7 ms·

Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite Colleges

84 points by _RPM 12y ago

fiatmoney 12y ago
One problem is that the poor and highly qualified are mostly white kids from flyover country and to a lesser extent recent Asian immigrants, both of which are ethnic anti-priorities for colleges.
- smeyer 12y ago
  I don't have statistics on hand, but my experience as a Harvard undergrad (class of 2013) was that the less wealthy students at the school were more economically diverse than the more wealthy students. Any efforts by Harvard to increase racial diversity and increase economic diversity would likely work hand in hand.
  - gnarbarian 12y ago
    I would bet that's because there are far more scholarships available for poor minorities.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - hkmurakami 12y ago
      Hmm, I'm not so certain. My alma mater (Princeton) probably has similar scholarship structures to Harvard, and there, need based aid gets given out to every student who needs it, regardless of race. (iirc there is now a system where families making less than $180,000/yr only pay 10% of their household income for tuition) But you might be right that there may be additional scholarships that students can apply for (I remember a few friends writing letters to their scholarships annually to update them on what they've been up to as part of the scholarship deal, provided by bodies separate from the school itself -- presumably set up by alums with a set of stipulations as to who can qualify), may perhaps these may be skewed one way or another along various dimensions.
    - smeyer 12y ago
      Nope, I don't think that has anything to do with it. Harvard's policy is pretty similar to Princeton's described by hkmurakami. You can check out the calculations at [1], but the basic idea is that it's free up to 60k family income for Americans regardless of race then about 10% up to 180k income. This means that you can be making the median family income and still have an expected family contribution of $0 at Harvard. Obviously these sorts of levels of financial aid are only at the top few schools, but at places like Harvard and Princeton it really is independent of race. [1] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat...
      - Ntrails 12y ago
        One of the issues plaguing the UK is that the wealthy students go to private schools, which have the best facilities/teachers etc and are able to produce far far higher results. The argument becomes "when n% of the people with maximum A level grades come from private schools, that's the % you should expect at the top universities which gate by grades, regardless of their history". So I guess I have 2 questions: Do you have a similar issue where the wealthy buy better tuition to ensure higher results and get a better shot at the best colleges? Is there a scaling factor applied to those of different backgrounds to mitigate this?
        smeyer 12y ago
        I think the answers to those two questions are roughly yes and yes. I get the impression a lower percentage of people here go to private schools in general (and could be totally wrong), but many do. There are also plenty of other opportunities that are easier to access with wealth. Even with public schools, wealthier people tend to live in school districts with better schools. There's no simple scaling factor because there's no numerical value to scale (admissions at places like Harvard are not just an objective formula of grades and test scores) but background is certainly taken into account. A kid going to a school without lots of AP classes isn't expected to take lots of AP classes, for example. A kid from a rough economic background who has to work a minimum wage summer job for financial reasons will get more understanding than the rich kid who chooses a summer job for spending money instead of volunteering in a research lab, and so on. As I mentioned in another comment, I think one challenge is that it is harder to differentiate kids without these opportunities. To use the AP class example, you can help separate kids from top schools by looking at how many/which AP classes they took and what scores they got on the tests. If you take a similarly sized cohort of kids at a school without AP classes, how do you differentiate them?
- guelo 12y ago
  This white "reverse racism" meme seems to have really caught on in the last decade or so. To the point that white people now think they are discriminated against more than black people[1]. Our culture sucks. [1] http://politicalblindspot.com/study-finds-white-americans-believe-they-experience-more-racism-than-african-americans/ http://politicalblindspot.com/study-finds-white-americans-be...
  - refurb 12y ago
    No, it's not that white people think they are discriminated again more than black people. The idea is that discrimination based on race is bad regardless of who it is practiced against.
- nooron 12y ago
  Hey fiatmoney. I think you're concerned about some thing that a lot of people don't vocalize civilly, so I'm glad that you are. Though I don't work in admissions, I work alongside a number of people of that do. I've gone out of my way to ask about those "white kids from flyover country". I will elaborate on those of my alma mater here. Very few kids from rural school districts perform highly on standardized testing. Very few receive the encouragement (familial and cultural) to go to high-quality, distant schools. If you want to hear some horror stories about this from me, shoot me an email. I'd be happy to share them in private. Point being that even within its state, my large public school struggles to recruit from its rural parts. Contrary to what you assume, they actually do employ recruitment and affirmative action policies towards to the exact folks you're talking about -- predominantly poor and culturally disadvantaged rural people who are predominantly white.
  - gnarbarian 12y ago
    I'm interested in hearing a few of these stories.
    - nooron 12y ago
      If you email me at jordan at birnholtz dot com, I will get right back to you. Hell, if you email me right now with your phone number, I'll even call you. I think these stories are worth telling, but I'm not going to compromise the privacy of my very close friends in the public forum without their consent.
      - enraged_camel 12y ago
        Couldn't you anonymize personally-identifiable information?
        nooron 12y ago
        Reasonable question. I don't think I've made my motive for not sharing publicly very clear. That you'd parse their identities is a secondary concern to me (as I don't think you could). I'm more concerned about their feelings, since they could easily find this post (as my real name is tied to this account). While I think it's alright to anonymize and subsequently discuss my friends' lives in private, 1-to-1 discourse, I'm not ready to make their lives part of the public record with out their approval. Does that make sense, enraged_camel?
- a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
  Ron Unz found clear evidence that in the ivy league qualified poor whites and asians are actively discriminated against. Jews are disproportionately admitted. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
      This is obviously controlling for qualifications like test scores, dummy.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - tuananh 12y ago
    hence the word "rare" in the title.
staunch 12y ago
Poor people are likely as rare in elite Silicon Valley investor portfolios. The vast majority of investors today are from upper middle class backgrounds and educations. We know this isn't based on merit because they're almost universally bad at investing. But who makes the decision to invest in VCs? It's LP money managers with almost identical backgrounds.
- johnnydayld 12y ago
  "upper class"? As in aristocrats? Old money? I don't really think so. Maybe upper middle class.
  - chc 12y ago
    We don't have aristocrats in the US. The term refers to people with wealthy backgrounds.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
      "We don't have aristocrats in the US." Not yet.
    - alistairSH 12y ago
      The Kennedys and Bushes disagree with that assertion. ;)
    - lotsofmangos 12y ago
      Sure you do, you just call them dynasties. edit - There is loads of European aristocracy in power in the US. "The frequency with which royal blood has found its way into the White House is much higher than the share of the American population with links to British or European monarchs, which is estimated at less than 5 percent. In short, American Presidents have been at least six times more likely to have royal blood than the people who elected them." http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/05/us/bush-they-say-is-indeed-a-connecticut-yankee-from-king-henry-s-court.html http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/05/us/bush-they-say-is-indeed...
sitkack 12y ago
Thanks god. Last thing we need is actual meritocracy where people can cross class boundaries with hardwork and a bit of cunning. Harvard and Princeton are rubber stamp universities for the elite. GW Bush graduated from Harvard.
- sp332 12y ago
  Bush has an MBA from Harvard, which unlike many MBA programs, is pretty impressive. He got his BA in History from Yale, averaging a 77. (All according to Wikipedia.) Edit: I mostly agree with your post, but I don't think dragging Bush into the discussion is constructive.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Who knows how many of his papers he did himself? [Because usually wealthy drug abusing rich sons of prestigious fathers do all their hard work themselves right?]
- bnolsen 12y ago
  And your point is? A lot of lame people graduated from Harvard. A bunch of them. And they have no clue how economics work. 96% of political contributions from ivy league staff and faculty went to obama, not romney. Looks like GW was a yale grad, Obama harvard. Oops I stand corrected, GW has degrees from both.
- nether 12y ago
  thanks for the input, reddit. guess where ralph nader went. oh, and jill stein.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- santaclaus 12y ago
  Quite a few nobel laureates are also associated with Harvard. [1] I'm sure one could cherry pick rich jokers from virtually any school. [1] http://www.harvard.edu/nobel-laureates http://www.harvard.edu/nobel-laureates
bnolsen 12y ago
What really matters: Are the most capable getting into elite colleges?
- smeyer 12y ago
  Do you think that it's rare that the poor are the most capable? Presumably, if the poor are underrepresented at these schools, they're missing out on a lot of potential people who are very capable. I studied at Harvard and certainly wish the student body were more economically diverse, as challenging of a problem as it is to solve. It can be very hard to identify highly capable high schoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds since they often don't go through the sort of differentiation that the wealthier high schoolers coming to schools like Harvard do (top high schools, academic summer programs, research at local universities, et cetera). And that's ignoring the problem of getting them to apply and attend. Edit: grammar
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    By what metric, and over what timeframe? I went to Amherst, which has made a very concerted effort both to make an Amherst education affordable to low-income students (the school is free for people making under $60K/year, and has generous financial aid for the $60-100K range) and to recruit from low-income neighborhoods. I've heard it has been...challenging. It's very difficult to find students from low-income backgrounds who can handle a freshman Amherst courseload. Heck, I found it quite difficult as well, and I came from a solid middle-class background, had aced my SATs, passed 8 AP tests, etc. The school has had to bump up remedial tutoring and study-skills courses particularly to low-income students. It's hard to catch up with 18 years of systemic advantages in one year. Now, I do think that over a lifetime many people who grew up poor are as capable or moreso than people who grew up rich. But it takes time, effort, and opportunity, and if any one of those is missing, it doesn't happen. College may provide the opportunity to students who put in the effort, but without time...they can't catch up. Students may put in a sustained effort over a long period of time (I think this may actually be the most effective approach, as opportunities tend to come to people who do this), but without opportunities, they'll go nowhere. Or we could set up a concerted system of opportunities over a time period ranging from pre-school to college, but unless you can convince people that it's worth the effort, they won't make a difference.
philip1209 12y ago
I still feel offended that my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, is not need-blind despite its $5.7 Billion endowment.
- ridicter 12y ago
  Wash U alum here. I agree: unacceptable. I believe Wash U uses the term "need-aware." It aggressively recruits based on "merit" at the cost of socioeconomic diversity. While I was attending, Wash U had the most National Merit Finalists, largely because those students get at bare minimum a $2k/yr scholarship for showing up.[1] On the one hand, this has resulted in a significant increase in the standardized test performance of its student body [2]--and that has probably resulted in higher rankings overall. On the other hand, there's a simulated environment quality to being around people who are all so similarly well off. For example, every student from a 150k+ income family thinks of his/herself as middle class. Not much perspective. [1] http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-with-the-highest-sat-scores-2014-8?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-with-the-highest-sat...
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Given that funding for elite colleges is largely about social signaling, if the poor and rich were fairly represented by ability in these colleges, wouldn't the rich move their money out and set up new elite colleges?
- judk 12y ago
  This is really interesting. It would be great to see how this plays out, as there are "menu effects" and "reputation effects", intertia and such that would make it awkward to have society make this change without people publicly admitting what they are doing.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    This might be why you end up getting colleges within colleges within colleges. They are like a kind of social power fractal, that becomes crystallized in brick over time.
jostmey 12y ago
The problem should not fall on colleges - if someone grew up poor and that held them back then sadly I think it is too late for them - colleges should not have to reach down. Assistance needs to begin way before poverty stricken kids apply for college!!!! That's why I think we need more programs like Head Start. P.S. Teacher pay needs to increase while at the same time teachers must be tested for competency.
bjourne 12y ago
Question for the Americans: Does it really matter if you go to an "elite" college or a regular one? Where I'm from, about 8 universities offers roughly comparable Bc.S and Ph.D engineering programs. I'd guess that roughly 90% of the study material is the same. It's the same in many EU countries. No one, but an idiot, would claim that an engineer who studied in Luleå is more qualified than one who studied in Lund because of their choice of schools. But in the US, if you graduated from (expensive) school X you are objectively more qualified than if you graduated from (cheaper) school Y? Or if university programs are supposed to be equivalent across universities, cant you just lie and say you went to a brand-name university? Because it doesn't seem fair that someone who couldn't afford an expensive university should have his or her whole career retarded just because of that.
- fiatmoney 12y ago
  There is an enormous threshold effect once you hit the "elite" level of colleges, because it's where many industries heavily recruit. It's relatively easy to sleepwalk from Harvard into a career in finance or consulting, very difficult from even a very good state school. "Qualification" has nothing to do with it. That isn't true across all industries, of course.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  If you want to work for an elite company, you don't had a hands unless you go to one of their chosen schools. Lying is always a violation of your employment contract, so probably not the best course of action. The real ripoff is mid tier private schools.
  - sq1020 12y ago
    Exactly, I still have no idea why anyone in the right mind would want to go to a mid tier private school that no one has heard of yet still charges the same tuition as Stanford and Harvard!
- phurley 12y ago
  Objective qualifications are not the primary filter. The biggest advantages are from a higher level of networking, your fellow students are generally from a higher income bracket, have better connections, etc. Similarly the best paying firms tend to focus on the more prestigious universities as well. All of this leads to a situation where wealthy parents have the education and means to ensure that their children have the advantages to give them a better chance of going the more selective universities, adding another level of systemic injustice based on wealth.
ipince 12y ago
> Sustaining one poor student who needs $45,000 a year in aid requires $1 million in endowment devoted to that purpose I don't see how this makes sense. Why does it require over 5x of what you would expect by multiplying cost per year times number of years??
- samatman 12y ago
  The endowment is invested, and the dividend supports the student. This quote assumes a 4.5% yearly return on investment. If the institution spent the endowment directly, they would shortly no longer have it.
thrush 12y ago
Shouldn't we be more concerned with the frequency of poor people becoming not poor? Frankly, I'm not convinced that going to college, potentially accumulating debt, and not having a guarantee of a job is really the best strategy for someone near or below the poverty line. Perhaps there are other avenues available that promise or at least offer positive outcomes that don't require a college education.

84 points by _RPM 12y ago

One problem is that the poor and highly qualified are mostly white kids from flyover country and to a lesser extent recent Asian immigrants, both of which are ethnic anti-priorities for colleges.

smeyer 12y ago
I don't have statistics on hand, but my experience as a Harvard undergrad (class of 2013) was that the less wealthy students at the school were more economically diverse than the more wealthy students. Any efforts by Harvard to increase racial diversity and increase economic diversity would likely work hand in hand.
- gnarbarian 12y ago
  I would bet that's because there are far more scholarships available for poor minorities.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - hkmurakami 12y ago
    Hmm, I'm not so certain. My alma mater (Princeton) probably has similar scholarship structures to Harvard, and there, need based aid gets given out to every student who needs it, regardless of race. (iirc there is now a system where families making less than $180,000/yr only pay 10% of their household income for tuition) But you might be right that there may be additional scholarships that students can apply for (I remember a few friends writing letters to their scholarships annually to update them on what they've been up to as part of the scholarship deal, provided by bodies separate from the school itself -- presumably set up by alums with a set of stipulations as to who can qualify), may perhaps these may be skewed one way or another along various dimensions.
  - smeyer 12y ago
    Nope, I don't think that has anything to do with it. Harvard's policy is pretty similar to Princeton's described by hkmurakami. You can check out the calculations at [1], but the basic idea is that it's free up to 60k family income for Americans regardless of race then about 10% up to 180k income. This means that you can be making the median family income and still have an expected family contribution of $0 at Harvard. Obviously these sorts of levels of financial aid are only at the top few schools, but at places like Harvard and Princeton it really is independent of race. [1] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat...
    - Ntrails 12y ago
      One of the issues plaguing the UK is that the wealthy students go to private schools, which have the best facilities/teachers etc and are able to produce far far higher results. The argument becomes "when n% of the people with maximum A level grades come from private schools, that's the % you should expect at the top universities which gate by grades, regardless of their history". So I guess I have 2 questions: Do you have a similar issue where the wealthy buy better tuition to ensure higher results and get a better shot at the best colleges? Is there a scaling factor applied to those of different backgrounds to mitigate this?
      - smeyer 12y ago
        I think the answers to those two questions are roughly yes and yes. I get the impression a lower percentage of people here go to private schools in general (and could be totally wrong), but many do. There are also plenty of other opportunities that are easier to access with wealth. Even with public schools, wealthier people tend to live in school districts with better schools. There's no simple scaling factor because there's no numerical value to scale (admissions at places like Harvard are not just an objective formula of grades and test scores) but background is certainly taken into account. A kid going to a school without lots of AP classes isn't expected to take lots of AP classes, for example. A kid from a rough economic background who has to work a minimum wage summer job for financial reasons will get more understanding than the rich kid who chooses a summer job for spending money instead of volunteering in a research lab, and so on. As I mentioned in another comment, I think one challenge is that it is harder to differentiate kids without these opportunities. To use the AP class example, you can help separate kids from top schools by looking at how many/which AP classes they took and what scores they got on the tests. If you take a similarly sized cohort of kids at a school without AP classes, how do you differentiate them?
guelo 12y ago
This white "reverse racism" meme seems to have really caught on in the last decade or so. To the point that white people now think they are discriminated against more than black people[1]. Our culture sucks. [1] http://politicalblindspot.com/study-finds-white-americans-believe-they-experience-more-racism-than-african-americans/ http://politicalblindspot.com/study-finds-white-americans-be...
- refurb 12y ago
  No, it's not that white people think they are discriminated again more than black people. The idea is that discrimination based on race is bad regardless of who it is practiced against.
nooron 12y ago
Hey fiatmoney. I think you're concerned about some thing that a lot of people don't vocalize civilly, so I'm glad that you are. Though I don't work in admissions, I work alongside a number of people of that do. I've gone out of my way to ask about those "white kids from flyover country". I will elaborate on those of my alma mater here. Very few kids from rural school districts perform highly on standardized testing. Very few receive the encouragement (familial and cultural) to go to high-quality, distant schools. If you want to hear some horror stories about this from me, shoot me an email. I'd be happy to share them in private. Point being that even within its state, my large public school struggles to recruit from its rural parts. Contrary to what you assume, they actually do employ recruitment and affirmative action policies towards to the exact folks you're talking about -- predominantly poor and culturally disadvantaged rural people who are predominantly white.
- gnarbarian 12y ago
  I'm interested in hearing a few of these stories.
  - nooron 12y ago
    If you email me at jordan at birnholtz dot com, I will get right back to you. Hell, if you email me right now with your phone number, I'll even call you. I think these stories are worth telling, but I'm not going to compromise the privacy of my very close friends in the public forum without their consent.
    - enraged_camel 12y ago
      Couldn't you anonymize personally-identifiable information?
      - nooron 12y ago
        Reasonable question. I don't think I've made my motive for not sharing publicly very clear. That you'd parse their identities is a secondary concern to me (as I don't think you could). I'm more concerned about their feelings, since they could easily find this post (as my real name is tied to this account). While I think it's alright to anonymize and subsequently discuss my friends' lives in private, 1-to-1 discourse, I'm not ready to make their lives part of the public record with out their approval. Does that make sense, enraged_camel?
a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
Ron Unz found clear evidence that in the ivy league qualified poor whites and asians are actively discriminated against. Jews are disproportionately admitted. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
    This is obviously controlling for qualifications like test scores, dummy.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- tuananh 12y ago
  hence the word "rare" in the title.

staunch 12y ago

Poor people are likely as rare in elite Silicon Valley investor portfolios. The vast majority of investors today are from upper middle class backgrounds and educations. We know this isn't based on merit because they're almost universally bad at investing. But who makes the decision to invest in VCs? It's LP money managers with almost identical backgrounds.

johnnydayld 12y ago
"upper class"? As in aristocrats? Old money? I don't really think so. Maybe upper middle class.
- chc 12y ago
  We don't have aristocrats in the US. The term refers to people with wealthy backgrounds.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    "We don't have aristocrats in the US." Not yet.
  - alistairSH 12y ago
    The Kennedys and Bushes disagree with that assertion. ;)
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    Sure you do, you just call them dynasties. edit - There is loads of European aristocracy in power in the US. "The frequency with which royal blood has found its way into the White House is much higher than the share of the American population with links to British or European monarchs, which is estimated at less than 5 percent. In short, American Presidents have been at least six times more likely to have royal blood than the people who elected them." http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/05/us/bush-they-say-is-indeed-a-connecticut-yankee-from-king-henry-s-court.html http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/05/us/bush-they-say-is-indeed...

sitkack 12y ago

Thanks god. Last thing we need is actual meritocracy where people can cross class boundaries with hardwork and a bit of cunning. Harvard and Princeton are rubber stamp universities for the elite. GW Bush graduated from Harvard.

sp332 12y ago
Bush has an MBA from Harvard, which unlike many MBA programs, is pretty impressive. He got his BA in History from Yale, averaging a 77. (All according to Wikipedia.) Edit: I mostly agree with your post, but I don't think dragging Bush into the discussion is constructive.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Who knows how many of his papers he did himself? [Because usually wealthy drug abusing rich sons of prestigious fathers do all their hard work themselves right?]
bnolsen 12y ago
And your point is? A lot of lame people graduated from Harvard. A bunch of them. And they have no clue how economics work. 96% of political contributions from ivy league staff and faculty went to obama, not romney. Looks like GW was a yale grad, Obama harvard. Oops I stand corrected, GW has degrees from both.
nether 12y ago
thanks for the input, reddit. guess where ralph nader went. oh, and jill stein.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
santaclaus 12y ago
Quite a few nobel laureates are also associated with Harvard. [1] I'm sure one could cherry pick rich jokers from virtually any school. [1] http://www.harvard.edu/nobel-laureates http://www.harvard.edu/nobel-laureates

bnolsen 12y ago

What really matters: Are the most capable getting into elite colleges?

smeyer 12y ago
Do you think that it's rare that the poor are the most capable? Presumably, if the poor are underrepresented at these schools, they're missing out on a lot of potential people who are very capable. I studied at Harvard and certainly wish the student body were more economically diverse, as challenging of a problem as it is to solve. It can be very hard to identify highly capable high schoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds since they often don't go through the sort of differentiation that the wealthier high schoolers coming to schools like Harvard do (top high schools, academic summer programs, research at local universities, et cetera). And that's ignoring the problem of getting them to apply and attend. Edit: grammar
- nostrademons 12y ago
  By what metric, and over what timeframe? I went to Amherst, which has made a very concerted effort both to make an Amherst education affordable to low-income students (the school is free for people making under $60K/year, and has generous financial aid for the $60-100K range) and to recruit from low-income neighborhoods. I've heard it has been...challenging. It's very difficult to find students from low-income backgrounds who can handle a freshman Amherst courseload. Heck, I found it quite difficult as well, and I came from a solid middle-class background, had aced my SATs, passed 8 AP tests, etc. The school has had to bump up remedial tutoring and study-skills courses particularly to low-income students. It's hard to catch up with 18 years of systemic advantages in one year. Now, I do think that over a lifetime many people who grew up poor are as capable or moreso than people who grew up rich. But it takes time, effort, and opportunity, and if any one of those is missing, it doesn't happen. College may provide the opportunity to students who put in the effort, but without time...they can't catch up. Students may put in a sustained effort over a long period of time (I think this may actually be the most effective approach, as opportunities tend to come to people who do this), but without opportunities, they'll go nowhere. Or we could set up a concerted system of opportunities over a time period ranging from pre-school to college, but unless you can convince people that it's worth the effort, they won't make a difference.

philip1209 12y ago

I still feel offended that my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, is not need-blind despite its $5.7 Billion endowment.

ridicter 12y ago
Wash U alum here. I agree: unacceptable. I believe Wash U uses the term "need-aware." It aggressively recruits based on "merit" at the cost of socioeconomic diversity. While I was attending, Wash U had the most National Merit Finalists, largely because those students get at bare minimum a $2k/yr scholarship for showing up.[1] On the one hand, this has resulted in a significant increase in the standardized test performance of its student body [2]--and that has probably resulted in higher rankings overall. On the other hand, there's a simulated environment quality to being around people who are all so similarly well off. For example, every student from a 150k+ income family thinks of his/herself as middle class. Not much perspective. [1] http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-with-the-highest-sat-scores-2014-8?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-with-the-highest-sat...

lotsofmangos 12y ago

Given that funding for elite colleges is largely about social signaling, if the poor and rich were fairly represented by ability in these colleges, wouldn't the rich move their money out and set up new elite colleges?

judk 12y ago
This is really interesting. It would be great to see how this plays out, as there are "menu effects" and "reputation effects", intertia and such that would make it awkward to have society make this change without people publicly admitting what they are doing.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  This might be why you end up getting colleges within colleges within colleges. They are like a kind of social power fractal, that becomes crystallized in brick over time.

jostmey 12y ago

The problem should not fall on colleges - if someone grew up poor and that held them back then sadly I think it is too late for them - colleges should not have to reach down. Assistance needs to begin way before poverty stricken kids apply for college!!!! That's why I think we need more programs like Head Start. P.S. Teacher pay needs to increase while at the same time teachers must be tested for competency.

bjourne 12y ago

Question for the Americans: Does it really matter if you go to an "elite" college or a regular one? Where I'm from, about 8 universities offers roughly comparable Bc.S and Ph.D engineering programs. I'd guess that roughly 90% of the study material is the same. It's the same in many EU countries. No one, but an idiot, would claim that an engineer who studied in Luleå is more qualified than one who studied in Lund because of their choice of schools. But in the US, if you graduated from (expensive) school X you are objectively more qualified than if you graduated from (cheaper) school Y? Or if university programs are supposed to be equivalent across universities, cant you just lie and say you went to a brand-name university? Because it doesn't seem fair that someone who couldn't afford an expensive university should have his or her whole career retarded just because of that.

fiatmoney 12y ago
There is an enormous threshold effect once you hit the "elite" level of colleges, because it's where many industries heavily recruit. It's relatively easy to sleepwalk from Harvard into a career in finance or consulting, very difficult from even a very good state school. "Qualification" has nothing to do with it. That isn't true across all industries, of course.
Spooky23 12y ago
If you want to work for an elite company, you don't had a hands unless you go to one of their chosen schools. Lying is always a violation of your employment contract, so probably not the best course of action. The real ripoff is mid tier private schools.
- sq1020 12y ago
  Exactly, I still have no idea why anyone in the right mind would want to go to a mid tier private school that no one has heard of yet still charges the same tuition as Stanford and Harvard!
phurley 12y ago
Objective qualifications are not the primary filter. The biggest advantages are from a higher level of networking, your fellow students are generally from a higher income bracket, have better connections, etc. Similarly the best paying firms tend to focus on the more prestigious universities as well. All of this leads to a situation where wealthy parents have the education and means to ensure that their children have the advantages to give them a better chance of going the more selective universities, adding another level of systemic injustice based on wealth.

ipince 12y ago

> Sustaining one poor student who needs $45,000 a year in aid requires $1 million in endowment devoted to that purpose I don't see how this makes sense. Why does it require over 5x of what you would expect by multiplying cost per year times number of years??

samatman 12y ago
The endowment is invested, and the dividend supports the student. This quote assumes a 4.5% yearly return on investment. If the institution spent the endowment directly, they would shortly no longer have it.

thrush 12y ago

Shouldn't we be more concerned with the frequency of poor people becoming not poor? Frankly, I'm not convinced that going to college, potentially accumulating debt, and not having a guarantee of a job is really the best strategy for someone near or below the poverty line. Perhaps there are other avenues available that promise or at least offer positive outcomes that don't require a college education.