Editorial: Admissions quick fix isn’t a real answer

Our response to Harvard’s half-hearted nod to diversity in
admissions is a quiet yawn. Several schools have joined Harvard in
eliminating their early admission programs, but none of them will
have any significant effect on a problem that is far larger than
that.

Diversity in admissions is one of the most hotly debated issues
in higher education today. Many top-tier universities across the
country have found their minority admits decreasing over the years
and many are looking to change that.

Elite eastern universities ““ Harvard, Princeton and the
University of Virginia ““ have jumped on the admissions
bandwagon and revised their procedures in the hope that it will
help out low-income students who rarely apply for early
decision.

Proponents of the revision say low-income students are left
behind by the early applications because they must wait to compare
how much financial aid they may receive from other schools, arguing
that this makes early applications impractical or impossible.

But that’s not true in every case. Many universities have
an early admissions option that is nonbinding ““ they will
admit or defer a student early, but the student is free to wait to
respond or simply choose another school. Most of these applications
give students time to hear back from other schools before they have
to commit. This does not disadvantage for low-income applicants who
apply for nonbinding early applications.

Other schools have adopted the binding early decision process in
which the prospective student agrees to attend a specific school if
accepted. This is the case in which low-income students face a real
problem.

It’s a noble goal to save low-income applicants from this
conundrum, but it’s hardly the most important consideration
colleges should be addressing. It’s simply too small an
effort for such a large and looming problem within higher
education.

In the context of such a vastly mangled educational landscape,
early admissions isn’t even a drop in the bucket.

We’re in a situation where university tuition is
ballooning, K-12 education in many places is abysmal, and teachers
in low-income areas simply don’t get the resources they need
to be good educators and prepare students for college. It looks
like we have much more to deal with when it comes to who gets into
which school.

Related Links

• Application
  review may be restructured
• The
  changing face of UCLA diversity
• School to
  adopt UC Berkeley’s “˜holistic’ approach

A commission charged by U.S. Education Secretary Margaret
Spellings that assesses the current state of higher education
recently finalized its report. The commission brings to light a
prohibitively expensive school system that is geared toward the
privileged and does not hold itself accountable for student
performance.

UCLA has approved a new model for admissions termed the
“holistic” approach. This differs from the current
process by requiring administrators to score each application as a
whole rather than in separate parts.

In reassessing its admissions process, UCLA cannot overstep the
bounds of Proposition 209, which forbids the use of race in
admissions decisions.

The policies being implemented by the likes of UCLA, Harvard and
others show how much concern universities have for changing the
quality of higher education.

It’s too bad the problem really isn’t in their
hands.