Abstract
Allegations of bribery and corruption in admission to prestigious American colleges brought academics and athletics into the public forum in March 2019. This paper distinguishes illegalities from inequities in the decisions that elite college admissions offices make about student applications. Typically special admission allowances tend to favor outstanding athletes whose academic record may be marginal. The incidents in Varsity Blues indicated a different imbalance: namely, that athletic admission slots, especially in so-called “country club” sports tended to give an admissions edge to applicants who did not show great athletic achievement or potential. These episodes put into bold relief new examples of advantage and privilege in going to college as part of American society.
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Notes
Scott Jaschik, “Massive Admissions Scandal,” Inside Higher Ed (March 13, 2016). See also, Jason McGahan, “How USC Became the Most Scandal-Plagued Campus in America,” Los Angeles Magazine (April 24, 2019)
Frederick M. Hess, “A Modest Proposal Regarding College Admissions,” American Enterprise Institute Symposium on Operation Varsity Blues (2019).
Frank Bruni, “College Admissions Shocker,” The New York Times (April 16, 2016) p. A21.
Jack Stripling, “‘It’s an Aristocracy’: What the Admissions-Bribery Scandal has Exposed About Class on Campus,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 26, 2019) pp. A22–23. Jason England, “The Mess That is Elite college Admissions, Explained by a Former Dean,” The Highlight By Vox (May 8, 2019).
Henry Rosovsky, “Chapter 4. The University College: Selectivity and Admissions,” The University: An Owner’s Manual (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990) pp. 59–74.
Kate Taylor and Jennifer Medina, “Who Paid $1.2 Million to get into Yale? A family’s Lawyer Solves the Mystery,” The New York Times (April 27, 2019) page A10.
Joel Rubin and Matthew Ormseth, “Family in China Paid $6.5 Million to College Admission Fixer at Stanford, Sources Say,” The Los Angeles Times (May 2, 2019).
Bill Pennington, “N.C.A.A. Eyes Limits on Early Recruiting,” The New York Times (April 16, 2019) page B9.
Saahil Desai, “College Sports are Affirmative Action for Rich White Students,” The Atlantic (October 23, 2018).
John R. Thelin, “Admissions, Athletics and the Academic Index,” Inside Higher Ed (April 3, 2019).
Charles C. Clotfelter, Buying the Best: Cost Escalation in Elite Higher Education (Princeton, New Jersey, 1996).,
Matthew Gutierrez, “Harlem Develops into a Hotbed for a Sport Rooted in the Suburbs,” The New York Times (May 18, 2019) p. B10.
Suzanne Mettler, Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream (New York: Basic Books, 2014). See also, Karin Fischer, “Engine of Inequality,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 17, 2016) p. A1.
Charles T. Clotfelter, Unequal Colleges in the Age of Disparity (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2017).
Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870–2033: An Essay on Education and Equality (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1958). See also, Jonathan B. Imber, “The Far Side of Meritocracy,” The American Interest (November–December 2012) pp. 91–96.
Ralph Turner, “Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System,” American Sociological Review (December 1960) pp. 855–867.
Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, The Academic Revolution (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1968).
Eliza Shapiro, “Diversity Issue at Elite Schools Pulls Big Money,” The New York Times (April 27, 2019) pages A1, A21).
Alan Rosenberg, “Dining with Privilege, at Brown,” Providence Journal (February 23, 2019). I am indebted to Prof. Luther Spoehr of Brown University for sharing this article with me.
Jon Katz, How You Can Understand Animals and They Can Understand You (New York, London, Toronto: Atria, 2017) p. 56.
Official Register of Harvard University: Information About Harvard College for Prospective Students (September 5, 1963) Volume LX, Number 22, pp. 1–2. See also, John R. Thelin, “Introduction,” A History of American Higher Education (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). p. xxi.
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Thelin, J.R. An Embarrassment of Riches: Admission and Ambition in American Higher Education. Soc 56, 329–334 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-019-00376-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-019-00376-3