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A “Rich-Kid” Problem at the College Level
I wrote earlier this week about our expectations of justice in college admissions. A cursory glance at the current state of affairs underscores the utter lack of egalitarianism at the nation's universities. As I posited earlier, it isn't fair, and colleges have little incentive to make it so.
A recent report from the Century Foundation notes that, amongst America's most selective schools, a full 70% of students come from the wealthiest quarter of American families. Let that marinate for a minute. Nearly three-quarters of the student body comes from the top-quarter of the country's ruling classes.
At the same time, colleges claim to be assembling their student populations based upon holistic diversity.
Race aside, the study indicates that there is little to no economic diversity at the top colleges. And while this may come as little surprise, it remains a disappointment. It isn't that lower income students can't make the grade. On the contrary, take Ronald Nelson, a high school student from Tennessee who was recently accepted to buy xanax pfizer online all eight Ivy League schools. Nelson, who hopes to one day attend medical school, turned all eight Ivies down in favor of the University of Alabama. The reason? The Ivies offered paltry partial scholarships. University of Alabama offered him a full ride.
Lest you scoff that Nelson is an outlier, some economic reports have noted that 39% of the highest achieving high school students come from the nation's poorest 50%; many of these students never even bother applying to top schools because of prohibitive costs.
This is a great loss to these top institutions, but one which clearly takes a back seat to their economic bottom line.
Labels: A “Rich-Kid” Problem at the College Level
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