‘Welcome to the Wild West’: The Competition for College Applicants Just Intensified

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They did it despite their reservations. They did it because they saw no other choice. Under pressure from the Justice Department, admissions officers and college counselors on Saturday voted to delete portions of their ethics code. And just like that, the rules of competition among colleges changed.

Previously, the National Association for College Admission Counseling, known as NACAC, barred colleges from offering incentives, such as special housing or better financial-aid packages, exclusively to applicants who apply under binding early-decision programs. The organization’s “Code of Ethics and Professional Practices” also said colleges must stop recruiting a student once he or she has submitted a deposit to another institution. And the code said colleges can’t solicit transfer applications from a previous applicant or prospect unless that student inquires about transferring. Now all three provisions are gone.

The changes made here at NACAC’s 75th national conference will inject even more uncertainty into the admissions realm. For one thing, the old calendar just went out the window: Because colleges now are free to pursue students who’ve committed elsewhere after the May 1 deposit deadline, financial-aid offers could keep flying all summer long. Poaching another institution’s students while devising ways to protect your own could become a familiar exercise for many enrollment leaders.

“Welcome,” one insider tweeted after Saturday’s vote, “to the Wild West.”

Colleges find themselves in this situation because of a dispute over two related questions: Do key provisions of NACAC’s ethics code restrain competition among colleges? And do those provisions help applicants or harm them?

Nearly two years ago, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether the code, with its long list of mandatory practices, violates federal antitrust laws. In a recent message to members, the association said the Justice Department interpreted some provisions restricting recruitment before or after May 1 as hindering students “who may be able to lower college costs if they remain subject to competition among colleges.”

One college official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations between the association’s members and the Justice Department, described the dialogue as frustrating. “We tried to explain that students should be free from pressure from the many players with a vested interest in the outcomes of those decisions,” the official said. “But the DOJ sees this purely through the lens of restraint of trade. They think they’re protecting applicants’ financial outcomes.”

Recently NACAC informed its members that the investigation threatened the organization’s future. Hoping to avoid costly litigation and burdensome requirements, the association’s leaders urged voting members to approve the removal of the three provisions.

Before the changes were approved — by a vote of 211 to 3 — Stefanie D. Niles, NACAC’s departing president, said she hoped the changes would be seen as “a good-faith compromise with the DOJ.” But it remains to be seen whether the changes will bring the investigation to a close. Just in case, NACAC’s members voted to grant its Board of Directors temporary authority to make changes in its bylaws in the event of “extraordinary legal circumstances.”

Special Incentives

Many admissions officials described the association’s move as disruptive to students and colleges alike. Johnny and Susie might not see a clear-cut finish line to the recruitment process on the back end. And they could see many more enticements to apply early on the front end.

NACAC’s president-elect, Todd Rinehart, who is vice chancellor for enrollment at the University of Denver, said he was most concerned about the eased restrictions on what colleges can offer to early-decision applicants: “I worry that instead of making an informed choice to apply early to their No. 1 college, some students will apply early somewhere just because they were offered special incentives.”

Last fall High Point University, in North Carolina, offered incentives through its website to students who applied for early decision. Those included “first priority” in choosing their housing and creating their class schedules, and moving in a day earlier than other students. Such offers, a no-no under the old policy, could become common.

That worries Louis L. Hirsh, a former director of admissions at the University of Delaware. After NACAC’s members cast their votes in a convention-center exhibit hall on Saturday, he sat several rows behind them, looking glum. “I just watched some of my own words disappear,” he said.

Hirsh, who is retired, helped lead the steering committee that overhauled NACAC’s ethics codes a few years ago. “You have to look at this process from the standpoint of a 17-year-old kid,” he said. “Our focus should be on how to make this process less stressful and more meaningful for students, who should not have colleges badger them after they’ve decided which college they’re going to. This document was created to protect people who are vulnerable, and that’s what the Justice Department missed.”

As NACAC’s annual conference ended, members discussed the need to explain the new rules to high-school seniors and their parents. Patrick J. O’Connor, associate dean of college counseling at Cranbrook Schools, in Michigan, planned to inform families via email and newsletter.

“We’ve got to let them know that the landscape has changed,” he said. “In this day and age, when cost is driving a big part of the discussion, it’s hard not to think that an extra $2,000 in July won’t reshape the college decision for some families.”

‘Market Disruption’

Many enrollment offcials were considering what, if any, changes they might make during this recruitment cycle. “Many of us are a little more sensitive to market disruption because of what happened this summer,” said Robert G. Springall, vice president for enrollment management at Muhlenberg College, in Pennsylvania.

A higher degree of “melt” — the proportion of committed students who don’t end up enrolling — this academic year already had prompted him to think harder about how to hold on to students who send deposits. “We now have an extra incentive,” Springall said, “to think about those strategies.”

Those strategies might include sending more messages to students who commit, moving affinity-building events for incoming freshmen from spring to summer, and connecting them with academic advisers sooner than before. Though Springall wasn’t inclined to increase Muhlenberg’s deposit fee — a strategy that other enrollment officials plan to adopt to deter poaching — he might give it some thought. “In this new environment,” he said, “we at least have to consider whether our deposit fee helps us or hurts us.”

In some corners of higher education, the changes in the ethics code were welcome. Officials at some NACAC member colleges, including art schools, said the ethics code had hindered their ability to compete with nonmember institutions that play by different rules. And some enrollment officials predicted that the effects of the changes wouldn’t be so dire.

Still, on many campuses, the prospect of a wilder Wild West in admissons surely will pose some bottom-line challenges, especially for tuition-dependent institutions that must scrap for each applicant they enroll.

“Colleges are going to have to spend more energy and resources just to hold on to their class,” said Ken Anselment, dean of admissions and financial aid at Lawrence University, in Wisconsin. “They’ll have to think about how much money they might have to set aside for offers that come later. And it could change the way some institutions think about how to price themselves in the first place.”

Many members of NACAC went home from the conference feeling that their association, for understandable reasons, had just kicked itself in the teeth. Anselment shared many of his colleagues’ concerns about the revised ethics code, but he saw reason for optimism, too.

“Many folks out there understand that we straddle the space between the best interests of the student and the best interests of the institution,” he said. “Even without an external ethics document to police human nature, I still think there are enough of us who will say, ‘Man, if we do this, it won’t be good for this student.’”

Eric Hoover writes about the challenges of getting to, and through, college. Follow him on Twitter @erichoov, or email him, at eric.hoover@chronicle.com.