College presidents went to the White House on Thursday to discuss attracting more low-income students to higher education.
Admissions leaders were tasked with defining how they judge merit. Who is admitted? Who gets aid? Who gets priority status with limited aid budget?
The attendees of the meeting turned to the define merit through two dictionaries the Latin and Greek (of course the Greeks!! If you hadn't guessed by my last name, I am Greek) and philosophy.
The consensuses on merit was that it’s not enough to just have the highest grades and test scores. One aspect they did agree upon was recruiting more socioeconomically diverse class is a great thing, the majority agreed.
Vassar College returned to need-blind admissions in 2007, and Vassar has not changed course since, 2007 wasn’t the ideal time to change to a need-blind admissions because of the economic downturn. However, since shifting the discount rate has gone from 35% to 50% rapid growth but the share of students from minority groups has grown from 20% to 35%.
“Georgia Nugent, president Emerita of Kenyon College and a senior fellow at the Council of Independent Colleges, who has campaigned against the use of non-need-based aid, said it was time to stop calling such awards "merit aid."
When colleges say "merit aid," in this context, they mean "a student or family with sufficient means to pay for college education but they want to get a good deal and they want bragging rights," she said. "So-called merit aid is awarded neither because the student has earned it nor because we are meeting the objectives of our colleges."
Another term Nugent attacked: "need-sensitive." Colleges that do not practice need-blind admissions use the term to refer to policies under which, at some point in the admissions process, they only accept students who can afford to pay their own way. Nugent said that when she first became a college president, "foolishly I thought the term meant sensitive to the needs of our students," adding that "I learned it meant the opposite."
Nugent -- a classicist by training -- said these phrases matter. "When the language we use is disordered, it’s often a clue that our practices are less than admirable," she said.
Nugent said that the moral arguments against these practices were well known for years, but that -- at a certain point -- people took courageous stands, built alliances and made changes -- sometimes at risk to themselves.
Many speakers were frustrated with the current system of admissions, because of the advantages wealthier applicants have over less financially affluent. The wealthier students are able to utilize their wealthy to beef up their applications and make them stand out more.
Donald E. Heller, dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University, gave the attendees at the conference a logical argument to do away with merit:
"Take any one of our selective institutions, and look at the scholarship athlete, or legacy, or for that matter, any student who was admitted and had the lowest academic credentials, however you want to choose to measure those credentials. I'll assert that this is a decision to establish a floor at which the institution has determined any student can succeed. Right? If we admit the student, then we're making a statement that the student can succeed at our institution."
Merit is not a necessary aspect of the admissions process it only clouds the judgment of the admissions application. When the majority of the attendees agreed that recruiting more socioeconomically challenged students would be a plus than merit would be counterproductive to the objectives of recruiting more socioeconomically challenged students. Our education system should never promote class differences, and the admissions process should be blind to the applicants, it should allow all people to have the same opportunity to create any life they choose, free from others limitations and predigest. This is our birth right as Americans….
Please follow the link to read a full article on the issue, written by Scott Jaschik.
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