Equity in College Admissions

MWolf
Tue, 14 Jul 2020 01:38:21 +0000

Sisternight:

Part of the underlying problem is that access to top schools and the credentials they confer have become more and more inaccessible because both cost and selectivity have skyrocketed. This scarcity of access and the sense that higher education is a zero sum game make some people oppose efforts to broaden access. The problem of access has been created by the system of higher education and only they can change it.

No, what has happened is that the perception of some colleges as being objectively “the top” colleges has spread much wider, and therefore every high school senior feels that, unless they are accepted to a T-20 college, their life is over.

Access to “top schools”, especially the private ones, is a luxury item, and many people can no longer tell the difference between “need” and “want”. The big problem is that the majority of the public colleges have become unaffordable, because the federal and state governments no longer fund them enough. Of course the reason that they no longer fund colleges, is because the state governments have cut taxes.

So every person who has voted for state government candidates because those candidates promised to reduce taxes and to reduce the size of the government is who is responsible for the prices of public colleges.

So long as the large majority of the people refuse to accept increases in taxes to fund higher education, they should stop complaining about the prices of higher education.

Yes, college is more expensive, partly because of administrative bloat, but also because people demand more from colleges. Again, everybody wants better dorms for their kids, a modern gym, state-of-the-art labs and equipment, student support, career advising, etc. Back when colleges were 1/2 of the price they are today, they had nothing of those.

Basically, people want expensive colleges at half of the price of cheap colleges.

You either pay with your taxes, or you pay with tuition. You either accept a college with few facilities and services, or you pay for those extra facilities and services.