Lessons in higher education: What California can learn
Keeping California public university options open
Superintendents: Well-paid and walking away
The debt to degree connection
College in prison: How earning a degree can lead to a new life
Library or police, a small town’s struggle puts a spotlight on library inequities across California
There is a deep irony that almost all the parents charged with crimes in the college bribery scandal that exploded in national headlines on Tuesday are from California.
Arguably no other state has done as much to level the playing field in admitting students to its public universities, including to its most selective colleges.
Twenty-five out of the 33 wealthy parents charged in the case involving devious schemes to get their children into a range of mostly private universities live in California, as do 10 out of 17 of coaches, athletic directors and others charged with actually carrying out the schemes.
Their involvement makes a mockery of efforts to create a meritocratic society, especially in California, in which hard work and a good education are supposed to help overcome class and wealth differences.
“IQ + effort = merit” is how the British sociologist Michael Young defined meritocracy when he coined the term 70 years ago. He envisaged a fully democratic society governed by “not an aristocracy of birth, not a plutocracy of wealth, but a true meritocracy of talent.”
It is obvious that there is still a long way to go before such a society is achieved in the United States.
Income still has a profound impact on who gets into elite or competitive colleges. Students from the highest income levels are “vastly overrepresented” at 200 of the nation’s most selective universities, including at “flagship” public universities, and those numbers actually increased in the 2000s, according to a 2018 American Enterprise Institute report.
The pattern in California is different, where the influence of family income is still a factor in its public universities, but much less so than in other states.
It is significant that about 4 in 10 students enrolled in the 10-campus University of California system receive Pell Grants. That’s far more than any other top public research university system in the country. Pell Grants are federal grants awarded to low-income undergraduates, typically those from families with incomes of less than $50,000.
The percentage of Pell Grant students is higher at several UC campuses and lower at others. At UC Berkeley in 2016-17, about 30 percent of students received Pell Grants, and 36 percent at UCLA. Without including out-of-state students who are from higher-income backgrounds, those numbers would be even higher. That compared to the 16 percent of Pell Grant students at Harvard University and 15 percent at Stanford University.
Some of this has been accomplished by putting in place a system of what it calls “comprehensive review” at the University of California, which takes into account a much broader range of factors in admitting students than most selective public universities. It has also eliminated, at least officially, so-called “legacy admissions,” which gave preference for students whose parents are UC alumni.
As a result of these policies, reinforced by California’s changing demographics in recent decades, some 42 percent of all UC undergraduates are the first in their families to attend college and nearly two-thirds of those students are from low-income backgrounds.
Beyond the University of California, the 23-campus California State University system and the 114 California Community Colleges are even less selective and admit far higher percentages of low-income students. At all three systems, large numbers of low-income students receive tuition waivers, intended to open college doors to all.
There is still much more to be done, not only at UC’s most selective campuses but across the university system where living and other costs in addition to tuition create high barriers to attendance for many students and enrollments are still skewed towards higher-income families, even at most CSU campuses.
In the wake of the scandal, for example, California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Oakley has called for ending the use of SAT and ACT tests, which favor higher-income students.
To my colleagues who associate with @CollegeBoard & @ACT – take this recent gaming scandal as an oppty to end the use of SAT/ACT in admissions. Perhaps the tests were well intended but they are perpetuating a wealth advantage & undervaluing low-income students. #DroptheSAT
— Eloy Ortiz Oakley (@EloyOakley) March 13, 2019
One issue that the admissions scandal has highlighted is why it would be so important to already extremely wealthy families for their children to attend some of the nation’s most elite universities — when their families are already part of the elite.
That may have something to do with the dramatic decline in children who end up earning more than their parents do, especially among those at high income levels, causing anxiety among even the wealthiest families. As Princeton philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah argued in a recent article, “To achieve a position in the top tier of wealth, power and privilege, in short, it helps enormously to start there.”
He cites Yale law professor Daniel Markovits’ assertion that “American meritocracy has become precisely what it was invented to combat: a mechanism for the dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations.”
The scandal should be a wake-up call in California to guard against insidious efforts to undermine the admissions process, whether at a private or public university, and for the state to renew efforts to create a meritocratic society that affirms its democratic ideals.
The system has enrolled more in-state residents, but not enough to meet targets set by the state.
Two prominent organizations say the proposal would dismantle progress made to improve reading instruction for those students.
Fresno City College professor Tom Boroujeni is unable to fulfill his duties as academic senate president while on leave, the latest update reads.
This is a continuing EdSource series on proven innovations in higher education that relate to the problems facing California’s higher education systems.
Comments (7)
Comments Policy
We welcome your comments. All comments are moderated for civility, relevance and other considerations. Click here for EdSource's Comments Policy.
Bo Loney 5 years ago5 years ago
Eloy Oakley is taking advantage of a tiny minute fraction of cheaters of the SAT scores to discredit the whole process. And you quote him? You don't think College Board is going to be all over this now? 2.1 million students took the SAT in 2018. This cheating case charges 50 people out of 2.1 million students. How does that even automatically register that this completely negates the … Read More
Eloy Oakley is taking advantage of a tiny minute fraction of cheaters of the SAT scores to discredit the whole process. And you quote him? You don’t think College Board is going to be all over this now? 2.1 million students took the SAT in 2018. This cheating case charges 50 people out of 2.1 million students. How does that even automatically register that this completely negates the test? Come on. This is a weak argument.
Paul Muench 5 years ago5 years ago
Has anyone determined if getting accepted to UC is as good a predictor of future income as attending UC? It would be particularly interesting to know for those students that attend CSU instead.
Muvaffak GOZAYDIN 5 years ago5 years ago
You should accept the facts that there are only 50-100 good universities in the USA . But they can accommodate only 2 million or so students . There are 10 million more students who would like to go these schools . But no room and expensive . It is easy to solve the pşroblem as I DID . Convince these top schools to provide the same quality online degree programs at low … Read More
You should accept the facts that there are only 50-100 good universities in the USA .
But they can accommodate only 2 million or so students . There are 10 million more students who would like to go these schools . But no room and expensive . It is easy to solve the pşroblem as I DID . Convince these top schools to provide the same quality online degree programs at low price such as $ 100 per course . Cost for an online course is close to $ 10 per person per year . That means schools still can makle lots of money . On the awerage if they take 5 onlkine courses per year annual income would be 5 x 8 million x $ 100 = $ 4 billion .
Joan Buchanan 5 years ago5 years ago
Well said!
SD 5 years ago5 years ago
That 42 percent of all UC undergraduates are the first in their families to attend college is a staggering statistic. Is that reflective of the population? What percentage of recent California high school graduates are from families where neither parent attended college?
Thomas Timar 5 years ago5 years ago
Another perspective on this issue is that it may be increasing meritocracy in access to higher education that is driving wealthy parents to resort to devious and even unlawful means to give their own children an advantage over other children. Reformers may want meritocratic admissions policies, but parents want their children to have any advantage they can get to the front of the line in the queue for elite colleges and the social and economic rewards that flow from that.
navigio 5 years ago5 years ago
Well, meritocracy has always been a myth in this country, so I’m not sure it's become anything that it wasn't already. My guess is most people — even those who seem to recognize the problem in the abstract — haven't, until now, truly understood how deeply these advantages reach and are accepted in our culture. And by demonizing the explicitly illegal, we are probably going to return to our bubble of denial about the systemic … Read More
Well, meritocracy has always been a myth in this country, so I’m not sure it’s become anything that it wasn’t already.
My guess is most people — even those who seem to recognize the problem in the abstract — haven’t, until now, truly understood how deeply these advantages reach and are accepted in our culture. And by demonizing the explicitly illegal, we are probably going to return to our bubble of denial about the systemic fairly shortly. There is value to scapegoating.