Raj Chetty, David Deming, and John Friedman published a study this week that seeks to determine whether wealthy people are disproportionately enrolled in elite universities, and if so, why. This has been a topic of intense interest in this debate for as long as I have been involved in it, and I think this study will help resolve some of the long-standing controversies in that debate.
First of all, while it is true that children from the wealthiest families have higher academic performance than the population as a whole, this does not fully explain their higher representation in top universities. . After adjusting for test scores, the wealthiest children enroll at more than twice the rate of her overall population. Remarkably, this enrollment increase is seen at the 12 Ivy Plus schools analyzed in this study, but not at major public universities.
Contrary to what some may think, the glut of wealthy individuals at top universities is not solely or primarily driven by legacy orientation. The paper finds that after controlling for test scores, about 30 percent of surplus-rich attendees are explained by traditional preferences, while the remaining 70 percent are explained by higher application rates, higher admission rates, better non-academic credentials, and athletes. will be explained according to your preference.
If we remove application and admission rates from the equation and leave only factors related to how universities make admissions decisions, traditional preferences account for 46 percent of surplus affluent attendees, while better non-wealth Academic qualifications account for 30 percent, followed by athlete preference. the remaining 24 percent.
There has been a long-standing debate about how much weight to place on test scores over grades and non-academic factors. One common view emerging on the left is that test scores can be enhanced, if not completely replaced, by more holistic considerations, such as personal statements, extracurricular activities, and recommendations. It should be. This view appears to be primarily motivated by the belief that such expansion would benefit children from poor families.
Another view is that wealthy people have more information and are more strategic about building their college resumes, so they tend to accumulate better recommendations, more extracurricular activities, and even better grades. Because of this, these overall considerations actually favor the wealthy.
This study suggests that another view is correct. When comparing students with similar test scores, all other considerations favor the rich, including academic evaluations (grades), non-academic evaluations (extracurriculars), career guidance counselor recommendations, and teacher recommendations. Therefore, extracurricular classes and recommendations are particularly advantageous to the rich.
If the goal is to eliminate the extent to which rich kids are overrepresented in top universities relative to their test scores, this study shows that there are some fairly easy ways to make that happen. points out that it exists. You can zap Legacy and Athlete Preferences right away. Non-academic factors such as recommendations and extracurriculars may be significantly reduced or eliminated entirely. Other targeted incentives could increase application and enrollment rates among non-wealthy groups.
However, this is not the real goal of top universities. These schools already have far more qualified applicants than capacity. If you want to create a more socio-economically balanced class, you can already do so from your current applicant pool. They choose not to do so because part of their goal is to run the country's elite families through their institutions in order to increase their wealth and power in society.
As such a large proportion of the country's ruling class enrolls through these institutions, it is no surprise that they are subject to intense scrutiny. Anything that has to do with the creation and reproduction of the ruling class should be of interest to the public because it affects everyone.
However, many people seem to be interested in these institutions, even though in reality this is not the case. Because we believe they are an important part of the higher education system. The study found that the 12 Ivy Plus schools had an average entering class of 1,650 students, admitting about 157 more wealthy children than should be determined by test scores alone. This means that among these schools, approximately 1,884 seats are misallocated to the wealthy each year. By comparison, approximately 4 million children enroll in undergraduate institutions each year.
The kids who are elbowed out of the 1,884 unjustly rich kids continue to attend college only at 98th percentile institutions, not 99th percentile institutions. Although there is no difference in the quality of the educational services they receive, there is a difference in the prestige, status, and career opportunities offered by the educational institutions.
Egalitarian reforms to the higher education system should focus on reducing selectivity and weakening the distinction between top universities and other universities. Replacing thousands of people in the top percentile of a university system, even if it has some effect, is unlikely to do much to create an equal or just society.
