as being of African descent. 

In addition to the reporting of numbers and percentages, there are two other lists provided by the JBHE.  One is a list of one-year gains and losses.  Two colleges, Bates and Harvey Mudd, saw an increase of more than 100%, and five other schools–Lafayette (already referenced), Oberlin, Middlebury, Barnard, and Hamilton–had increases above 45%.

I was particularly interested to see Washington & Lee among the top ten on the list with a 30% increase.  I have previously written about the challenges W&L faces through its connection to Robert E. Lee, who served as President there from 1865-1870, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the removal of Confederate monuments around the country, most prominently in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, capital of the Confederacy.  The W&L university community has discussed, but thus far pushed down the road, a decision about changing its name.  I have seen W&L described as the least diverse national liberal arts college, and I have suggested that the association with Lee could prevent the University from being the national institution it aspires to be.  I greatly respect the Washington & Lee admissions staff (full disclosure–I have served as a guest faculty member at their MAZE program for children of alumni), and am glad to see them making progress at a time when they face a number of barriers to doing so.

The third list reported by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education involves racial differences in admission rates.  That list is limited by the fact that only 14 liberal arts colleges were willing to report that data, whereas in the past nearly all of the colleges in the survey were forthcoming about their admit rates for Black applicants.  The JBHE theorizes that colleges are reluctant to be transparent because of efforts to challenge race-based affirmative action.

Two colleges, Middlebury and Scripps, show significantly higher admit rates for Blacks compared with their overall rates.  Middlebury’s 31.5% Black acceptance rate is double its overall rate of 15.7% while Scripps admitted 42.6%, 13 points higher than the overall 29.5% rate.  Most of the other colleges reporting data have comparable Black and overall admission rates, although both Bucknell and Macalester have admit rates for Blacks that are more than 10% lower than their overall rates.

How should we interpret this data?  Once again, the JBHE cautions against jumping to conclusions.  It states, “While no firm conclusions can be made, the fact that for the past 10 years there are now more colleges with overall acceptance rates that are higher than Black acceptance rates, causes one to wonder if there has been some curtailment in colleges’ consideration of race in admissions decisions.  Or it may be that the colleges that have a much higher acceptance rate for Black students than they do for the applicant pool as a whole, are unwilling to publicize this information in fear of litigation or do not wish to anger some contributing alumni who are not in favor of race-sensitive admissions.”

I’m grateful for the data.  I am a product of a liberal-arts college, although not one prestigious enough to be part of the survey (but nevertheless a good place that happens to be the newly-crowned NCAA Division 3 national champions in men’s basketball).  I have always believed that the liberal arts college is America’s unique contribution to higher education, but many of those colleges have historically been bastions of whiteness.  I applaud those liberal arts colleges that are working to make sure that they embrace and attract a student population that reflects the nation’s diversity and that small private colleges do not resemble private clubs.