John W. Weeks Bridge, Dunster House, Harvard University, Cambridge, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
America's most elite universities serve as gateways to positions of wealth and power. The 12 most prestigious private schools (the Ivy League plus the University of Chicago, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Duke University) account for only 0.8% of college students. But graduates of so-called “Ivy Plus” universities make up 13% of the highest earners and 12% of Fortune 500 CEOs.Ivy+ graduates are overrepresented in prestigious positions such as the U.S. Senate and the New York Times.
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Therefore, it is concerning that even when academic background is taken into account, students from wealthy families are more likely to attend Ivy+ schools. Some mid-career high school students with 99 pointsth By SAT or ACT percentile, about 10% attend Ivy+ universities. But nearly half of ultra-wealthy students with the same test scores attend one of the 12 most elite schools.
A new study by economists Raj Chetty, David Deming, and John Friedman uses several new data sets to investigate why. The authors found that students with wealthy parents enjoy a significant advantage in elite university admissions that cannot be explained by academic background alone. Additionally, graduates of these institutions receive significantly greater financial and non-financial rewards compared to similar college graduates who attended less prestigious schools.
The findings suggest that admissions to elite universities would be fairer if admissions officers relied more, rather than less, on academic factors such as SAT scores. But this study should also serve as a wake-up call for employers to focus less on a university's reputation and more on the qualifications of individual students when hiring.
Why do rich people attend Harvard University?
Income-based differences in students' admission rates to elite schools can be broken down into three stages of the college admissions process: submitting an application, receiving an offer of admission, and actually enrolling after receiving an offer.
The authors found that high-income students were slightly more likely to apply to Ivy+ colleges when standardized test scores were taken into account. Differences in application rates explain approximately 22% of the income-based differences in attendance rates.
In contrast, most of the gap is explained by enrollment rates. This means that high-income students who apply are more likely to receive an acceptance letter to an Ivy+ university. The preferences of the recruited athletes explain approximately 16% of the gap. Another 20% difference is due to the fact that admissions officers give wealthier students higher marks in non-academic aspects such as extracurricular activities. (Generally, wealthy students can afford sailing lessons.)
But the biggest single factor that gives wealthy students an advantage in admissions to elite universities is their preference for legacy applicants, the children of alumni. Holding other applicant characteristics constant, students whose parents attended the college are three times more likely to receive an acceptance letter than non-traditional applicants.
Legacy admissions could be a tool to secure donations from wealthy alumni. A mid-class applicant to an elite university improves her chances of admission by about three times if she is a legacy. However, legacy applicants at the top of the income distribution are five times more likely to be admitted. Legacy orientation explains 30% of the difference in elite college attendance by income.
The remaining gap is due to admission rates: Once admitted to an elite university, wealthier applicants are slightly more likely to be admitted, but only by a small amount. The authors believe this is largely due to wealthy students taking advantage of early decision, which requires admitted students to attend. Admission rates explain only 12% of the class-based disparities in elite university admissions. These facts suggest that, in the authors' view, “financial barriers are not the primary driver of differences in Ivy+ college attendance by parental income.”
Elite universities open doors to elite jobs
The authors then investigate how attending an elite university enables students to obtain high-paying, prestigious jobs. Directly comparing the work outcomes of students attending elite universities with their peers cannot isolate the influence of elite universities. That's because students who enroll in elite universities also differ on other dimensions, such as family wealth.
Instead, the authors pursue more sophisticated methods, such as comparing students who narrowly get into elite universities with similar students who narrowly fail. For students attending Ivy Plus schools, the authors both observe their later life outcomes and construct counterfactual life outcomes if they had instead attended the selected state's flagship university. To do. This allows the author to separate the effects of her Ivy-Plus university and the next best alternative university.
Somewhat counterintuitive, the authors found that for the typical student, the impact of attending an Ivy+ university is small. The average graduate of an Ivy Plus institution ranks him 79th.th Percentile of income as an adult. In a counterfactual scenario in which the typical student attends a selected state flagship university, she would ultimately finish 77th.th Income percentile instead.
However, Ivy+ universities have a much stronger influence on a student's chances of getting a job in the highest echelons of society. A student who attends one of the top universities is 44% more likely to reach the top 1% of the income distribution. Although the impact of Ivy+ schools is modest on average, it has a large impact at the end of student performance.
There are also non-monetary rewards. Students who attend Ivy+ universities are approximately twice as likely to attend elite graduate schools. Ivy+ graduates are also 173% more likely to work at a “top” company. A “top” company is defined as one that is attractive to graduates of elite universities but offers lower-than-average salaries. There's a reason so many journalists at The New York Times have Ivy League degrees.
Breaking the Ivy League Cartel
Ivy+ universities significantly favor wealthy applicants, even after accounting for differences in academic preparation. Graduates of elite schools not only hold coveted prestigious jobs and leadership positions, but are also overrepresented in the top 1% of the income distribution. Higher education advocates like to position universities as drivers of economic mobility, but Ivy+ schools are more of a hindrance. what to do?
College admissions should rely more on standardized tests. Critics argue that the SAT and ACT favor wealthy students who can afford to take test preparation courses. However, Chetty's research shows that wealthy students maintain an advantage in college admissions even after taking standardized test scores into account because they have advantages in non-academic qualities, such as being athletes or traditional status. It conclusively shows that
Therefore, placing more emphasis on standardized tests and less emphasis on non-academic factors would increase the socio-economic diversity of the entering class. In the extreme, randomly selecting an admitting class from all applicants with SAT scores above 1500 would result in elite college campuses having more low- and moderate-income students. However, elite universities are unlikely to do this because abandoning the priority of the children of wealthy graduates would hurt their bottom line. (In fact, most schools are going in the opposite direction.)
Expand the number of students in elite schools. Although the number of students attending four-year colleges has doubled over the past 40 years, most elite universities have not expanded their enrollment. Even if the factors considered in admissions remain the same, expanding enrollment would allow more low- and moderate-income students to pursue high-paying, prestigious careers, and leadership roles. It will be. Ivy Plus schools have enough qualified applicants to fill large entering classes.
But elite universities are unlikely to expand enrollment if they correctly believe that much of the value of a degree is tied to exclusivity. Arguably, the ability of elite schools to push their graduates into the top 1% depends primarily on brand strength. Elite employers know that Harvard and Yale degrees are in short supply, so they pay top dollar to acquire job applicants with Harvard and Yale degrees. Any reduction in college selectivity could shatter the illusion that Ivy+ degrees have any real added value over large state universities.
Let go of your irrational obsession with elite schools. Ivy League admissions committees are unlikely to change their tune. But the rest of us don't have to play along. Employers can skip the school name when scanning resumes and instead check a job applicant's other qualifications. The New York Times should be as considerate of University of Kansas graduates as it is of Ivy League graduates.
The fact that Ivy Plus admissions is highly dependent on non-academic factors such as parental wealth and inheritance makes an Ivy Plus degree a reliable indicator of academic excellence that most people believe It should prove that it is not. Employers may also consider abandoning their preference for name brands and hiring candidates based on their skills and experience. This would give graduates from all schools, not just those serving the wealthy, a chance at great careers.
Elite universities serve the elite and it will be difficult to change them. But the rest of us can deny their status as gatekeepers to positions of wealth and power. That is the most promising path to making higher education more equitable.
