COVID-19 Exacerbates Inequality among Colleges

 

COVID-19 has exacerbated inequality in many ways, including in college applications.  As The New York Times reports in "Interest Surges in Top Colleges, While Struggling Ones Scrape for Applicants," applications to elite schools have surged by over 17% (due in part to their decision to make standardized test scores optional), while at many less well known schools applications have fallen considerably, putting some that are struggling due to COVID-19 funding cuts at greater risk of failure.  

Meanwhile, while more affluent students have wider prospects, the less affluent seem to be forgoing college in greater numbers, with declines in applications from first-generation students and those who qualify for fee waivers.  According to Doug Shapiro, the vice president for research at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which publishes educational reports: “We saw the largest declines by far among students from low-income high schools, high-minority high schools, urban high schools, who ordinarily would have gone to community colleges this fall, and who just vanished,” including among those applying to community colleges (which were among schools facing declines in applicants).  

The one bright spot in the report, though, is that minority applications to elite schools are up considerably, driven in part by their new ACT- and SAT-optional policies, which means that these schools will likely see greater diversity among their applicants.  

PBS's "Rethinking College" Series Tackles COVID-19's Impact on Student Mental Health

"How the pandemic is impacting college students’ mental health" (January 19, 2021) is the latest installment in PBS News Hour's excellent and long-running series, Rethinking College, and probably one of their most compelling.  The series, written and narrated by Hari Sreenivasan, concludes next week with a story on ways that colleges increasingly provide short-term programs and skills-based credentials to help students land jobs. Across over 100 episodes, the series has covered nearly every imaginable issue related to higher education and is very much worth exploring for students in search of a good topic for the final project.

More Evidence of the Merit-Aid Arms Race

In our online discussion of Caitlin Zaloom's chapter on "Enmeshed Autonomy" from Indebted, several students commented on the disturbing evidence that merit-based aid at public institutions is rising faster than need-based aid.  This is just one of many ways that the increased competition between public institutions, spurred on by privatization, advantages students from more affluent families. As Zaloom writes:

Through "enrollment management" ... colleges and universities sort students to achieve an optimal balance of higher-paying students and lower-paying ones.  Ideally, this process would free up aid funds for lower-income families after higher-paying students were enrolled.  In fact, the opposite has happened.  The expansion of merit aid has led colleges and universities to give preference in admission to students from middle-class and upper-class families whose grades and test scores reflect their class advantages and has directed scholarship funds toward attracting them.  Instead of increasing resources for low-income students, merit aid curtails them. (Zaloom 101).

She goes on to mention a study at one flagship state university that showed that "so much ... money was going to students from well-off families that the lowest-income students actually paid more on average than other students higher up the economic ladder" (Zaloom 101).  That study, titled "Undermining Pell: How Colleges Compete for Wealthy Students and Leave the Low-Income Behind" (PDF available through ERIC), was conducted by Stephen Burd of the New America Foundation.  Burd has a new study titled "Crisis Point: How Enrollment Management and the Merit-Aid Arms Race Are Derailing Public Higher Education" (PDF via The Chronicle) which seems to offer an even more complete survey and analysis of this disturbing trend for anyone interested in exploring this issue as part of their final papers.  

Additional commentary here:

• Inside Higher Education
• The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Birth of American Football

1911 Carlisle team under Pop Warner

This Super Bowl weekend, I found myself listening to an interesting program on National Public Radio's Radiolab about the birth of American Football (January 29, 2020).  Though Rutgers certainly claims credit for the "First Intercollegiate Football Game," we know that the game that Rutgers won over Princeton looked a lot more like rugby than the American Football that we know today.  The program focuses on the evolution of the game, which began at the collegiate level in the late 19th and early 20th century, when it was dominated by the Ivy Leagues (especially Yale and Harvard), and still very much like rugby, but popular because it was thought to help create fully rounded and "manly" men.  The rules changed, though, after the rise of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where Richard Henry Pratt and, later, Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner helped to change the rules so that the faster but lighter Native American players would be better able to compete with the bigger Ivy players.  I had some exposure to the importance of Carlisle from the PBS documentary, Jim Thorpe, The World's Greatest Athlete, which also touches on the way that Carlisle used football for fundraising and recruitment purposes (in ways familiar to us today).  But I really learned a lot from this program, which also talks about the rising awareness of concussions in the sport.
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First Generation Students Documentary

Returning to teaching "Research in the Disciplines: College!" after a long hiatus, I am out scouting for the latest documentary films.  "A Walk in My Shoes: First Generation College Students" interested me because my focus this semester is on the ways that increased privatization has made family support an increasingly important factor in student success.  The issues that first-generation students confront would make a good final topic, as several students who have taken my class over the years have shown.

Extra Credit: Grad School Meeting

Here is an extra credit opportunity, which might be especially valuable for any students who are thinking of going to graduate school in the future.  To get one point extra credit, you need to register for, attend, and post a blog about this event (ideally with a photo):

Beyond the Baccalaureate: A Look at Rutgers Graduate Education
Wednesday 12/6, 4:30 p.m.-6 p.m.
Academic Building, Room 4225
15 Seminary Pl.

Registration is important, as if there are a lot of students interested (and there may be) the event may be moved to another location.  And there may be a lot of interest, as several articles have gotten students worried:

• The House Just Voted to Bankrupt Graduate Students
• A Republican Tax Proposal Would Make Academia Even Whiter
• Senate Passes Tax Bill With Major Implications for Higher Ed
• Passage of Senate Tax-Reform Bill Leaves Colleges Scrambling

Basically, the version of the Tax Bill that passed the House of Representatives at a midnight session on Friday into Saturday has graduate students and grad programs worried.  As proposed, that bill would tax graduate students on their tuition remission as though it were income.  Tuition remission is money that graduate students never see as income, but it can be a very large amount -- as much as $50,000 per year at some institutions.  And because most graduate students are living on much smaller stipends (often from $20 - $30,000), if they were taxed on their tuition remission it could double or even triple their annual salaries and cost them more than they can afford in taxes.  Of course, the House bill does have to be reconciled with the bill that passed the Senate, which does not include this provision, so it is possible that this change in the tax code could be eliminated in committee.  But there is also a significant chance that it could go forward, in which case it would really alter the landscape of graduate liberal arts education in this country in many ways -- most of all by making it practically unaffordable for any but the wealthy, or perhaps for international students.

The meeting will likely feature lively discussion.

"It's on Us" to End Campus Sexual Assault

The full presentation, which is worth watching, can be found at the Rutgers University Facebook page.  I have great admiration for the bravery of all those involved. Former VP Joe Biden reminds us of how far we have come in such a short time, and therefore how dangerous this moment is as the backlash builds against the Obama advice on Title IX outlined in Biden's famous "dear colleague" letter of 2011 (which has since been supplanted and rejected by the current administration's 2017 guidelines).