Yale announced this week that it’s going to spend $4 million a year to send New Haven public school graduates to Connecticut public colleges and universities. Huh? Instead of spending that money recruiting, enrolling, and helping those students pay for an opportunity to go to Yale, Yale is going to pay other colleges and universities to do it for them.
My favorite quote: After the students graduate somewhere else, they can find jobs at Yale, and then, says Yale President Richard Levin, “A great life can be yours in this great community.” But not, you know, at Yale itself.
I don’t mean to knock the entire premise of the scholarships. It’s absolutely a good thing that college will be more affordable for more students. But c’mon, isn’t Yale better positioned to use that money to provide guaranteed tuition for 75 New Haven public school graduates each year? Surely Yale can think of better ways to spend its $17 billion endowment on improving college access at Yale itself. Only 13 percent of its students are low-income. It couldn’t afford to up that a notch?
More explanation on the program here.
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I think yale should be commended for doing something positive. The money would be going to poor and minority students who probably attend segregated schools in segregated neighborhoods, with bad teachers and a city that doesn’t care because the kids are poor and minorities. I am sure the well to do kids in New Haven (attend great schools, live in good neighborhoods, and have a smorgasbord of AP classes at their schools) can get into any top 25 college they wish, and does not need Yale’s help. I feel good about Yale and I am opening a bottle of Dom “96″ to toast yale! AHHH. Hit me again! Ciao!
How many graduates of the New Haven schools are academically qualified to attend Yale? I found an article from the New Haven Register listing the average SAT scores for the city’s 2 largest high schools of 1330 (out of 2400) and 1124. Students who hope to attend Yale would need to score at the very minimum an 1800 (and most likely >2100).
I think your critique of the New Haven program is off by 180 degrees.
The most crucial aspect in which the New Haven Promise differs from the Kalamazoo Promise is that the New Haven Promise requires a 3.0 high school GPA, whereas the Kalamazoo Promise does not. (Full disclosure: I live in Kalamazoo, served on the Kalamazoo School Board from 2000 to 2008, and as an economist have done some evaluation work on the Kalamazoo Promise.) The 3.0 GPA requirement means that the program is far less relevant to many students who might be unlikely to go to college without the program. This is a group of students who potentially would be motivated and enabled by a universal program, without a GPA requirement in high school, to go to college, including students who want to go to community college to get an associate’s degree or certificate. Therefore, the GPA requirement focuses the program on the students who are most ready for a college degree at top colleges, while not reaching students who may have had problems in 9th or 10th grades or who have career and life goals that are not centered around going to a liberal arts college. The GPA requirement also puts pressures on high school teachers for grade inflation.
Asking Yale to admit just 75 students from New Haven Public Schools would be even more targeted at just the top students. Such a program would be irrelevant to most New Haven students.
Part of the argument for Promise-style programs is their potential use as a vehicle to change the “culture” of high schools towards a culture in which all students are seeking to go to a post-secondary option, although the precise nature of that option will vary with student interests and achievement levels. Changing the culture of a school district is easier to do with programs that have more of a universal reach. In other words, these programs should be evaluated not based on just their effects on a few exceptional individuals, but on their effects on the overall school system.
Geeze. Just proves “you can please some of the folks some of the time…”.
I am certain — but i think it could be empirically determined (thesis topic anyone?) that Yale is doing a lot more good for more people this way (giving the $4 million a year to other institutions) than they could possibly do themselves. I don’t think they are necessarily saying “we are a bloated and inefficient institution serving a far too narrow set of objectives, and others who serve the public interest better and more broadly can doubtless do more good than we can” — but Yale is perhaps saying that after thinking long and hard, they have concluded this is truly the best way they can make a contribution. And for this they should be commended, loudly and often.
Why so cranky???
I’m pretty sure Yale already spends a lot on scholarships for students at Yale; but never everybody can go there, and most of them are not locals. This is generous offer directed specifically at local students who wouldn’t make the grade at Yale. I don’t see what grounds you have to carp. I would love it if the Ivy in my neighborhood offered to pay my kids’ way to public colleges. I would send them there if they could get in, but they don’t qualify.
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