Photo by Zhanhui Li on Unsplash
My town has always had a good track record of getting its smartest students into the Ivy League colleges, but parents tell me that those kids aren’t getting into the most elite college anymore. Now, those kids are still doing really well. Maybe they are going to Dartmouth or University of Michigan instead of Princeton. And the students who used to go to Dartmouth or University of Michigan are now going to still really great colleges, just one or two rungs down on the ranking ladder.
While the competition is heating up among the private colleges and flagship colleges — 72 of those schools have acceptance rates of less than 20 percent — other colleges are struggling to get warm bodies in the door. 1 in 5 students at community collegesaren’t even 18. They’re high school students looking for trade classes or advanced classes to prepare them for college.
A few years back, I wrote an article for The Atlantic about Sweet Briar College, a small, private college on the edge of bankruptcy. Since then things have gotten worse for those small colleges and community colleges, because they don’t have enough students to pay the tuition, while dealing with rising costs and dwindling donations. In the coming years, higher education is going to be marked by intensity at the top and closed doors at the bottom.
Read more at Apt. 11D, the newsletter
Apt. 11d 
Closing schools doesn’t necessarily closed doors. There’s just fewer kids, so fewer seats are needed.
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I have seen the results of more recent admissions cycles in which kids haven’t gotten in where they thought they might (or at least that where friends and family thought they might — parents and counselors know more); the people I know are trying to support their children in the schools they are going to. A few support heavy handedly (posting stats about the school) others more gracefully (posting info about its mission, vision, values).
“Are they are going to readjust their goals and expectations and learn to embrace a world without an Ivy League pedigree?
Some are re-adjusting their goals if they acquire sufficient knowledge of how acceptances have shifted (especially how they are influenced by other factors, including underrepresented demographics, legacy status, recruited athletes, full-pay, grades, . . . .). The MOCO (Montgomery county https://moco360.media/2022/09/13/here-are-the-colleges-where-bethesda-area-high-school-grads-applied-got-accepted-and-enrolled/) web site shows those stats for Montgomery County and it is informative: the pandemic created a lot of chaos, but it’s notable to see the increase (2021 is nearly double the number in 2020) in apps at, for example, a high rated SLAC that is need-blind, meets full need, and SAT optional (the number of students accepted did not go up). The number of apps at Harvard stayed roughly the same, on the other hand. Excellent students who apply to the Ivy+ schools are being told to consider other schools. Some will definitely pursue the Ivy name/brand in subsequent education, potentially more aggressively.
“Or are they going to find new ways to game the system and engineer perfect, yet quirky, young people, who will catch the eye of jaded admission directors?”
You can’t truly be perfect and quirky, though parents will certainly try to help shape their kids kids to be perfectly imperfect and acceptably quirky. The current trends (including the supreme court case) have thrown a lot of randomness in the system. Given that I am actually pro random (I think that’s how you get some quirky kids and diversity)
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The worst part is having to drive around Ohio more because you need to apply more places.
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Thinking about community colleges, which I care about, I think that if they are offering vocational education (in the form of, this is teaching you a skill that an employer needs) the collaboration between the employer & the school needs to be stronger, both in design and funding. If T-mobile wants students with certain skills, they should be paying for the developing of those skills and offering jobs to those who enroll; ferry systems that need maritime workers need to be allocating some of their budget towards teaching them, with a promise of jobs, and not just general statements about staffing levels (also true about teachers, nurses, etc); some of that vocational education has to be funded by government anyway, but we should think about what pot of money it’s coming from. Some of it should be coming from those who want the trained labor.
I do think there is a short term community college effect of people getting jobs that pay well enough (even if not well) and not going to school. As I’ve said, my kiddo has a job at a summer camp at $21/hour for 40 hours a week (and it is his first paying job); some of his friends are finding similar jobs and other are getting paid better in service jobs with tips, where they are making $30-$35/hour. These kids are in college, but there are non-college 19 yo in those jobs, too. Minimum/entry wages that high mean less of an incentive to go to CC (even if tuition is free).
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“The most elite colleges must increase seats to educate more young people.”
But they won’t – they have literally no incentive to do so. The more competition for places, the happier they are.
And, part of what makes them ‘elite’ *is* their small size – changing to be something like Texas A&M or Rutgers removes this advantage both perceptually (they are seen as less exclusive, so can’t charge as much) and in reality (small size encourages meaningful relationships with professors)
A more important change would be deciding what the point of attending a college is.
A large chunk of late-teens early twenties have decided that the grind of paying off student loans for decades isn’t worth the (theoretical/possible) benefit of a higher-paying job in 10 years time.
And, they may well be right. A plumber earns considerably more than a teacher here in NZ (and I suspect in the US as well). And you get paid to learn (apprentice salaries are still more than a beginning teacher)
There *are* of course vocational degrees (you need uni to be a doctor) – but the arts or fine arts degrees for the masses – may be going the way of the dodo – except for the wealthy who can effectively pay for their kids to have the social benefits of attending university.
I don’t have a particularly academic kid (he’s smart, but just not interested in any of the arts subjects, and pretty commercially focused). He’s still undecided about uni; but if he goes, it will be to do a vocational degree (food science) – which have businesses queueing up to employ graduates right after graduation – at very nice salaries, indeed. If he were looking at an Arts or a Fine Arts, or even a Commerce degree – I’d be sitting down with him, doing the math of the cost, and possible return.
And, I’m saying this as someone with a BA and a Masters (the latter a vocational degree). But the economics today, are very different to the ones which existed 35 years ago – when I was making those decisions)
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It’s true that non-tuition dependent colleges (i.e. ones where the majority of students receive aid and that is a promise, which include, just to sample a few, Harvard, Brown, Stanford, Swarthmore, Amherst) don’t have an incentive to increase the number of students. They have, though, but by 10%. Even 10% is a struggle because the model of those schools is that students are resident on campus.
Each have been building more dorms and living spaces. But to have numbers like UCLA, Rutgers, U Washington, they’d have to increase by 5-10x the number of students. Given that they already do not charge tuition to many students, I don’t think it’s correct to blame the unwillingness to grow their model to that size solely on remaining selective.
I think a real solution for is for UCs and other favored state schools to grow.
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“Elite” is all perception, though, isn’t it? I don’t see a need for the elite colleges to grow, especially as the number of college applicants is decreasing.
Some of the perceived difficulty comes from gamesmanship on both sides. The Common App has made it easy to apply to lots of colleges, although the students can only attend one. So I would presume the top students are able to collect many acceptances, thus decreasing the chances for their near competitors in the same high schools to be accepted.
By the way, that’s one way private high schools increase acceptance rates at the most competitive colleges. If you’re accepted to Harvard in the early round, you are strongly discouraged from applying to other top colleges. You can’t “prestige shop” at the expense of your peers.
Another method of improving acceptance rates is to make the students research colleges and themselves. If you want to go into medical research, you’re applying to Johns Hopkins or Cornell, not Harvard (in my opinion.) Ideally, students end up with a list of colleges they want to attend, and can afford, that offer them programs that fit their talents.
On the other side, many colleges use Early Decision to lock in a class. And I don’t blame them! It’s all very well to fantasize that every strong student should see their dreams fulfilled, but admissions departments have to admit a class that will show up in the fall.
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” I don’t see a need for the elite colleges to grow, especially as the number of college applicants is decreasing” This is a pushback comment. I think the large and prosperous and highly tax-advantaged hedge fund (with a small eleemosynary educational component) called Harvard University should be pushed into spreading its wealth over four-five times as many students. Branch campuses! Harvard-Chillicothe! Princeton-Biloxi! Yale-Spokane! Dartmouth-Fresno! They all say, ‘we could fill our classes five times over with students who could do the work’ – okay, make them do it!
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I’m not a Harvard booster, but they do offer the Harvard Extension School. https://extension.harvard.edu
They all say, ‘we could fill our classes five times over with students who could do the work’ – okay, make them do it!
Why? To make ambitious parents proud? I don’t see a real reason to do this, other than animus against a small number of colleges. I don’t think the education you get at the Ivies is superior to good colleges elsewhere. It certainly isn’t superior in scientific/technical fields.
If the Ivies were to radically increase their size, it would be deadly to the next level of colleges in prestige.
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Northeastern has been working that model (we have a local branch & know someone going to Northeastern Oakland (which was a take over of the former single-sex Mills college).
https://graduate.northeastern.edu/our-campus-network/
NYU is playing with global campuses
Yale played in Singapore and failed
I do think educational institutions should have requirements about spending from their foundations (as non-ed foundations do). And, building branches would be a way to spend that money.
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Official rule that I know of (because they can’t tell you where to apply) is that if you are accepted early to one of the few schools that are “Early Action” (and do not require you to commit to going there (private): Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, U Chicago or Caltech & MIT — they) the counsellor will write only one more letter to another college.
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Yglesias (Dalton, 1999, Harvard, 2003), son of a Newsweek writer and a screenwriter, wrote in his Subtack (13,000 subscribers, $80/) last week “The fact of the matter is that whatever privileges I may have benefitted from in life, a big part of the reason I’m successful is that I am, in fact, much better than the average person at writing high volumes of cogent articles”
He goes on to compare the related skills and the randomness that plays a role in having a particular skill at the right time. He struck gold because he was much better at that subgenre of writing when blogs became a method of communicating. The flaw is thinking that the benefits of the various privileges on amplifying his ability means that he was “much better than average”. I’ll give him “better than average), but the rest could have been name and connections (which included a NYT article published in 1999, when he was a HS student).
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It’s the amplification of that “better than average” that schools like Harvard provide, by providing their brand and connections and recognition. There’s a line of research on this with NIH grant awards. Getting a grant can be a measure of future success not because the best grant is chosen, but because having the grant than provides the resources to do the work that leads to success (and, in some cases, the brand, as well). A rule of thumb some advocate is that it’s possible to divide the group of applicants into quartiles but dividing the top quartile further, ranking individually, to pick the top quintile in that quartile? not meaningful.
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NIH grants are great because they allow you to hire data analysts. But not great because they don’t let you pay those data analysts much.
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I’d say having writers as parents would be an enormous advantage. Most parents who are not writers would not believe that one could make a living as a writer. The “average person” may not even start out on the career path.
It’s all a perception thing. Did Harvard help him? Who knows? The thing I don’t accept is to assume that very successful people who attended Harvard are more successful because they attended Harvard. The selection process is important.
The most successful person I know didn’t attend college.
The NIH grant example is interesting, because medical research, as an offshoot of medicine, is part of an extremely hierarchical, gatekept system. The average age of the applicant with a first grant is what, 44? https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2021/11/18/long-term-trends-in-the-age-of-principal-investigators-supported-for-the-first-time-on-nih-r01-awards/
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That’s probably older than it should be, but there are a series of less important grants for those starting out. An R01 isn’t the start of a medical research career. It’s a “you’re someone” moment, like tenure or becoming a partner.
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“An R01 isn’t the start of a medical research career. It’s a “you’re someone” moment, like tenure or becoming a partner.”
Not really, because of the increasing number of positions at medical centers that are “WOT” (meaning without tenure for reason of funding at the University I know that uses the term). For these faculty, the university does not having any funding for the position and the RO1 grant pays the faculty member’s salary. So, one needs to keep renewing those RO1s or funding new ones to keep ones to pay not just for the research, but for the principal investigator’s salary. In the olden days, think, people who started their careers in the 1960s and 1970s, those RO1s were reliably renewable, but in the 90s and 2000s, the number of such faculty increased and faculty wrote multiple RO1s to get one renewed, and, sometimes, didn’t get renewed at all.
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I thought the younger faculty were using K01 & K02, but plus drawing some salary from senior people but practicing medicine for much of their time. But that may have just been because the guy I worked for had so much grant money.
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And industry-funded grants. I worked for 15 years with faculty with “tenure” but no salary if they didn’t get grants. I didn’t follow all the money, but the accounting people
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I didn’t finish that sentence. I got distracted.
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The age increase might have more recently stabilized, but, NIH has mightily struggled with that “age to first grant” number and now offers “Early Stage Investigator” paylines that are different than for more established faculty (ESI is defined as time from PhD, not age, but they receive funding with scores by the evaluators that are lower than for established — meaning longer from their PhD investigators).
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And, of course, the older investigators complain. Allocation of limited resources always creates winners and losers and there are no fair ways to measure merit in all the different ways that might be important when differentiating among the best .
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“It’s all a perception thing. Did Harvard help him? Who knows? The thing I don’t accept is to assume that very successful people who attended Harvard are more successful because they attended Harvard.”
The Chetty study (mentioned in the article about Ivy advantage) tried to answer the question by comparing (for the Ivy+ schools) the trajectories of those who were admitted v not admitted off the waitlist (the schools gave them the data — including examining whether there differences in their applications). The Chetty study concludes that there was an Ivy+ advantage in top 1% salaries and “prestigious” hiring.
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I need to really dive into the Chetty study. Here’s another analysis. https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/despite-what-they-say-elite-colleges?r=2l8ui&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
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I was convinced by the analysis on “affirmative acceptance” of rich applicants in Chetty’s work, but not by the increases in “success”. Henderson summarizes as 60% more likely to be in 1%, increased representation at elite grad school, and 3x more likely to be working in prestive firms. The problem was that the salary was extrapolated (because his subject pool was still not in peak earning years) & the prestige firms seemed to be circular (he defined prestige firms as the ones that hire from the Ivy+, mostly).
I liked the idea referenced (Demmet’s?) as buying lottery tickets for unlikely outcomes (say for supreme court). Harvard is an extra lottery ticket and of course people without a ticket at all can’t win, but Harvard isn’t a statistically important number of extra tickets compared to those who get one.
If the people without a degree at all are the ones without a lottery ticket, I do think we need to be working on giving them a ticket, rather than making them all go to colleges that may not be the right opportunity for them. I’m not sympathetic to lies but I always just feel sad when someone feel a need to lie about their college not angry.
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