In the Admissions Game, the Rich Keep Getting Richer

Michael Morgenstern for The Chronicle

For the second consecutive year, students admitted to High Point University through the early-decision process will receive, among other benefits, first choice of dormitory rooms, early move-in, first priority in class selection, and a “guaranteed parking space for your entire freshman year!” And then there’s the autographed book: Whether it’s signed by “the co-founder of Apple, the first CEO of Netflix, or one of America’s best corporate trainers,” an autographed book by one of the university’s in-residence faculty members is complimentary.

Perhaps other colleges and universities, inspired by the gauntlet thrown down by High Point, will now add free car washes and a personal valet to carry your books to class — for your entire freshman year!

The growing use of enticements to apply early was made likely when NACAC — the National Association for College Admission Counseling — voted recently to remove several provisions from its Code of Ethics and Professional Practice, including the rule that “colleges must not offer incentives exclusive to students applying or admitted under an early-decision application plan.” It will not, I suspect, take long for more institutions to dive headfirst into the murky ethical waters created by the NACAC vote.

Though NACAC voted almost unanimously to strip this provision and others from its code, it did not do so out of a belief that the code was wrong or outdated. Rather, it did so under pressure from the Justice Department, which has for some time been investigating NACAC for possible antitrust violations. Apparently the Justice Department believes that allowing incentives for early decision, as well as allowing attempts to lure away students who have already made deposits at other colleges, is more advantageous to the consumer than the prohibitions against such practices in the now-gutted ethical guidelines. Faced with the possibility of a long and costly legal battle, NACAC took the only step it could to preserve its existence.

There are multiple problems with the position of the Justice Department — where have I heard that before? — but chief among them is the fact that it ignores the question of which consumers will benefit, and which suffer, from those changes in acceptable practice. The answer, as seems almost always to be the case, is that more-affluent consumers (a word the department surely prefers to “students”) will benefit and less-affluent consumers will suffer. We do seem to have a social propensity to do this again and again.

In his recent, outstanding book, the journalist Paul Tough notes that “researchers have found that for a variety of reasons, early admissions benefits affluent students more than middle-class or poor ones.” The reasons are not difficult to determine. Affluent students are more likely to be savvy about the college-admissions process, more likely to have access to counselors who will tell them that acceptance rates are higher for early-decision applicants, more likely to be able to afford campus visits to help them settle upon an early-decision choice. And colleges are looking to lock in as much revenue during the early-decision process as possible and therefore are likely to favor the applicants who bring in the most tuition. That personalized parking spot has value only if you show up for your freshman year with a car.

The more spots in selective colleges that are filled by early-decision applicants, of course, the fewer that are available to applicants in the regular-decision pool, which is where most low-income students are likely to find themselves. This is, for selective colleges, a zero-sum game, and ramping up the incentives to apply early decision will add yet another obstacle to the college path for those who are already most ill-served by a system filled with inequities.

Incentives like those offered by High Point will not only disadvantage less-affluent students in the admissions process; they will disadvantage them as they pursue their degrees. One of the most daunting challenges for first-year students at any college is finding spots in the courses most in demand. Thanks to High Point’s early-decision benefits package, affluent students will also skip to the front of the registration line. Guess who ends up in the back.

The same will hold true for the process of “poaching,” or attempting to entice students who have already paid a deposit to change their minds. The chief enticement will be additional financial aid, and one can be certain that the vast majority of this aid will not be need-based but will be misleadingly named “merit aid” and offered to students who will improve net-tuition revenue: in other words, the same students who benefit most from early decision. For affluent students, eating the cost of a $250 or $500 deposit fee in order to change colleges will be insignificant; for students with the fewest resources, it might be impossible.

Tough describes the current “rich get richer” system of higher education as both “unsustainable” and “unstoppable.” The change in the NACAC ethical code has, I fear, made it even more unstoppable. Whether it is sustainable remains to be seen.