How Elite Colleges Divide Us? A Case Study in the First Year at a Public K-12 School and the Effects on Admissions, Academic Progress, and Education

These effects have been well known for at least 20 years because of the research that shows a strong bias from early admissions in favor of the wealthy. No elite college seems willing to give up any ground in their competition for status.

In this context, where the bar for admissions is set so high, where privilege is far from constant, where the pressures on students are greater than ever, and where many students are undertaking a lifetime of debt in pursuit of their degree, weed-out courses do not distinguish students on merit alone.

A student whose high school didn’t offer advanced chemistry classes but who is the first in her family to attend college and works 20 hours a week to pay her bills would be like this. Imagine if this student didn’t have a laptop or the internet at her apartment that she would have to use her phone or computer to do her schoolwork. Now compare her to the kid who took multiple A.P. science classes, who has no financial obligations, and who has all the learning tools he needs. They may sit right next to each other in that orgo class, but their backgrounds place them miles apart.

Editor’s Note: Evan Mandery is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of “Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us.” A senior aide to President Barack Obama while he was in office, Michael Dannenberg works for non-profit College Promise campaign. The views expressed here are those of the authors. You can read more on CNN.

Fixing these kinds of inequities would take a massive shift in the way the country supports families and funds both public K-12 schools and higher education.

Changing the way we are: Early Decision and High-Energy Admissions at Private and Public Colleges in the 21st Century

The Ivy League and other elite colleges are sending offers of admission to students who applied through non- binding means such as early decision, which means that they pledge to attend a prospective school if accepted.

It wasn’t always this way. Only about a quarter of Harvard’s class was admitted early. By contrast, an astonishing 68% of Harvard’s Class of 2025 got into Harvard or another college early. What changed?

For one thing, until 2003, the U.S. News & World Report rankings placed great weight on what’s known in the higher ed business as “yield” – the percentage of admitted students who actually enroll. It is pointless to have an educational value if you are not competitive, and so elite colleges try to increase their rate. Predicting how likely each application was to enroll was more of a priority.

It isn’t widely known that this information. Harvard professor Christopher Avery likens the process to a game of blackjack on Mars, in which the players don’t know the rules of the game, and the colleges – the casinos in this metaphor – don’t make them known. Professional college advisers are the only repeat players who have the incentive to learn the nuances of the system. And almost none of those applicants can pledge to attend a college without seeing their financial aid package in advance, as early decision requires them to do.

The federal government can facilitate collective action by suspending antitrust law enforcement for colleges that want out. There’s precedent for this. Congress granted the medical-residency match program an antitrust exemption in 2004. Biden could simply order the Department of Justice to refrain from prosecuting any violations for a period of time.

The Republican Party proposed a excise tax on wealthy colleges to eliminate unfair admissions policies and enroll low-income students. In this effort, Biden could find an unlikely ally in Senator McConnell, who spearheaded an endowment tax exemption for Berea College in Eastern Kentucky, which accepts applications only from those whose family falls in the bottom two income-quintiles of US households.

If the federal government doesn’t act, states should ban early decision at public colleges and private colleges that do not guarantee grant aid, and not burden students with loan debt. New York state has legislation pending that can serve as a model.