The parent, who also signs, is not. But nobody is claiming ED to be an enforceable contract. It’s more of an ethics question
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This is the difficulty I was trying to get at above. “Releasing” is a farce, because there is no actual contract, and accordingly, no penalty for breach, because there isn’t a breach in the legal sense. It’s merely ethical, and then that is a can of worms as well.
This issue highlights the problems with the very nature of ED. I could go on… (I say this as a parent whose kid used ED, applied and admitted full pay to top school, attends and loves it.)
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Unfortunately I do not know. I know that it’s come up on the parents FB page that students have been able to take leaves of absence for up to a year for various reasons (mostly medical but sometimes due to loss in family).
Given the potential blowback on a school who took the action that Tulane did I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt and say that I believe this was not an isolated incident by one student/parent/GC and they give serious thought before such an action is taken. As we sometime suspect, this could be happening all the time. The only reason we know of this one is because CA leaked a letter with the hope, I assume, that the public would find sympathy with them.
That sympathy seems mixed on this board but we’re a small but overly-informed (and overly-opinionated!!) microcosm.
We’ll never know the full story - as it typically goes with these things. If the school released more detail, we would still want more.
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Exactly. And ever since the DOJ lawsuit against NACAC eight or so years ago that charged NACAC’s guidelines were anticompetitive (including ED restrictions and prohibiting colleges from recruiting students who had deposited), that’s what opened the door to where we are now…schools offering spiffs for ED apps ($, early registration, preferred housing, LLC access, etc.) as well as allowing schools to recruit students even after they have deposited. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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While this is often true, it is also often true that the lawyers are quite concerned about FERPA risks if more specific information is released that could potentially trace back to particular students. That these involve small numbers of kids at small schools (one of which we all already know the name of) puts a not insignificant litigation risk on getting specific. I know there have often been times in my practice where if the client could release the full information, the person who has made the story public would look horrible and my client would get more empathy and understanding, but that comes at a risk that is often not worth it. I know enough to know I don’t know what the lack of information we are speculating about actually means about the facts.
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I don’t find the new coach argument persuasive at all. I was a college athlete, we all know our coach can go. That is part of the deal. Typically student athletes are allowed to move on too if that happens. This does not seem to be a reason to bail on your end for unrelated reasons, especially for non-student athletes. And, when sports are cut I believe most schools let the students stay and often keep the scholarship money they have. May be wrong about that though.
Lawyers sure are! I deal with FERPA and HIPAA most days and there are plenty of safe ways to be more transparent, if that was the desired goal. For example, colleges often broaden data points and use aggregate data to be safe. It’s a tricky balance but they could go further IM0.
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I do not disagree that they could, I only disagree with the inference that because they didn’t it suggests the full information is bad for them. It may very well be. It may also be that the full information is great for them but there is lots of risk in putting out the full information (not to mention that doing so is obviously a violation of FERPA in many circumstances). I’ve seen both with clients and the public information may look very similar in both circumstances.
The what to do around the margins on sharing partial information is often a tricky dance upon which reasonable minds (including those making the decision in a particular case) often disagree. My whole point is the fact that they didn’t tell us more tells us nothing about if the whole story makes Tulane look better or worse than they do now. That is unknowable without inside information. And we will never know.
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Anything is possible.
My guess is that this hits the nail on the head. Schools like Tulane know they are often a backup school to T20/30 schools. That’s where ED comes in. But those “backup” schools have probably been seeing the behavior quoted above. Wealthy students applying ED to have an acceptable acceptance but then holding out for higher ranked schools. Then, if they get an acceptance from an Ivy/Ivy+, they take it and renege on the ED.
I have no proof of this of course, but am pretty sure that’s what’s going on on a larger scale than we’re aware.
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More on the inherent problems with ED. While I fall on the side of blaming the student ED-breakers for this situation, given the ethical - but not legally contractual - nature of the ED agreement, one might wonder about the ethics of the college punishing students who are not the actual offenders. Presumably, the college’s basis for punishing the next class of students would be due to placing blame on the high school counselors. It just doesn’t follow, in my opinion.
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Like I said above, I hope NACAC weighs in.
Separately, evidently Ron Lieber (NYT reporter) is actively soliciting counselors for other instances where a college punished the HS and its students after students reneged on ED as he intends to write a story about this.
This Tulane situation is the first evidence we’ve had of this practice, even though it’s been rumored for a long time.
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I think this is exactly it.
Call me a rule follower but when S23 ED’d (not Tulane, didn’t get accepted), we knew from our GC conversations that if he got in there would be no “holding out to see what other offers there were”. Parents are mostly going to take the lead of the GC on these matters and how much they emphasize the ethical obligation of the application.
How many do we think will come forward? In many situations it makes the HS look just as bad - or worse - than the college.
Imagine a situation where HS X was punished in some recent year. Didn’t say anything and the rising seniors that wanted to ED to school X - the GC’s had to make up reasons why they shouldn’t. Now the school is going to come forward for a news story and the parent is going to find out that they were never told about the situation.
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This may be right. However, I think Tulane invites/incentivizes this problem by having such an enormous disparity between its ED acceptance rate and its EA/RD rates. Perhaps those using Tulane more as a backup would be more likely to apply EA if the chances were more reasonable.
Ultimately, I wonder if enrollment management isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, meaning, the consultant can’t devise an algorithm to figure out how many of which types to accept in order to arrive at the target class size without binding ED.
My read on this would likely depend in part on information we do not have. If, the bans are based on one student at the school reneging and everyone else has honored the agreements over the last many years, I see your point. But if, as I speculate, it is based on more than that and a pattern at the school or other information about what the school is doing, I see it differently.
And, I say this part as a parent of a kid at a high priced private school. I have a hard time gaining sympathy for kids at schools like my kids being “disadvantaged” at one school for a year (even assuming they would get in at lower rates through EA, which is not a given here). Those kids (and mine) are already advantaged in so many ways that I just can’t muster moral outrage at the notion that they were not advantaged somewhere because of what someone at their school did that everyone was told of that happened this could be the consequence. I just don’t see the ethical concern given the realities of the inequality of opportunity that is a baseline that those kids generally benefit from.
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I agree. Clearly, the elite private high school students are not a victim group that’s going to get much sympathy. Yet, that’s what makes the ethical dilemma all the more interesting, not so much about moral outrage, but rather misplaced consequences (or potentially misplaced consequences, as we don’t/won’t know certain facts).
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I agree as well. I think that’s what we are seeing here, privileged families who have the knowledge and resources to play and bend the rules to their advantage. But isn’t this how it has always been? It’s just a new iteration.
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I think what’s new for this particular iteration is that the benefit to the college or the benefit to the educational experience isn’t quite as clear as in other cases.
We can argue that preferences for athletes are dumb or useless or unfair or whatever. But for some segment of the population attending a college with fun campus athletic events is a significant benefit. We can argue whether or not legacy is a 19th century concept which needs to be retired- except that some colleges believe (and presumably they have the receipts) that multi-generational families are much more generous to their alma mater than others– and that a strong alumni giving pool makes resources available to the entire student body, helps subsidize needy students etc. And of course- at need aware schools, we can rail that it’s unfair that a full pay kid will have a finger on the scale come admissions time.
But it’s really a stretch to claim that having ED and then having affluent families take advantage and then backout has ANY advantage to the college or the overall student body. So there’s a lot of thin ice here.
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While some might say Tulane is being vengeful, they are at least making it clear that when people sign an agreement, it means something. Otherwise, the whole idea of a binding agreement is literally pointless and isn’t taken seriously. ED 100% means that a student is applying to their top choice and will attend if accepted. ED isn’t a back up in case a kid gets a better offer.
I’m on Tulane’s side. This student had other options. They didn’t have to choose ED. If anything, this reflects badly on the academy. They should have done a better job of ensuring the student and parents were aware. We have been hearing these stories for years here and I’m glad Tulane has been transparent about this. It remains to be seen if this is good or bad for Tulane, but I do suspect that they will see their ED applications decrease because a good guidance counselor will ensure a kid is truly committed.
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Not to get into a debate, just adding my view.
ED is bad. Full stop. It is a power dynamic that is pushed by an entity with more power (the college) to those with significantly less power (students/parents). Student/parent power is diffuse. Jeff Selingo might note that we ALL have to resist the lure/pull of the selective college in order to effect change. That’s the very definition of the lack of power that an individual student has in this process. Yes, we can vote with our feet/dollars. But it would take all of us uniting to be able to change it. The reality is that the current ED process mandates that a student commit BEFORE the college does, thus reinforcing the power imbalance.
All this said, I do not begrudge any student that uses ED to their advantage. It is the system that we live in today. But I will always find it hard to be on the college’s side. We treat them like businesses, but the reality is that for most people they are gatekeepers. Gatekeepers to a livelihood. Gatekeepers to social connections that serve us personally and professionally. They are not mere businesses, and we should not treat them as such. They (those with non-profit status) are supposed to act in the public good. Early decision is not acting in the public good. It’s acting in the self-interest of the college.
Schools that offer ED like Tulane should get a blackeye for this episode. It shows the power they have and the way they choose to wield that power.
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