Ethical College Admissions: Meritocracy and Mobility

Are merit and fairness contradictory values? That question was at the heart of a George Will column in The Washington Post last week.

Will’s column, titled “How Merit-Based College Admissions Became So Unfair,” draws on two essays that appeared back in December in The Chronicle Review, Richard Reeves’s “The End of Upward Mobility” and Wilfred McClay’s “Higher Ed’s Dysfunctional Devotion to Meritocracy.” All three pieces raise important questions about society, higher education and the college admissions process.

Higher education has always promoted itself as a societal good, an avenue for upward economic and social mobility. That was certainly true when the GI Bill provided educational opportunity to many veterans after World War II and during the 1960s and 1970s when the civil rights and women’s movements broadened the pool of those eligible to receive a college education at many institutions. But is it still true at a time when the gap between rich and poor in America has widened?

Is higher education still a force for promoting upward mobility? Does the admissions process help or hinder that goal? How does the devotion to the concept of merit impact that?

Reeves argues that “America sees itself as a meritocracy. No other nation has turned upward mobility into a civic religion.” But is upward mobility a product of meritocracy, or is a reliance on merit an impediment to social economic and social mobility today? Is higher education breaking down class differences or reinforcing them? At the Ivies and other highly selective colleges and universities, there are as many students enrolled from the top 1 percent of households in terms of income as from the bottom 80 percent. None of those colleges are hurting for applicants or revenue, but does that discrepancy reflect a problem for society? And are colleges and universities responsible for solving societal issues of inequality?

McClay, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, suggests that “Meritocracy, while highly democratic in its intentions, has turned out to be colossally undemocratic in its results” and that “we should consider the adverse effects, some of them highly ironic, of our society’s commitment to an ideal of meritocracy.”

But do the adverse effects come from the ideal of meritocracy, the way in which merit is defined, or from the fact that merit is only one of the competing values that influence the way selective colleges build a student body?

I want to believe both in an admissions process and a world that rewards merit, but I also recognize that merit is hard to define and even harder to measure, especially when trying to compare individuals with diverse talents, backgrounds and experiences. McClay seems to suggest that merit may be a cultural norm rather than a universal concept.

The genesis of the SAT in college admissions was to measure merit in the form of academic aptitude, breaking down barriers of class and educational privilege. Of course we now know that performance on standardized tests has a strong correlation to family income. Similarly, children who grow up in households where education is valued and attend schools with a college-going culture are at a huge advantage academically. Much of what we call merit is privilege.

It is also the case that admissions decisions aren’t driven by merit alone. Colleges and universities are complex institutions with a variety of constituencies and strategic goals. They use the admission process to help achieve those goals. Maximizing tuition revenue or producing winning athletic teams doesn’t lead to student bodies based solely on merit.

There is also a danger in talking about meritocracy in college admission. In a hyperselective admissions environment, admissions committees are forced to make fine distinctions among applicants with similar credentials. The language of meritocracy may lead those admitted to ignore their good fortune and believe that they are more deserving than or even superior to unsuccessful candidates, a college admissions twist on prosperity theology.

Of the three articles, Reeves’s devotes the most attention to the relationship between college admission and economic inequality. He argues that a number of admissions conventions, ranging from early decision and early action to legacy preferences to demonstrated interest, disadvantage students who don’t come from upper- and upper-middle-class families and those without access to good college counseling. He recommends three possible admissions-related solutions.

The first is simplifying the admissions process. Reeves contrasts the application process in the United States with that in Britain and finds the American version “byzantine,” given how complex applying to college is when you factor in the variety of ways to apply, the variety of deadlines and twists such as early decision and applying for merit scholarships. He concludes that “complexity is the friend of the upper middle class” and that the complexity of the process is a “navigational nightmare” for students and families with limited knowledge.

Is there anything we can do about that? It would be wonderful to double the number of school counselors nationally, especially in inner-city and rural schools, but I don’t see that happening. So can we use technology to provide resources to those students who need the most help? Years ago USA Today used to sponsor a college admissions call center for a week each fall, and for several years I volunteered for a shift. It was gratifying and energizing to help and educate students and parents who lacked basic knowledge about how admission works. I wish we could develop a comparable resource accessible for any student applying to college.

Reeves’s second solution is to reallocate merit aid to need-based financial aid, investing in those who truly need funds rather than using the same funds to induce affluent students to enroll. He recognizes that the market forces driving institutional choices and strategies make that unlikely.

The third suggested college admissions fix involves devising a wider definition of merit, with the expressed goal of increasing social mobility. Reeves recognizes that this is the most challenging of his suggestions. He recommends that colleges give greater attention to context when reading applications to the extent that students with lower grades from poorer schools receive a “bump.” He also advocates that there be “affirmative action” by zip code to recognize students who have overcome economic adversity, or even that there be a lottery for spaces once a student has achieved a certain academic threshold.

There is another solution that comes back to the definition of merit. At some level selective college admission is an exercise in distributive justice, where the goal is allocating a scarce good or resource fairly. So how do we decide what is fair? The traditional definition of merit says that students with higher grades and test scores are more deserving. That definition rewards for past performance. But what if admission decisions are based instead on future benefit, admitting the student who will derive more benefit from the opportunity? That would be a definition of meritocracy that also incorporates social mobility.