May 24, 2020 by Philip Lewenstein

Scandal Highlights Troubling Admissions Issues, Need for Reform

On March 12, 2019, authorities charged 50 people, including 33 parents, with facilitating fraud and paying a combined $25 million in bribes to get the parents’ children into elite colleges. The scandal, called Varsity Blues, drew in Hollywood stars, hedge-fund millionaires, and athletic coaches.

The parents paid the $25 million between 2011 and 2019 to a sham charity run by William “Rick” Singer, who bribed coaches to designate kids who did not play competitive sports as athletic recruits to give them an easy path to admission; he boosted teens’ SAT and ACT scores by having someone else take or correct the tests.

Singer began as a legitimate college counselor, developing a business in Sacramento in the early 1990s. In 2002, he opened a counseling business called College Source before starting Edge College & Career Network in 2007; it also was called The Key, and a purported charity called Key Worldwide Foundation began in 2012.

Singer said in federal court in March 2019 that college admissions had become so competitive that more-traditional back-door strategies used by wealthy parents—donating money or calling a friend on the board—were not foolproof, so he created a “side door,” one he said came with a “guarantee” of getting in.

For Singer, facilitating the side door was more lucrative than his legal consulting for which clients paid him between $10,000 and $20,000; in the illegal scheme, parents paid average fees between $250,000 and $400,000.

As of early April 2020, 16 parents had been sentenced in the scandal, with all but one getting prison time, from two weeks to nine months. Six more have pleaded guilty or agreed to do so. Fourteen parents are scheduled for trials in October and January. Singer has pleaded guilty to four felonies.

Brian Rosenberg, president of Macalester College, says, “The only thing surprising about this news is that anyone would find it surprising. The fundamental assumption underlying this scheme –that wealthy and powerful people can use their wealth and power to gain admission for their children into prestigious colleges is widespread indeed and has a pretty firm basis in reality” (“The Only Surprise in the Admissions Scandal Is That Anyone Is Surprised,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 22, 2019).

The people charged with the crimes were not inventing a new game or new rules, “but were bending the rules further than the law allows,” Rosenberg says. “In other words, they were doing what many others do, but with more malice and less art . . . the novelty of this scheme comes not from the fact that money is buying admission, but from the fact that money is buying a guarantee of admission.”

Over the past year, since news of the scandal broke, I have been monitoring and reflecting on its significance and the important issues it has raised. I have a strong interest in college admissions; I worked in higher education for 41 years, I helped my wife and four children successfully navigate the admissions process, and I worked as an independent college counselor.

The admissions scandal has exposed and highlighted many troubling issues; the most important  is the preference of privilege and its impact on equality and fairness. A second important subject is the role and ethics of private college counselors, most of who are not like Rick Singer. Third, is the focus on misplaced values by parents and the elevated state of anxiety by both parents and students. Fourth, is the questionable value of colleges’ brand names, and fifth, is the need for systemic reform.

College admission is imperfect and lacks transparency, but the scandal overshadows some strengths of American higher education: access to and choice of a rich variety of both public and private opportunities. The scandal focuses on a small number of elite institutions. Research, however, shows that brand names may not matter much. Students have many choices, and most students, in fact, are admitted to one of their top college choices.

The scandal overshadows discussion of relevant, pressing higher-education issues such as college completion and affordability. For example, about 40 percent of undergraduates leave a university without degrees and little to show for their education; about 60 percent of community-college students drop out without earning an associate degree or transferring in three years. A big disparity exists between white and minority students and the first in the family to attend college. Only about 11 percent of the lowest-income high-school students complete a bachelor’s degree in six years.

And the effects of the COVID-19 crisis could affect how admissions works even after the pandemic subsides, according to Eric Hoover of The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Admissions Field’s New Leader Hopes to Reinvent Enrollment and College Access,” May 4, 2020). “With the pandemic disrupting the enrollment process, many colleges are scrambling to fill their seats amid a tanking economy that threatens many families’

ability to afford higher education,” Hoover says. “COVID-19 has forced testing companies to cancel exams, prompting many institutions to drop or temporarily suspend their ACT/SAT requirements for the class of 2021.”

The admissions scandal has spurred talk of reform in college admissions. Many ideas have been suggested and debated, but dramatic change has not occurred in the past year. The newly-named chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, Angel B. Perez, says he intends to lead a collaborative effort to “reinvent enrollment and college access in America and across the globe.” He has expressed hope that the association could convene a global conversation on rethinking the admissions profession and its role (Chronicle, May 4, 2020).

Role of Privilege in Higher-Education Admission

The scandal of 2019 has highlighted the longstanding presence of inequality and role of privilege in higher-education admissions. It has exposed a deepening divide across the United States along socioeconomic, geographic, and racial lines. I gained an understanding of this reality several years ago, reading books by James Karabel, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California-Berkeley; and Daniel Golden, a senior editor at ProPublica.

Karabel wrote a history of Ivy League admissions in 2005: The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The book is a 700-page expose of the ways Ivy League colleges have quietly tinkered with their admission formulas for decades, often for reasons that have nothing to do with ensuring that they admit the most-qualified applicants. Karabel writes about moves to limit enrollment of Jewish students.

Interviewed by The Chronicle of Higher Education last year, Karabel said, “The underlying issue has to do with the capacity of privileged people to use the admissions process in a way that enhances the privileges of already privileged people” (“Democratizing Anxiety,” March 22, 2019).

“Specifically, things that we already take for granted as normal, such as donating a building or getting special consideration for your child or grandchild, could be considered corrupt or scandalous,” Karabel says. “But they are taken for granted as the way we do things in the United States. In other countries, that could be considered immoral or illegal.”

Karabel says admissions is more meritocratic than it was in the 1920s and 1930s, but the privileged still enjoy the advantages though they are more subtle. These advantages refer to good parenting—good parents who have resources to send their children to a private school or buy their way into a suburban district known to have good schools.

These parents, Karabel says, can provide children with subject-matter tutors, SAT tutors, private college counselors with fees up to $40,000, and private athletic coaches if the children show talent or have interest. “So, in all these ways, those children come to be considered more meritorious,” he says. “That is how privilege is perpetuated through generations. Yet the majority of privileged children applying to elite colleges are rejected, an inherent feature of a process in which 95 percent of applicants are rejected at most selective colleges.”

Karabel notes some modest changes in the admissions process over the last decade: growing presence of international students, most of whom come from privileged backgrounds and “modestly greater weight given to socioeconomic disadvantage.” However, he says, the boost to socioeconomically disadvantaged is modest compared to the boost given to legacies or to children of donors.

“I think the broader issue is that this kind of abuse reveals a larger crisis in American society,” Karabel says. “Specifically, as America becomes more and more unequal, affluent parents have become increasingly desperate to pass on their privileges to their children and avoid downward mobility at all costs. And part of the backdrop to this is that elite colleges have come to be viewed as a kind of insurance policy against downward mobility. They also have become a status symbol of success for a society that falsely claims to be meritocratic. I think the bottom line is that what has happened with elite colleges is that they’ve democratized anxiety far more effectively than they’ve democratized opportunity.”

Karabel says the situation shows the extraordinary weight given to athletic talent and the remarkable latitude given to coaches to select the people whom they want for their teams if they meet minimal standards—including at elite colleges. “And what I think is not well known is that the weight of preference given to athletes far surpassed the weight given to underrepresented minorities or, for that matter, legacies,” he says. “It’s the weightiest preference of all the various preferences.”

In his 2006 book, The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, Daniel Golden documented the outsized influence of wealth and parentage on elite-college admissions and suggested six reforms. They included eliminating preferences for athletes in upper-crust sports and for children of alumni and donors, and establishing a firewall between fund raising and admissions.

Golden argued that America is rapidly becoming an aristocracy in which America’s richest families receive access to higher education, allowing them to give their children a head start.

He exposed corrupt admissions practices that favor the wealthy, the powerful, and the famous. Each spring, middle-class and lower-income high-school seniors learn they have been rejected by America’s most exclusive colleges while wealthy, white students with lesser credentials—children of alumni, big donors, or celebrities—are favored, he says.

“Despite the popular notion that top colleges foster the American dream of upward mobility and equal opportunity, the truth is quite different,” Gulden says. “While only a handful of low-income students penetrate the campus gates, admissions policies channel the children of the privileged into premier colleges, paving their way into leadership positions in business and government.”

Golden points out that since 2006, several studies have confirmed his mostly anecdotal evidence: that what he called “the preferences of privilege” have far more influence in admissions decisions than universities like to acknowledge. For example, Golden notes, Harvard accepted 55 percent of legacies compared to 15 percent of non-legacies, according to a 2013 study (“The Epitome of Sleaze,” The Chronicle Review, November 1, 2019).

“In more than a dozen years since The Price of Admission was published, most colleges have not adopted its proposals, nor have they restricted the preferences of privilege,” Golden says. “The bulk of changes have tilted the balance even more in favor or the wealthy and well-connected.”

Public universities also have tilted toward the rich, Golden says. With falling state appropriations, these institutions depend more on private donors, who often seek admissions perks in return, he says.

In the fallout from Operation Varsity Blues, the colleges have portrayed themselves as helpless victims, Golden says. “In reality they have no one to blame but themselves,” he adds. “They created the conditions for Singer’s scheme, from the admissions preferences he exploited for athletes in rich people’s sports, to the ever-increasing selectivity that ratcheted up parents’ desperation. They’ve sold admissions slots for decades, yet professed shock that coaches would too.”

As Anthony P. Carnevale notes, “Favoritism and ill-gotten gains have always been part of the American higher-education system.” (“The admissions system is worse than broken. It’s fixed,” The Washington Post, March 19, 2019). Carnevale is research professor and director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

“The shocking part of the scandal is that wealthy, connected people actually thought they had to cheat to get their children into selective colleges,” Carnevale says. “They already have plenty of avenues for ‘honest graft’ by bypassing anything resembling a fair process and rigging the game in their favor. These include separate admissions tracks or standards for legacies—children related to alumni—as well as applicants connected to donors, politicians, and college employees and officials. There’s an inside track and an outside track, and if you don’t know about the inside track, your kids aren’t on it.”

Twenty-five percent of all students attending colleges in the two-highest tiers of selectivity (about 200 of the most elite colleges in America) have SAT scores well below the average test scores of entrants to those institutions, Carnevale says. “If admissions were based on test scores alone, more than 40 percent of the white students already enrolled in such institutions would have to leave.”

How did they get in? Some are athletes, and some may have other skills or attributes that the admissions committees found desirable, according to Carnevale. Yet, it’s no coincidence that two-thirds of these students come from families in the top quarter of all family income, he adds. They are the sons and daughters of those who already have everything.

“When it comes to college, there are two very different Americas,” Carnevale says. “To most of the country, college is supposed to be a meritocracy, a reward to those who have worked the hardest and sharpened their talents. To the wealthy and connected, on the other hand, America’s selective colleges are their birthright, the final step in the youthful coronation to an aristocracy posing as a meritocracy.”

Carnevale points out that the imbalance in higher education favoring the wealthy and white has always been staggering. Since 1995, more than 8 in 10 new white students have enrolled at one of the nation’s 500 most-selective colleges while more than 7 in 10 new enrollments of blacks and Latinos have been in open-access two-and four-year colleges.

Colleges are not doing enough to correct for disparities based on income and racial/ethnic status, Carnevale says. “Their goals, instead, are driven by the all-important rankings that reward colleges for becoming ever-more exclusive, and, therefore, ever further out of reach to average Americans.”

The college-admissions scandal has highlighted the issue of fairness at public universities, particularly legacies. Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, notes that a recent poll showed only six percent of admissions directors at public universities said that legacy status is a factor in admissions decisions at their universities (“Legacy admissions at public universities are fundamentally unfair (opinion),” Inside Higher Education, March 21, 2019).

“Nevertheless, it’s a practice that is at odds with public universities’ commitment to fairness,” says McPherson, president at Michigan State University from 1993 to 2004. “Universities can have these strong ties with their alumni without providing preferential treatment in their admissions decisions. At a time when many public universities have more applicants than available seats, every admissions decision matters. Changing the practice of legacy admissions is no exception.”

Efforts and initiatives to support first-generation students and others cannot be fully realized if practices that give preferential treatment to those from families of multigenerational college graduates continue to exist, McPherson says.

Role of Private College Counselors

Part of privilege is the ability of some parents to hire private college counselors. The scandal has highlighted the role of private college counselors. Singer allegedly charged clients hundreds of thousands of dollars to use illegal means to get their children into top colleges. Some college counselors are charging their clients as much, but their business model is legal, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Douglas Belkin (“Anxious Families Drive Up Price of Advice,” March 14, 2019).

Entrepreneurs promising to boost the chances of gaining admission to top-tier schools are charging as much as $1,000 an hour, fees typically associated with white-shoe law firms, according to Belkin. He notes that the college market was once dominated by former high-school guidance counselors, but as demand has risen, a more-credentialed class of entrepreneurs has entered the market—counselors with PhDs, JDs, and other advanced degrees along with former Ivy League admission officers.

“The field has grown as anxiety has increased among middle-and upper-middle-class families about getting their children into a top school,” Mark Sklarow, CEO of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA), told Belkin. “There isn’t one state where this is licensed. The most typical thing I hear is someone will say, ‘I got my kid into Bryn Mawr, so now I want to do that for other people.’”

The college-admission scam has distorted the legitimate role of independent educational consultants. According to Sklarow, consultants help level the playing field by supporting working-and middle-class students who go to public schools by allowing families of more- modest means to gain similar expert help and advice at an hourly rate that is affordable for most. Also, all IECA members commit to efforts to serve those from underserved communities, he says (“How IECA Helps Level the Playing Field in College Admissions” March 15, 2019).

IECA members are committed to helping families find the most appropriate college for their students and assist families in navigating the application process (“IECA Stresses Ethics & Personal Fit to Guide Students in Choosing a College,” IECA). Following a comprehensive code of ethics, IECA members are professionals who understand and adhere to high ethical standards in all their interactions with clients and institutions and are compensated by and work exclusively on behalf of their client families.

IECA gives several reasons for the growth in independent educational consulting: increased confusion over who is admitted to college, increased cost of education, over-worked high-school counselors, and students with unique needs such as “gifted” or learning-disabled students.

All IECA members are required to pledge adherence to a statement of Principles of Good Practice. Likewise, another organization of consultants, Higher Education Consultants Association, has developed an extensive statement of Standards and Ethics to guide work with students and parents.

Several years ago, after 31 years working in higher education, I established Coaching for College to help students select, apply to, and pay for a college education. In preparation, I completed coursework in UCLA’s online college-counseling certificate program and participated in extensive IECA training, including its summer training institute. I help students develop a plan to pursue a college education that best matches their personal, educational, and career goals. I provide coaching on all aspects of the college application, selection, and financing processes. I have helped several students and parents at a modest price, far lower than fees charged by counselors highlighted in newspaper articles.

Anxiety and Misplaced Values in Parents and Students

Another important piece of the admissions scandal is the misplaced values and anxiety seen in parents and their children. Parents sometimes place more importance than students on a college’s status and prestige, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Sue Shellenbarger (“It’s Their College Years, Not Yours,” March 18, 2019). Some parents recycle their own dreams through the children, pushing them to get into the Ivy League because they couldn’t. “This pattern, called ‘protection’ is common among parents whose identities are closely intertwined with those of their children, according to a 2013 study in the journal PLOS One,” Shellenbarger says.

Parents do this without realizing it in hopes of feeling more successful themselves, Shellenbarger says, referring to the study. Clinical psychologists note parents may follow this pattern because they are trying to rectify some loss or an unresolved issue in their own lives. They bask in their children’s reflected glory, experiencing their achievements as if they were their own.

Shellenbarger notes that parents often err if they pressure their teens to take too heavy a workload. “Parental projections are risky for teens,” she says. “Students typically pick a college during a critical stage when they’re struggling to develop their own sense of identity. Freighting them with a parent’s recycled dreams risks extinguishing that drive, threatening their autonomy when they need more than anything to break away.”

The high-stakes educational culture that has spiraled out of control was described several years ago by Alexandra Robbins in The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids (2006) Robbins explored teen issues such as intense stress, the student and teacher cheating epidemic, sports rage, parental guilt, the black market for study drugs, and a college-admissions process that drives students to suicide and depression because of getting only a B.

Commenting on the 2019 admissions scandal, Robbins says that the overachiever culture has caused drastic changes in schools and homes, “relentlessly prioritizing prestige, high-stakes testing and accountability at the cost of families and schools.” (“Kids Are the Victims of Elite College Obsession,” March 12, 2019, The  Atlantic).

“It’s a myth that going to a certain type of school is a ‘roadmap to success,’ but parents desperately want to believe that by controlling the system, they can guarantee success for their children, even if it’s a narrow, winner-take-all definition of that word,” Robbins says.

“Education has been eclipsed by marketing—on the part of both students and schools—and as one college dean of admissions told me, ‘It’s not simply marketing one for a position at the very difficult preschool, high school, college, and grad school, and for various employment opportunities. It comes down to marketing one’s soul, which gets to undermining the meaning of one’s life.’”

Robbins notes that from standardized-test scores to the arms race of year-round youth sports, students are taught that their statistics matter more than their comfort,  that their resume matters more than their character. Students respond in kind, she says, noting that almost 90 percent of college students say they have cheated in school and an estimated 15 to 40 percent of high-school students have abused prescription drugs as study aids.

Caitlin Flanagan, author and contributing editor at The Atlantic, writes that many parents who grew up in the recent past are furious that once belonged to them (assurance that their children would be admitted to a top college) has been taken away and they are driven mad with the need to reclaim it for their children (“They Had It Coming,” April 4, 2019).

“The changed admissions landscape at the elite colleges is the aspect of American life that doesn’t feel right to them; it’s the lost thing, the arcadia that disappeared so slowly they didn’t even realize it was happening until it was gone,” Flanagan says. “They can’t believe it—they truly can’t believe it—when they realize that even the colleges that they had assumed would be their child’s back-up, emergency plan probably won’t accept them.

“They pay thousands of dollars for extended-time testing and private counselors; they scour lists of board members at colleges, looking for any possible connections; they pay for enhancing summer programs that only underscore their children’s privilege. And they complain about it endlessly. At every parent coffee, silent auction, dinner party Clippers game, book club, and wine tasting, someone is complaining about admissions.”

Admissions mania isn’t just about keeping one’s child happy, Lois Weis, University of Buffalo professor, told Beckie Supiano of The Chronicle of Higher Education (“They’re Already Rich. Why Were These Parents So Fixated on Elite Colleges?” March 22, 2019). “More than anything, it runs on anxiety,” says Weis, a distinguished professor of educational leadership and policy. “It is arguable the case that the anxiety is a rational—not wonderful but rational—response to what people are perceiving.”

Weis says that the global economy has changed and so has America’s position in it. “People with any means at all are incredibly worried that they are not going to be able to sustain their own class position with their children.”

Psychoanalyst and author Erica Komisar says that parental pressure to excel induces anxiety in many adolescents. “The scandal of wealthy parents allegedly cheating the college admission system is an extreme example,” she says. (“The Sickness Behind the College Scandal,” Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2019).

“Parents do their children no favors by shielding them from ordinary experiences of disappointment, frustration, and rejection, or refusing to acknowledge their academic or personal limitations,” she says. “Confronting adversity and working with limits are important parts of building resilience to stress. Parents who game the system are telling their children that they can’t achieve something on their own.”

Komisar says that when parents use their money or influence to get their child into an elite institution without considering whether it’s the right school or academic environment, it may be because they’re more concerned about their own status than the child’s well-being and success. It can give the children a sense of entitlement rather than accomplishment. Some of the kids who get into these top universities find they can’t handle the academic pressure and break down.”

The obsession by parents and students reflects misguided values, according to Denise Pope, co-founder of Challenge Success, a Stanford, California, school-reform nonprofit.

“In a society that is hyper-focused on achievement, credentials, and status, it isn’t surprising that some parents are willing to sacrifice just about anything, including their integrity, to get their child into a top-ranked school,” Pope says. “Unfortunately, many high school students also have a ‘cheat or be cheated’ mentality when it comes to getting the grades and test scores that they believe they need for future success.”

More than 80 percent of students at high-achieving schools cheat in one way or another, according to surveys of more than 145,000 students conducted in recent years by Challenge Success, Pope reports.

“Today’s admissions scandal should serve as a wake-up call,” she says. “As a society, we need to reexamine the purpose of college and the underlying issues that lead families to be so obsessed with status or brand name that they jeopardize their own children’s healthy development and well-being.”

In surveys by Pope’s group, three-quarters of high school juniors and seniors list planning for college as a top source of stress or worry in their life, well above relationships and family issues. More and more students are reporting severe sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, and thoughts of suicide as they struggle to meet the unrealistically high expectations foisted upon them, Pope says.

“The ultimate irony is that, even when those students end up in selective colleges, many of them continue to struggle with mental and physical health issues and often lack the independence, resilience, and sense of purpose they need to graduate and enter the workforce,” Pope says.

Questionable Value of College Brand Names

Ironically, the brand name of a college may not matter. Evidence shows that a college degree delivers a large and sustained income premium over a high-school diploma, but a selective college doesn’t make the premium bigger, concludes Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal. (“Colleges Are the Golden Ticket, Elite or Not,” March 21, 2019).

“There are exceptions, but most people who prosper after graduating from such a college would likely have prospered if they had attended a less prestigious institution as well,” Ip says. “The fact that smart, ambitious children who attend elite colleges do well in life doesn’t mean the first caused the second.”

Ip refers to the oft-quoted research of Stacy Dale of Mathematica Policy Research and the late Alan Krueger of Princeton University. Krueger and Dale found that the choice of schools applied to be indicative of ambition, which they argue, is a more powerful driver of success than the school they attend, according to Ip.

The best research on the question suggests that, for most students, the brand name does not matter, according Pope. She says that Challenge Success, the research and advocacy group that she founded at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, conducted an extensive review of the academic literature on the subject.

The group found that a school’s selectivity (as typically measured by ACT or SAT scores, high school GPA and class rank, and the school’s acceptance rate) is not a reliable predictor of outcomes, especially when it comes to learning (“The Right Way to Choose: What Students Do at College Matters More Than Where They Go. The Key to Success is Engagement Inside the Classroom and Out,” The Wall Street Journal Review, March 23-24, 2019).

“As common sense would suggest, the students who study hard at college are the ones that end up learning the most, regardless of whether they attend an Ivy League school or a local community college,” Pope says.

Pope says that what students do at college seems to matter much more than where they go. And the students who benefit most from college, including first-generation and traditionally underserved students, are those who are most engaged in academic life and their campus communities. Engagement on campus is a better predictor of future job satisfaction and happiness than a college’s status or prestige, Pope notes.

“Given the research on what matters in college, the best advice for choosing the right one would seem to be finding a place where the student will be engaged in class and out by all that the college has to offer,” Pope says. “The good news is that engaging experiences of this sort can happen at a wide range of colleges, regardless of selectivity, size, and location.”

Both Ip and Pope note that research suggests, however, a modest financial gain occurs from attending a highly selective school if students are the first in their families to attend college or come from underserved communities.

Kevin Carey, director of the education policy program at New America, says that the Dale/Krueger analysis identifies four strong benefits for the subset of black and Hispanic students, and for those from whose parents had few educational credentials (“How Much Does Getting into an Elite College Actually Matter,” The New York Times, March 15, 2019). “It turns out that students who come from less privileged backgrounds benefit greatly from selective colleges,” Carey says. “Elite higher education gives them social capital they didn’t already have.”

In fact, the great majority of schools where most Americans get their post-secondary education admit most of the people who apply to them, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Department of Education data (“A majority of U.S. colleges admit most students who apply,” Drew Desilver, April 9, 2019, Pew Research Center Fact Tank).

Of the 1,364 four-year colleges and universities looked at, 17 admitted less than 10 percent of applicants in 2017, the most recent year for which comprehensive data were available. Another 29 percent admitted between 10 and 20 percent of applicants. The extremely competitive schools accounted for 3.4 percent of all colleges and universities in the analysis, and they accounted for 4.1 percent of total enrollment. By contrast, more than half the schools in the sample (53.3 percent) admitted two-thirds or more of their applicants in 2017.

Need for Systemic Reform

Two University of Southern California scholars, Don Hossler and Jerry Lucido, argue that media critiques of elite-admissions processes “fail to grasp the extent that this is a systemic problem that ripples across the admissions processes at many four-year colleges and universities” (“College Admissions Side Doors,” Inside Higher Education, April 22, 2019). Hossler is senior scholar at the Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice at USC; Lucido is professor of practice and executive director of the Center.

Hossler and Lucido assert that “there is ample evidence that collectively the college admissions process is at an inflection point. Evidence of the need for change starts with the most recent scandal but goes much further.”

They cite several examples including affirmative-action lawsuits filed against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, decision of the Justice Department to investigate early-decision admissions programs at selective colleges, renewed critiques of legacy admissions, the growing popularity of test-optional admissions, different admission standards for athletes at elite schools, and a scandal at a Louisiana prep school whose graduates were admitted to elite universities based on fabricated records and letters.

Hossler and Lucido also suggest the need to examine tuition discounting at many less selective private and public schools, including the possibility that low-and moderate-income students may end up borrowing to pay for scholarships for higher-income students.

Though the U.S. does not have a centralized admissions system, the presence of similar side doors is common, Hossler and Lucido say. “Once this is acknowledged, it becomes possible to see the everyday practice of privilege that advantages students from affluent families as well as students from upper-middle class and some middle-class families.”

The two scholars say that if a tipping point in college admissions has been reached, and there is a will to act, careful thought is needed to enact appropriate accountability measures. “If not, the decentralized admissions system will continue practices that provide everyday privilege, not just for the top 1 percent, but also for the top 10 percent, or perhaps even the top 35 percent of college applicants,” they say.

“We do indeed have an informal national system of college admissions. How should this system work—will this turn out to be the time to act? We believe the answer is yes. Government may not prove to be a good solution, but the threat of it may finally move equity to the top unless institutions choose to act collectively in order to create a systemically just system.”

The scandal puts the admissions profession in a bind, says Eric Hoover of The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Admissions Officers Didn’t Cause the Scandal. But They Helped Shape the Culture That Spawned It,” March 22, 2019).

“At a time of immense scrutiny and public skepticism of the way high-profile colleges select applicants, this controversy erupts in the admission realm, raising familiar questions about its commitment to fairness,” Hoover says. “The challenge, some admissions officials say, is to take stock and learn something from the moment, even if, in fact, no one in the field did anything wrong.”

Melissa Korn, who has covered the admissions scandal for The Wall Street Journal, came up with ten ways to fix college admissions, based on interviews with college admissions officers, high-school and private counselors, parents, students, and others (“How to Fix College Admissions,” November 30-December 1, 2019).

The first suggestion is to eliminate rankings, which “fuel a vanity race for admission to the No. 1 school.” Second, is to limit the number of colleges to which students may apply, perhaps a half dozen. Third, is to end preferential treatment of legacy applicants. Fourth, is to stop favoring athletes, a preference which disproportionately benefits wealthy students. Fifth, is to rethink recommendation letters because at many schools counselors supervise so many students that they can’t write meaningfully about each one.

A sixth suggestion is to “blow up the essay,” because many students’ personal statements are polished by an English teacher, private counselor, or family members who went to college, whereas applicants who don’t get much assistance can suffer by comparison. Seventh, eliminate the SAT and ACT. Korn explains that research shows that scores are closely aligned with wealth and race and reflect how well students prepared for a particular type of test rather than how much potential they have.

Eighth, is to eliminate early decision (requires students to commit to attending a school if admitted) which disproportionately benefits students who don’t need to compare financial aid offers from various colleges and who have received good college counseling from their schools or private coaches. Ninth, is to use a lottery system, and tenth is to overhaul the tuition model to change published rates, which almost nobody pays, to better match actual charges and reallocate merit awards to those who really need the money.

Although the admissions scandal has highlighted the advantages for wealthy applicants and raised questions about fairness and equity, experts say little has changed (“A Year After the College Admissions Scandal, Here’s What Has and Has Not Changed,” Katie Reilly, Time, March 12, 2020).

“If there’s one thing the admissions scandal has done, though, it has energized advocates who have long pushed for changes that could alleviate the inequities plaguing low-income and minority students as they vie for spots at top colleges and universities,” Reilly says. She notes efforts to oppose requiring SAT and ACT tests, steps by some colleges to monitor donations to prevent them from affecting admissions decisions and to more clearly document admissions decisions based on athletics and other special talents, and proposals to eliminate early-decision applications and legacy preferences. Making college affordable for low-income families is another major goal.

Change will have to come not only from schools but from parents, Richard Weissbourd told Reilly. Weissbourd is a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and longtime advocate for reform in the admissions process. In March 2019, he released a report warning that the focus on academic achievement was leading to ethical lapses, especially among middle-and upper-income parents.

Weissbourd urges parents to stop focusing on the most-selective universities in the country since it puts excessive pressure on students and tempts parents to pull strings for their children. “So long as parents are hyper focused on this small number of colleges,” he told Reilly, “they’re going to be looking for an angle to get their kids into those colleges.”

The Harvard report calls on parents and high schools to put ethical character at the center of college admissions (Turning the Tide II: How Parents and High Schools Can Cultivate Ethical Character and Reduce Stress in the College Admissions Process, 2019). The report, published by the Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, argues that an intense focus on academic achievement has squeezed out serious attention to ethical character in many high schools and families, especially in middle-and upper-income communities.

With a narrow focus on high achievement and admission to selective colleges, parents in these communities often fail to help their teens  develop the critical cognitive, social, and ethical capacities that are at the heart of both doing good and doing well in college and beyond, the report says. Many parents also fail to be ethical role models to their children by allowing a range of transgressions—from exaggerating achievements to outright cheating—in the admissions process, according to the report.

The 2019 report follows the initial Turning the Tide report, published in 2016, which sought changes in admissions at the college level to advance three related goals: elevating ethical character, especially concern for others and the common good; increasing access and equity for economically disadvantaged students; and reducing excessive, damaging achievement pressure in many communities. About 200 admissions deans have endorsed the report.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently examined three key questions about the year since the scandal broke: who in higher education was held responsible? Which part of higher education came under the most scrutiny? Did other colleges act? (“One Year After College-Admissions Scandal, 3 Questions about What, if Anything, Has Changed,” Andy Thomason, Nell Gluckman, and Lindsay Ellis, March 12, 2020).

The reporters concluded that former university employees have been held responsible for the scandal, but the effects have not been clear for the reputations of the universities, their rankings, or their application numbers. Several of the implicated institutions pledged to strengthen their admissions processes. Every involved institution (except for the University of San Diego) slid no more than two slots on the U.S. News rankings from 2018 to 2019.

The college-admission profession has drawn the closest scrutiny since the scandal with one president saying, “The big takeaway for me was there is not public confidence in the integrity of higher-education admission.” Lucido of USC urged colleagues to be “more clear and transparent with the public about what they do and to create a firewall between fund raising and admissions.” Some admissions professionals said competition for higher rankings has fueled the crisis.

Some colleges said they would change their admission protocols after the scandal while others didn’t say whether they would change their policies, according to the reporters.

Some elite universities are walking back the practice of giving the children of alumni preferential treatment in admissions, in some cases reacting to the public distrust from the scandal, according to The Wall Street Journal (“Colleges Rethink Legacy Preference,” Douglas Belkin).

Johns Hopkins University in January said it had phased out legacy preferences over several years, Belkin says. Indiana University is considering dropping legacy to create more equitable access, a school spokesman told Belkin.

While Ivy League institutions all continue to consider legacy preference, schools, including the University of Florida and Purdue University, say they collect legacy information but that it carries less weight  than it once did—or none at all, according to Belkin.

“Legacy preference has been entrenched for so long and given applicants such a big leg up that any movement away from it carries the possibility of alienating alumni, admissions officers say,” Belkin says. “The result is a hot potato with which schools aren’t eager to reckon.”

Belkin reports that in 2019, about 48 percent of colleges and universities considered legacy in their freshmen-admissions decisions, down from 58 percent in 2004, according to Peterson’s College Guide. Belkin notes that schools have defended legacy preference as needed to encourage alumni donations and keep them involved in the school community.

The Chronicle of Higher Education asked several colleges if they planned to change how they oversee athletics recruiting and whether there is a broader need for reform (March 29, 2019). The vice president and dean of admissions at Pomona College, Seth Allen, said that it is important to send the message that there are so many college options and possibilities for students.

“At the same time, the recent news is just the latest reason selective institutions of higher education need to rethink their approach to admission for all students,” Allen said. “This could involve building more opportunities for applicants to demonstrate who they are, rather than headlining what they achieve.”

Eric J. Furda, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, said that Operation Varsity Blues “exposes the deepening divide across our country along socioeconomic, geographic, and racial lines.

“As educators we need to highlight and celebrate the range of options in American higher education, from community colleges which can become a path to a four-year degree, to our flagship state university systems and private institutions, that should be measured by their graduation rates rather than admit rates,” he said. “Once we admit students to our institutions, we need to make sure all our students, regardless of background, are entering into a supportive learning environment where they can find their own voices and learn from those who have different lived experiences. In this way, they will be better prepared for the lives they will enter into as young adults.”

The most important goal in college admissions is to help students find the college that best fits their educational and career aspirations. The IECA offers important advice for parents and students:

• The college search and application process should be a fun and exciting time for students and their families. If anyone in any setting is exerting pressure or causing undue anxiety and pressure, be cautious. If you are told someone has “inside information, can pull strings, provide shortcuts to admission, or give you a special advantage (for a fee otherwise),” you are being misled.

• There are many great postsecondary options for every student, and no student should be made to feel that they must become something that they are not to get accepted. The “best” school is the school that fits a student academically, socially, and financially. Being and presenting one’s authentic self and demonstrating one’s own talents and abilities is a way of ensuring the right college fit. This is central to what an ethical independent educational consultant does.

• The vast majority of admissions officers, schools counselors, and IECs are ethical and compassionate professionals who dedicate their careers to advising students and families. (“IECA Stresses Ethics & Personal Fit to Guide Students in Choosing a College,” www.iecaonline.com).

The college-admissions scandal has been disappointing and disgusting. It has brought out the worst in college admissions and parental behavior. However, more than a year after news of the scandal, one can consider some positive aspects. The scandal has highlighted the longstanding emphasis of wealth and privilege, its inherent unfairness, and need for reform. The scandal has illustrated the misplaced values of parents and the anxiety of parents and students. The scandal has served as a reminder that students have many college choices and can gain admission to an institution that fits their needs. The scandal has highlighted research showing that elite brand name colleges do not necessarily provide the best value for students. And the scandal has elevated discussion of needed reforms although not many have been implemented.