We've long known that the Ivy Plus schools (the eight Ivy League colleges plus Chicago, Duke, MIT and Stanford) disproportionately usher graduates into positions of power and prestige, in politics and in high status law and business firms. 71% of Supreme Court justices have attended these schools; most Nobel Prize winners have at least one degree from this small number of colleges. Elite private firms recruit from these schools. "We admit the best of the best in highly competitive admissions", these campuses argue. "That's why our graduates assume so much power over the lives of others".
It's simply coincidence, they'd have us believe, that students at these colleges are also disproportionately from the wealthiest families in the country.
Now, Raj Chetty and his team of economists have published new research breaking down how these wealthy students are advantaged in admissions, even when many of those wealthy applicants fall short of the standards that these campuses insist are necessary for success. To be clear, these campuses are denying admissions to highly qualified students from low income families to give scarce space to children of wealth.
Besides the injustice for individual low-income highly qualified applicants who are denied admission, Chetty and his team argue for the democratic importance of leadership that reflects the socio-economic diversity of the country. Changing admissions policies, they argue, could diversify these student bodies and therefore diversify leadership in government, law, business, and science.
Their study shows that the admissions policies and practices that advantage the wealthy are about arbitrary gatekeeping, not the qualities that predict success in college or later positions of power:
- 24% of these admissions preferences come from athletic recruitment that favor the children of the rich. The children of the wealthy benefit from private coaching and are more likely to be recruited for such elite sports as water polo, lacrosse, or equestrian sports at elite colleges.
- 46% of admissions advantage is driven by "legacy" preferences offered to students who attended the same college. Students with the same academic records are 5 times more likely to be admitted to these elite colleges if they are "legacy" applicants.
- 31% of the admissions advantage is attributable to "non-academic" ratings of applicants: extra-curricular activities, private school attendance, "leadership traits" that admissions staff glean from application files.
In fact, Chetty's team found that none of these three factors – distinctive athletic prowess, legacy status, or non-academic factors – predict success in adult life. The justifications used to weigh these factors in admissions have nothing to do with ensuring that those given power over others will be successful or effective.
Any of us who care about leadership within a democracy should be alarmed that the wealthy are so casually advantaged in gaining access to power. Any of us should be alarmed at how casually the elite use their power to simply protect their own.
Thus, arguing for the democratic value of social class diversity in positions of power and leadership, the authors propose a straightforward change in admissions policies:
... [O]ne can generate comparable increases in socioeconomic diversity while retaining current admissions preferences by giving admissions “boosts” for highly qualified low-income students that are about 1/3 as large as those currently given to legacy applicants.
In other words, offering low-income students a fraction of the boost routinely available to legacy applicants could diversify the student bodies and the leadership pipelines of these elite campuses without compromising the admissions standards that now create each years' first-year classes.
Crucially, the authors argue that these shifts in admissions policies are more important than changes in financial aid. These elite schools already offer relatively generous financial aid to those low-income students that they admit. Yet these elite schools have done little to increase economic diversity in admissions in 100 years.
We cannot be naive: gatekeepers for positions of power will find other ways to advantage the elite even if there would be more social class diversity within graduating classes of the most elite colleges in the country. Lauren Rivera's book Pedigree showed us 10 years ago how elite college graduates are screened for "fit" at elite firms when "fit" translates to "your family skis at the same places we ski".
Yet Chetty and his team are working within those very elite spaces to shed light on the many ways that the elite protect their own. They're working against pervasive beliefs in the meritocracy where the wealthy are presumed to be the most qualified.
The privileged are unlikely to simply give away their power, but the more that projects like this illuminate systemic injustice and inequalities, the more likely it may be that the rest of us become willing to collectively challenge power – and especially to refuse the incessant messaging of the powerful that the rest of us are just not worthy of more agency and opportunity.
