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Monday, September 3, 2007
Money, color in college admissions
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At select colleges and universities, two chief considerations can be “color and money,” writes Peter Schmidt, a deputy editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education, in a new book on college admissions.
In an interview with the AJC’s Maureen Downey, Schmidt said the system is so flawed that children of Vietnamese boat people and West Virginia coal miners are considered advantaged for admissions purposes, while preferences are granted to African-American children of privilege, including the sons and daughters of physicians. That’s the color preference.
The money preference favors the children of legacies and of potential donors. Only about 3 percent of admissions at top-tier universities come from the most disadvantaged 25 percent of the population.
Schmidt estimates that 15 percent of the kids in the nation’s most prestigious schools aren’t there on academic merit. Some are athletes, others have political connections or are the children of donors, or are admitted as the result of other preferences. Others are the sons and daughters of school employees attending as a job benefit accorded the parents.
Are preferences unwarranted? Not inherently. Colleges do have a vested interest in building loyalty, and in attracting certain kinds of students, based on a particular skill. State universities have an interest, too, in creating a student body that reflects the state’s population and its regions.
My view of it is the same as my view of campaign finance: Put everything in the open so parents and the rest of us know the truth. Tell us, for example, how many students at the University of Georgia were admitted on the basis of academic merit alone and what the cut SAT scores were. Then tell us by race how many students were in the secondary pool, the range of SAT scores, and how many students were admitted. Add too, the reasons for preferences.
Preferences, too, should not be fixed. If a college is getting too many girls, some temporary preference may be given to boys. But point it out.
Keep records and keep them open.
