Selective Colleges and Admissions

• History of affirmative action and race• Legacy and sports admissions

Selective Colleges are not the norm

• 55 colleges qualify as highly selective. They accept fewer than 30% of applicants.

• Many private colleges accept nearly all applicants.

• The average acceptance rate for all four year colleges in the US is 65.5%

Selective Colleges

• 54% of corporate leaders and 42% of government leaders were graduates of just 12 institutions– Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Stanford, Columbia, MIT,

Cornell, Northwestern, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Penn and Dartmouth

Selectivity of Colleges

• Colleges with low selectivity spend 12,000 per student.

• Colleges with high selectivity spend 92,000 per student.

Affirmative Action as Compensatory Justice

• "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are free to compete with all the others, and still just believe that you have been completely fair.“ Lyndon Johnson 1965

Affirmative Action as Diversity

• Without diverse college classes students will learn less and society will lack for future leaders.

• Colleges should “look like” America• Leadership should reflect the diversity of

America

Affirmative Action

• 1960’s—reasons for developing preferences in hiring and admissions– Equality of opportunity– Compensatory racial justice

• 1965 President Johnson Executive Order 11246– Federal contractors to take affirmative action in

hiring

Affirmative Action

• 1969 President Nixon issues “Philadelphia Order” specifying federal contractors in construction had to show hiring of minorities

• 1970 Nixon extends the ruling to all federal contractors.

• Bureaucrats decide on the racial categories to be used, and soon afterwards add women to the category.

Affirmative Action

• Because it has been based on race, over time with the growth of minority populations and the growth of middle class minorities, affirmative action has increasingly benefitted affluent minorities and immigrants.

• 86% of African Americans at highly selective schools are middle or upper class

• 41% of Black Freshman are immigrants or second generation

California Case

• 1978 Regents vs. Bakke– UC Davis Medical School– Alan Bakke, white who was denied entrance

• Supreme Court outlawed racial quotas.• In a 5-4 ruling found it unconstitutional to set

aside a limited number of spaces.• Allow race as a “plus factor”

Michigan Case

• Grutter vs. Bollinger 2003– University of Michigan Law School

• Argument was that diversity enhances the educational experience of all students—whites and minorities.

• Divided court struck down “mechanistic” use of race, allowed race as a “whole consideration”

Michigan

• 2006 • Proposition banning affirmative action in

public education, employment or contracting.• The law was considered by the courts and

ended up in the Supreme Court where it was upheld in April 2014. The decision just covered higher education

Texas Case

• 1996 U T Austin used race as a factor in admission.– Freshman class was 4.1% black, 14.5% Hispanic

• 1996 Fifth Circuit court case (Hopwood vs.Texas) temporarily barred from using race.

• Coalition of civil rights activists and rural white legislators invented the Top 10% plan.

• Automatically admit the top 10% of every high school in the state

Texas Case

• In 2004 as a result of the Texas 10% plan, UT Austin was 4.5% African American and 16.9% Hispanic.

• The 2003 Michigan Supreme Court Case effectively overruled Hopwood. So Texas added race back into consideration, on top of class based and top 10% admissions.

• In 2013, 3.4% of entering students were African American Ten Percenters, 1.2% were African Americans admitted for diversity

Texas Case

• 2012 Fisher vs. University of Texas• Abigail Fisher argues she was denied

admission because she was white.

Electoral Challenges

• There are currently 8 states with complete bans on affirmative action in public institutions– California 1996– Washington 1998– Florida 1999– Michigan 2006– Nebraska 2008– Arizona 2010– New Hampshire 2011 – Oklahoma 2012

Race neutral admissions schemes

• UC system has employed a percentage plan and economic based affirmative action.

Harvard and UNC Lawsuit 2014

• Filed by Asian American student turned down by Harvard and a white student turned down by UNC Chapel Hill. Backed by same organization that brought Texas suit

• Blum alleged that Harvard’s admission process discriminates against Asian Americans, and that UNC-Chapel Hill failed to give adequate consideration to race-neutral admissions.

Harvard’s Admissions

• In the Bakke Case, the SC talked about Harvard Admissions:– “In Harvard College admissions the Committee has

not set target-quotas for the number of blacks, or of musicians, football players, physicists or Californians to be admitted in a given year,” Justice Lewis F. Powellwrote for the majority. “This kind of program treats each applicant as an individual in the admissions process.”

Lawsuit argues against using race

• Outlines other ways Harvard could have diversity:– Limiting legacy preferences– Increasing financial aid for minorities– Giving preference based on socioeconomic measures or

zip codes• Because Harvard is a private university it is sued under Title VI

of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which bars racial discrimination at

institutions that receive federal funds.

Legacy Admissions

• 30 top colleges children of alumni have a 45% greater chance of admission. (Hurwitz 2011)

• Being a legacy is equivalent to 160 additional SAT points (Massey)

• At Harvard Legacy admission rate 30% vs. 6.9% overall.

Sports and Higher Education

• The U.S. is unique in the world in the extent to which sports is part of higher education.

• Positive or negative effects on– Budgets– Admissions– Undergraduate Education

Sports and Status

• Efforts to regulate sports enabled schools to imagine themselves as groups of more or less similar institutions.

• The fundamental social power of colleges and universities lies in their ability to confer status in the form of academic credentials to graduates.

• Unlike France and other European countries, the government does not confer status on universities.

Status Systems of Colleges

• Academic selectivity• National representativeness of the student

body• Athletic league affiliation– Ivy League (1945)– Patriot League– New England Small College Athletic Conference– Big Ten

History of Sports and Higher Education

• First Sporting Event Harvard vs. Yale 1852 Lake Winnipesaukee

• First Football Game Rutgers vs. Princeton 1869.

• 1880s and 1890s football teams were fielded across the country in colleges.

• By the 1890s the championship game in New York on Thanksgiving attracted 40,000 players.

History of College Football

• 25 colleges were playing at beginning of 20th century. Rules were being improvised. Rugby had a strong influence. Particularly brutal.

• 18 players died playing football in 1905 alone.• Theodore Roosevelt summoned the

presidents and coaches of Harvard, Yale and Princeton to the White House.

• Rule changes—forward pass.• Organization precursor to NCAA

Why academics and sports?

• Sports lent a macho air to a college life that was popularly regarded as bookish and effete.

• Larger cultural anxiety about the fate of masculinity in a changing social order. (Theodore Roosevelt doing paperwork)

• Boy Scouts and Football• Female athletics in college highly debated.

Competition frowned upon. No scores kept.– Stevens pp. 104-105

1895 Harper’s Magazineon Princeton

• The male of the human species passes through a stage when he has ceased to be a boy and is not yet a man, when his passions are virile and his judgement puerile. In the essentials of life he must at that epoch, in spite of his impatience of restraint, remain under tutelage. But how is he to find play for his growing manhood? Where is he to make his blunders and learn his lessons of experience? In some sphere where he will do the least harm and the greatest good both to himself and the community. This sphere is so manifestly that of his physical exercise and sport that the proposition is self evident.

Money, Alcohol, Fame

• Harvard President Eliot– Colleges are presenting themselves to the public, educated

and uneducated alike, as places of mere physical sport and not as educational training institutions.

• 1893 Cornell President W.F.King– The hot competition in these games stimulates certain

unfortunate practices, such as the admission of professionals into college as nominal students at the expense of the team, tendencies to betting, the limitation of the benefits of the game to a very few persons, and with these the interest is too intense to be compatible with educational advantages.

From Student Clubs to Institutionalized Entertainment

• By the 1920’s the battle was over and college athletics became bureaucratized and commercialized. The idea was that faculty would oversee and control sports. Coaches were to be drawn from the faculty or report to the faculty.– Professional coaches– Paying spectators– Recruited athletes

• Small colleges: physical recreation and intercollegiate sports

• Large Universities: entertainment with elite athletes

University of Chicago

• 1931 President Robert Hutchins– College is not a great athletic association and social club, in

which provision is made, merely incidentally, for intellectual activity on the part of the physically and socially unfit. College is an association of scholars in which provision is made for the development of traits and powers which must be cultivated, in addition to those which are purely intellectual, if one is to become a well-balanced and useful member of any community”

• 1939 University of Chicago dropped football

NCAA

• NCAA founded in 1906, became dominant in the post war years. Problems were growing with recruiting, financial aid, defining the season.

• Television posed a big issue for sports.• 1952, paid director and national headquarters

set up in Kansas City• 1973 Divisions were created, I, II and III.

Divisions of NCAA

• Division 1– Must offer at least 14 sports– Must offer two team sports for each gender.– Must have men and womens sports in fall, winter

and spring.– Must offer a minimum amount of financial aid and

may not exceed the maximum.– 335 colleges and universities.– 66% are public, 34% are private

Division II

– Intermediate level of competition.– Scholarships are partial.– Must field 10 sports, four in each gender.– Regionalization with playoffs throughout the

country.– 302 institutions• 52% public, 48% private

Division III

• No athletic scholarships• Playing season to minimize conflict with

academic programs.• Features student athletes with the same

admissions standards, academic standards, housing and support services as the general student body.

• 447 institutions20% public, 80% private

College Scholarships• Not allowed until 1956• 4 year scholarships until 1972 when they were switched to

one year, now 4 year are allowed again.• 2003-2004

– 138,216 athletes received an athletic scholarship.– Men received 57% of all scholarship money.– Best paying sport?

• Men’s ice hockey $21,755• Women’s ice hockey $20,540

– Lowest paying sport?• Men’s rifelry $3,608• Women’s bowling $4,899

• Excluding football and basketball, the average NCAA athletic scholarship is $8,707.

Admissions Standards

• The only requirement from 1973-1986 was that athletes graduate from high school with a 2.0 GPA.

• In 1986 the rules were tightened to a 2.0 GPA in 11 core courses, SAT score of 700.

• In 1996 it was revised to 13 core courses and SAT of 1010 (although if your GPA was above 2.5 you could have SAT of 820).

Ivy League

• Academic Index– Athlete’s admissions credentials were considered

in relation to the overall academic profile of students in the school.

College scholarships

• 2% of the 6.4 million athletes playing high school sports get scholarships.

Title IX 1972

• No person in the US shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

• Average number of women’s sports teams per institution went from 2.5 in 1970 to 8.45 in 2006.

• Between 1988 and 2003 net gain of 2,102 women’s sports teams and 70 men’s sports teams

Business of Sports

• More than 90% of Division I athletic programs had deficits averaging $7.1 million.

• 7% of Division I athletic departments were self supporting. Most required subsidies.

• Athletic spending is increasing 4-5 times the rate of other costs for higher education.

Moving to the Pros

• Men’s Basketball 1.2%• Women’s basketball 1%• Football 2%• Baseball 10.5%• Men’s ice hockey 4.1%• Men’s soccer 1.9%

Admissions Advantages

• Athletics has become a major advantage in getting in to selective colleges, not necessarily in paying for them.

Advantages differ by sports

• High profile: men’s football, basketball and ice hockey

Ivy League Recruiting

Advantages for the Disadvantaged?

College Admissions

• What is the purpose of college?– Credential or Skills?

• How important is diversity by race or class?• How important is college for social mobility

and opportunity for smart people at the bottom of the hierarchy?

• Does our current system create “Excellent Sheep” (Deresiewicz)