Rich Get Richer in US Higher Education
https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-the-Admissions-Game-the/247483
The article In the Admissions Game, the Rich Keep Getting Richer details the manifestation of the ‘rich get richer’ model within the context of college admissions in the United States. The discussion begins with an explanation of the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s decision to remove a provision from its Code of Ethics and Professional Practice that stated “colleges must not offer incentives exclusive to students applying or admitted under an early-decision application plan.” While the decision was allegedly made in order to protect the best interest of the consumer, i.e. the prospective college student, it ignores the question of which consumers will benefit, and which will suffer, from such a change in acceptable practice. As is often the case in such situations, it is highly likely that the more-affluent applicants/consumers will benefit, and the less-affluent ones will suffer.
Such a system is clearly an example of the ‘rich get richer’ model, which was discussed in class, for a number of reasons. Firstly, affluent students are more likely to have access to college counselors who will tell them that acceptance rates are higher for early-decision applicants, and they are more likely to be able to afford to visit several campuses across the country when deciding where to apply early. This, combined with the fact that colleges want to lock in as much revenue as possible during the early-decision process, means that affluent students are likely to be favored as they will bring in the most tuition. Furthermore, the more spots in colleges that are filled up by early-decision applicants, the fewer that remain available to regular-decision applicants, who are more likely to be low-income students. Not only do early-decision incentives disadvantage less-affluent students in the admission process, these incentives may continue to disadvantage them over the course of pursuing their degrees. For example, those with early-decision benefits are given priority in enrolling in high demand courses at institutions like High Point University. As the current generation of more-affluent early-decision students graduate and continue to lead lives of relative wealth and success thanks to the quality of their college education, the less-affluent may struggle to gain upward mobility, both phenomena that feed into subsequent generations of college applicants and produce a domino effect. If this were to be modeled graphically, one might represent universities, more-affluent students, and less-affluent students in three distinct categories of nodes where edges between nodes might represent interactions that allow for upward mobility or future success. In such a graph, those nodes representing the richer students would keep getting linked to by those that represent universities, whereas the nodes representing the poorer students would receive significantly fewer in-links in the network. Alternatively, if this were to be modeled probabilistically, it is likely that there would be a power law-based probability distribution that models the number of affluent students who benefit from college to the fullest extent, versus the number of less-affluent students who do not, over time.
Based on the discussion in the article, it seems clear that the decision made by the NACAC enables the current higher education system to propagate inequity, which has serious implications regarding success and opportunity for those who attend college. The reader of the article is left wondering whether such a decision will be allowed to stand on grounds of ethics, and if so, whether such a system is sustainable.