The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates
 | The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates Daniel Golden Date: 2006-09-05 — DVD / VHS Rating: |
This book delves farther into a topic that really doesn't get enough press: admissions preferences, and who really gets left behind.
Lost over the years in the endless debates about affirmative action and quota systems is the debate about legacy preference, children of major donors, celebrity status and yuppie sports athletes. All of these groups get preferential treatment when applying to this country's top schools that meets -- and in most cases exceeds -- any advantage granted to minorities or poorer children. The result is an America where he vast majority of the so-called first-tier schools are less institutions of excellence and more like giant clubs for the rich and powerful. And this exclusivity gets passed down from generation to generation of rich people.
Golden estimates that about 25% of the students at the nation's top universities got in because of preferential treatment. Among them, the number of non-affirmative-action cases FAR outnumbers the number allowed in by affirmative action. But where is the outrage?
Any indignation has been buried under a tidal wave of tradition, fear and greed. Schools are afraid to change outdated policies such as legacy preference, tuition waivers for faculty and high-donor admits because they donb't want to incur the wrath of those well-off persons who they solicit each year for donations.
Unfortunately, this reliance on aristocracy over meritocracy breeds a few negative consequences: one, every slot taken by a legacy prevents someone of lesser socioeconomic means from 'joining the club.' Two, every gifted student pushed out by a 'special case' might have brought a lot more not just to the elite university, but to the world. Three, the supposedly-idealistic framework of college admissions and academic achievement gets shot to pieces in favor of favoritism. Finally, gifted Asians get totally fucked by this system. If you ever wondered EXACTLY why you've met so many average people who attended some of the nation's top universities, look no farther than this book. Golden has many stories to tell about specific admissions offices at schools such as Harvard, Duke, Notre Dame and Brown.
Golden describes Asians as "The New Jews." Just as schools went overboard figuring out legal policies that could be used to keep Jews out decades ago, stereotypes and hidden standards are being used to depress the over-representation of Asians on college campuses. This has the unintended effect of improving second-tier schools, as they will gladly accept high-achieving Asian students.
Many are under the false assumption that athletic scholarships and preferences favor poor minorities. Actually, the opposite is true: Title IX caused the NCAA to make many female sports clubs into varisty sports, such as golf, hockey, tennis, lacrosse, polo, squash, crew, fencing, equestrian events and the like. These sports are almost exclusively accessible only to the wealthy, thanks to costs of lessons and equipment. And these teams far outnumber the numbers of athletes playing economically accessible sports: football, basketball, track/field, softball, soccer, and cross-country. Even worse, Title IX has proven to freeze out even more disadvantaged students in favor of wealthy, connected ones. Many top colleges responded to Title IX by adding aristocratic women's sports teams to the varsity ledger instead of expanding programs for more accessible sports.
In fact, the supposedly-academic Ivy League schools have 30 or more sports teams - twice the national university average. And they recruit for all of them, giving athletes admissions preferences. The result? Across the nation, any given university's jock population tends to be more white, more wealthy and more socially-homogenous than their school's average student.
You may wonder what can be done about this. Well, Golden saves some examples of schools who operate a more merit-based system for the end. He describes policies at CalTech, Berea and Copper Union as ideal models for how admissions are supposed to work. Instead of essentially selling admissions spaces for cash and prestige, these school solicit donations from non-alums and the government simply based upon their sheer excellence and mission. Faculty at these schools don't expect their kids to get in. And because the missions of these schools are so specific (for instance, none of them have business or law schools), they do not have to cope with alumni who wield their influence and money like a club because they expect preferential treatment for their family members as a birthright.
Because this is a book review, I now need to disclose the negative aspects of the read itself. Truth be told, there's not much in the way of hard evidence here. Golden writes repetitive story after repetitive story about seemingly-underserving, well-connected people and juxtaposes them with stories of good-sounding, high-achieving kids who didn't get into their school of choice. This comprises about 85% to 90% of the book's content, and over time it starts sounding less like a critical analysis and more like speculative gossip. There's no way to know for sure why some people got in over others, except for certain blatant cases of legacy preference.
But to play devil's advocate, what data is Golden supposed to draw from? Colleges guard this information very carefully. It's not like there are a plethora of admissions studies to draw from that highlight the unfairness of the admissions process. If there is, universities aren't exactly tripping over themselves to provide it. Still, the lack of substantive data is trying at times.
The other problem is, of course, Golden's proposed solutions to these problems. Obviously, these preferences are at least as unfair as affirmative action, if not more so. At the same time, not every school can rely on the unaffiliated donor largesse that Caltech, Berea and Cooper Union do. Many schools are bigger, lack a distinguished niche, and cater to people who end up in professions where tremendous amounts of ego are required. How are these schools supposed to produce such a radical shift in culture? Finally, how does he know that ending all preferences (aside from slight nods to athletes and affirmative action) won't simply result in even more middle- and lower-class applicants being left out in the cold?
Golden's most powerful response to this problem is probably one he only dedicated a couple of lines to: once parents become accustomed to the fact that they cannot buy or coach their families into their schools of choice, they will donate to other universities and other causes for better reasons. Parents are only so disappointed in negative decisions on their children today because they expect preference. Take away that expectation, and you take away the potential firestorms.
Regardless of the books' flaws, it is both thought-provoking (and probably as well-researched as it can be given the subject matter). If you want to take the time to learn a different spin on one of America's most controversial issues, The Price of Admission isn't a bad place to start.
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