In the opening pages of his massive history of Ivy League admissions, Jerome Karabel writes that “the criteria governing selection to our leading colleges and universities have time and again become the object of bitter conflict.” That was proved true once more this month, as the FBI revealed its investigation into an alleged scheme in which dozens of wealthy parents paid thousands of dollars to bribe coaches and SAT proctors to get their sons and daughters into elite colleges.
Karabel’s 2005 book, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Houghton Mifflin), is a 700-page exposé of the ways Ivy League colleges have quietly tinkered with their admissions formulas for decades, often for reasons that have had nothing to do with ensuring that they admit the most-qualified applicants. In the 1920s, Karabel writes, there was a move by the big-three Ivies to limit the enrollment of Jewish students. Recently, Harvard has been embroiled in a lawsuit over whether it discriminates against Asian-American students. Add to that the traditional preferences extended to donors and the offspring of alumni, not to mention athletes, and what you’re left with is a mishmash of academic merit and sneaky favoritism.
Dozens of people, including famous actors, college coaches, and a university administrator, have been charged by federal prosecutors for their alleged roles in an admissions-bribery scheme involving Yale, Stanford, and other elite institutions.
Karabel, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, has been following the latest admissions scandal and thinks there are deeper lessons here about institutional secrecy, the nature of merit, and what has and hasn’t changed.
As someone who knows the history of college admissions as well or better than anyone, did this scandal surprise you?
I was surprised by the egregiousness of the abuses, but I was not surprised by the efforts of parents to test the boundaries and perhaps transgress the boundaries of the permissible in order to gain access for their children to elite colleges.
In The Chosen, you wrote about how the admissions process is shrouded in secrecy. Does it seem that secrecy played a role in this scandal?
The fact that the admissions process is opaque rather than transparent certainly provides more room for these kinds of abuses to occur, and I think that is one element of this scandal. But I think the underlying issue has to do with the capacity of privileged people to use the admissions process in a way that enhances the privileges of already privileged people. Specifically, things that we already take for granted as normal, such as donating a building and getting special consideration for your child or grandchild, could be considered corrupt and scandalous. But they are taken for granted as the way we do things in the United States. In other countries, that could be considered immoral or illegal.
Does any of this shed light on our varying definitions of “merit” when it comes to college admissions?
Yes, I think in particular it shows the extraordinary weight given to athletic talent and the remarkable latitude given to coaches to select the people whom they want for their teams if they meet very minimal academic standards — including at elite colleges. And what I think is not well known is that the weight of preference given to athletes far surpasses the weight given to underrepresented minorities or, for that matter, legacies. It’s the weightiest preference of all the various preferences.
You wrote that in the past, the children of privileged families were more or less guaranteed admission to the most-selective colleges. And that has changed, to some degree. How much closer to meritocratic has the system become?
Certainly, admissions is more meritocratic than it was in the 1920s or 1930s. It is still the case that the privileged enjoy advantages. The advantages are more subtle. They reside in taking for granted practices that are considered part and parcel of good parenting. A good parent who has resources either sends their children to a private school or buys their way into a suburban district that is known to have good schools. Similarly, such parents will provide their children with subject-matter tutors, SAT tutors, private college counselors whose fees run up to $40,000, and private athletic coaches if they show talent or even interest. So in all these ways, those children come to be considered more meritorious. That is part of how privilege is perpetuated through generations.
That said, the majority of privileged children applying to elite colleges are rejected, an inherent feature of a process in which 95 percent of applicants are rejected at the most selective colleges.
Affluent parents have become increasingly desperate to pass on their privileges to their children and avoid downward mobility at all costs.
The Chosen was published more than a decade ago. Has anything meaningful shifted in the admissions process in that time, or are we roughly where we were then?
I think there have been some modest changes in the admissions process. The first is the growing presence of international students, most of whom themselves come from quite privileged backgrounds. The second change is modestly greater weight given to socioeconomic disadvantage. That said, the best empirical evidence, including evidence from the recent trial at Harvard, is that the boost given to the socioeconomically disadvantaged is extremely modest compared with the boost given to legacies or to the children of donors.
This particular scandal has attracted a lot of attention, in part because it involves celebrities, and also due to the straightforward bribery that is alleged to have taken place. Is there something that could come from this that might be positive in terms of the awareness of these more deep-seated issues in college admissions?
I think it’s possible that greater public scrutiny of admissions could lead to a re-examination of long taken-for-granted practices, such as preference for the children of donors and legacy preference, as well as the magnitude of the preference for recruited athletes and the degree of latitude given to coaches. All of those things may come under greater scrutiny now — and that has the potential for some positive changes.
How does this relate to broader issues of status anxiety and social mobility?
I think the broader issue is that this kind of abuse reveals a larger crisis in American society. Specifically, as America has become more and more unequal, affluent parents have become increasingly desperate to pass on their privileges to their children and avoid downward mobility at all costs. And I think part of the backdrop to this is that elite colleges have come to be viewed as a kind of insurance policy against downward mobility. They also have become a status symbol of success for a society that falsely claims to be meritocratic.
I think the bottom line is that what has happened with elite colleges is that they’ve democratized anxiety far more effectively than they’ve democratized opportunity.
Tom Bartlett is a senior writer who covers science and other things. Follow him on Twitter @tebartl.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
