The halftime festivities of many big-time college basketball games feature a contest in which one student gets the opportunity to sink a halfcourt shot or series of shots for a chance to win a car or some other large prize. Paying off a winning prize is expensive, but the organizer doesn’t really have to worry about it since the odds of success are so low.
For the past few years, elite colleges and universities have taken a similar approach to admitting low-income undergraduates. They’ve unveiled some very generous “grand prizes” in the form of making college free for low-income students, eliminating loans for others, or capping payments for improperly defined “middle income” individuals. But while this makes for a big payoff, the school doesn’t have to worry too much—they can keep costs down by controlling who they let in and the extent to which they sell these policies to lower-income students.
To an elite institution, these policies are a win-win calculation: good press for seeming generous, but it doesn’t have to worry about going too far in letting in these more expensive low-income students because it doesn’t take a proactive approach to recruiting them and convincing them to apply. Instead, the financial aid policies of elite colleges and universities are implemented passively—increase awards, hope that more poor kids apply, and by osmosis, accept more low-income kids. It’s like holding a secret half court contest and hoping that enough students show that some will make the shot and gain admission.
Not surprisingly, this aid expansion strategy has not been particularly successful. Princeton, for example, has had generous aid policies for years, yet just 10 percent of its student body receives Pell Grants (a reasonable indicator for low-income students). At Harvard, 14 percent of its students are Pell Grant recipients, putting it just on average with the 75 wealthiest institutions, many of which do not have such generous financial aid policies.
So why hasn’t the “If you build it, they will come approach” worked for elite institution’s aid policies? Caroline Hoxby, a Stanford professor had an interesting suggestion on the New York Times’ Choice blog:
“If you are a low-income student and you have good qualifications and you apply to Princeton or Yale, you are going to be accepted,” said Caroline Hoxby, an economics professor at Stanford. “The problem is really that there are many low-income students out there who are able to fulfill admissions criteria at these schools but are not applying.”
Hoxby’s evidence for this statement is more than anecdotal. She is working on a paper due out later this year, which found that the likelihood of a qualified low-income student applying to an elite institution is just 8 percent. Even with generous aid packages, Hoxby found that many students are turned off by the sticker shock. “A low-income student who applies to Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton is not going to pay a dime,” she told the Choice, “but it’s not clear whether that message gets out to them.”
What Hoxby’s findings certainly suggest is that if institutions are truly committed to improving their socioeconomic diversity, then they need to do more just announce a new policy with a flashy press release. Instead, admissions officers should do a better job visiting lower-income high schools, forming relationships with guidance counselors where they can, and generally take a more proactive approach to identifying promising lower-income students. Admittedly, this is labor intensive and has some costs, but without a greater commitment, these generous financial aid policies will be little more than a flashy exercise with little risk of significant success.
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03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
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03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.
It’s also worth noting that elite schools have been reported to be affirmatively denying entrance to low-income students to prevent them from accessing their supposed generosity.
See: Reed College last admissions cycle.
There are also interesting ideas like Johns Hopkins’ Baltimore scholars program
http://www.jhu.edu/admis/pdf/2....._qanda.pdf
While it doesn’t accept a huge portion of each class through this program, it is a direct way to encourage good students and parents to commit time and energy to going to and improving Baltimore public schools. they also go into the schools and help with general college guidance to students. The school also has serious applied research programs on working to improve the local public schools.
Every top university doesn’t need to send representatives to low income schools across the nation, but if every university committed to providing college admissions guidance and help to schools in their own backyards, it would make a huge difference.
James,
I agree that better college guidance counselors would certainly help some of these problems, but that’s not really a feasible solution for a few reasons. First and foremost is resources. Most high schools that serve lower-income students simply cannot afford more than a few guidance counselors, resulting in a ratio of several hundred students per person. Granted, if they have a really outstanding student, that ratio doesn’t matter, but that brings me to the second issue: relationships. There’s an interesting book called Creating a Class, by Mitchell Stevens, who tracked an admissions cycle at an elite Northeast liberal arts college. He found when they went on the road, the counselors really only tended to spend time at schools where they had existing relationships with guidance counselors. They would go to those schools because they knew they might get a few applicants each year they could potentially accept and that they could broker deals—something like if you let in this kid this year, I’ll get a really good one the following year to apply. That kind of thing doesn’t really work if a) you don’t know the admissions officers and b) you don’t have a steady supply of really excellent students.
On the other hand, it would be much easier for a en elite college with more resources to simply hire additional staff that could go out and form more relationships with people. Even if it was a part-time position or something of that sort, more boots on the ground, if you will, is what it’s really going to take for proactive recruitment.
Great blog post. However, I’m wondering why you put so much of the blame on the college and university admissions people. It seems to me that the real villains in this story are incompetent high school guidance counselors. Aren’t they responsible to these “qualified lower-income students.” And, it’s certainly the job of the high school guidance counselor to be well versed in financial aid policies. A staff of 10 admissions officers simply cannot maintain relationships with students at America’ 30,000 high schools.
“You do know that the great majority of those qualified, lower-income students who aren’t applying to Harvard are white, don’t you? That might explain the lack of enthusiasm for pursuing them.”
Steve,
Two questions: (1) Are qualified, lower-income students more likely to be white? (2) Are qualified, lower-income, non-white students more likely to apply?
I know you race is your explanation for everything, but unless your answers to both questions is “yes”, I don’t see the point of your question.
Hm. I had it drilled into me when looking at schools that “sticker price doesn’t matter.” Then again, my high school guidance counselor had been the dean of admissions at a prestigious state school, and knew more than enough about the system to encourage me to look at the Ivies. If it wasn’t for my counselor, I probably wouldn’t have looked at the Ivies. It would have seemed out of reach.
And the Ivy I got into, back in ‘04, cost me about $10,000 less/year than going to that in-state public school would have. I wasn’t in Pell Grant territory, but financial aid grants fully covered tuition; my family income was around $70,000 or so when I enrolled. If they made $10,000 less, we’d have probably qualified for at least some Pell money.
And I must disagree with the claim that a qualified low-income student is guaranteed to get in. When Ivy schools are only accepting 7.9-20.7% of their applicants (Harvard, Princeton and Yale all under 10%; incoming for fall of ‘08), qualified students get turned away all the time.
It’s also worth noting that elite schools have been reported to be affirmatively denying entrance to low-income students to prevent them from accessing their supposed generosity.
See: Reed College last admissions cycle.
You do know that the great majority of those qualified, lower-income students who aren’t applying to Harvard are white, don’t you? That might explain the lack of enthusiasm for pursuing them.
The other resource that schools could tap into for this effort is their huge alumni networks. These elite schools generally have very dedicated alumni groups who could also be making those contacts in low income areas where they live… and they’ll do it for free.