Recent News & Editorials
"Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Affirmative Action at Harvard and U.N.C." by Adam Liptak, The New York Times, Jan. 24, 2022.
The fate of affirmative action in U.S. Colleges will once again go before the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear challenges to race-conscious admissions procedures at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Race-conscious admissions decisions were once thought to be a matter of well-established law, repeatedly upheld in past Court decisions. After it was upheld again in 2016, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the Court's support "as solid as you can get." Now the Court's conservative majority may well overturn this precedent in a case that has the potential to bring monumental changes for college admissions in America.
"Lawsuit Says 16 Elite Colleges Are Part of Price-Fixing Cartel" by Stephanie Saul and Anemona Hartocollis. The New York Times, Jan. 10, 2022.
A lawsuit in a federal court in Chicago may have significant consequences for the legal process of college admissions bribery in which wealth donors exchange large cash donations in exchange for admissions offers. The lawsuit takes aim at an exemption colleges have from federal anti-trust laws, allowing them to collaborate on a methodology for determining financial aid they offer prospective students. Normally, competing institutions would not be allowed to coordinate their prices, but colleges are given an exemption from the law provided that their admissions decisions are "need blind," meaning that a student's ability to pay would not play a role in their admissions decisions. The lawsuit charges that many colleges are not really "need blind" in part because they give "special treatment to the children of wealthy" donors.
"No College Kid Needs a Water Park to Study" by James V. Koch. The New York Times, Opinion, On Campus, Jan. 18, 2018.
Koch, a former college president, explains the growing trend of colleges offering luxurious amenities, at great cost but with no educational value, in an effort to lure more students to apply to their schools.
"Higher Ed's Low Moment" by Frank Bruni. The New York Times, Sunday Review, Dec. 30, 2017.
Bruni points out what he calls a "dangerous paradox": "At a time when a college degree is one of the surest harbingers of higher earnings and better economic security, college itself is regarded with skepticism by many Americans and outright contempt by no small number of them."
"What Colleges Want in An Applicant (Everything)" by Eric Hoover. The New York Times, Education Life, Nov. 17, 2017.
Hoover explores several factors contributing to the fact that the college admissions process is not fair and what some colleges plan to do to make it more fair. As he shows, many colleges have recently changed their admissions process to try to get a sense of the applicant's personal qualities and ethical character.
"Why Are More American Teenagers than Ever Suffering from Severe Anxiety?" by Benoit Denizet-Lewis. The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 11, 2017.
This article presents the shocking data on the recent surge in teenage anxiety, and some ways that parents, educators and health officials are responding. Denizet-Lewis shows that pressure to get into the "right" college is one recurrent cause of teen anxiety. One high school student, whose anxiety about college competition led him to shut down completely and drop out of high school, is later recommended a form of "exposure therapy" in which he goes to the Dartmouth campus and tells random strangers that he doesn't have the grades to get in there.
Some Helpful Books
Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, by Frank Bruni. (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2015).
Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite & The Way to a Meaningful Life by William Deresiewicz. (New York: Free Press, 2014)
Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid into College, by Andrew Ferguson. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.)
“Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, by Denise Clark Pope. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.)
Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges, by Loren Pope, revised by Hilary Masell Oswald. (New York: Penguin Group, 2012.)