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Among the late 40-something-aged crowd that’s chosen to wrap itself up in the elite college admissions process, nothing quite makes the rounds on social media like a long-form article in The Atlantic. Last year it was the piece about pricey club sports like hockey and squash (which was riddled with inaccuracies, by the way). This month it is the cautionary tale of parents behaving badly at elite private high schools. This article has inaccuracies as well (no, Harvard Westlake does not send 45 kids a year to Harvard University - that’s a five year total) - but it’s purpose is intact, which is to let us all gawk at the ultra-rich and their frustration with not being able to buy exactly what they want, which in this case, is admission to an elite college.
the piece is indicative of the misplaced anger that many people have towards the wealthy and their desire to attend highly selective colleges...
Author Caitlin Flanagan is a bit all over the map with her assessment of the ruling class and how it behaves at fancy schools like Dalton in NY, oscillating between surprise and disgust. But to us, the piece is indicative of the misplaced anger that many people have towards the wealthy and their desire to attend highly selective colleges. In the broader media context, the sentiment is that elite colleges offer too many spots to the rich and well-bred and don’t offer enough opportunity to the lower-class and the disadvantaged. Perhaps the heat top colleges get on this subject is because, as a society, we hold the concept of college as the great equalizer. College is the place where your future can be made as a result of your own merit and not the class that you were born into. That’s not a wrong way to think - it’s idealistic and we support idealism. But most of the highly selective colleges that the public scorns are indeed, private schools. They may get tax benefits for their standing as non-profits and benefit from government-backed tuition dollars available to students, but they are still not fully funded at the federal or state levels. They really must (or at least should) make decisions with money as a factor. Flanagan, and many others point to the endowments of many top colleges as a justification for ignoring the concept of ability to pay. But why is it that these colleges, which are essentially businesses, be shamed into disregarding the ability of its students to pay the bill? And if you think colleges are not businesses, pay close attention to the number of lower-tier colleges that close every year because families are not willing to pay for just any college education.
In reality, most top colleges go out of their way to make sure that the disadvantaged have a shot at attending their schools, for free even. But under the heading of “no good deed goes unpunished”, they are perpetually berated for not doing enough to level the playing field. To many, these colleges shouldn’t just ignore a family’s ability to pay via need-blind admissions, they should actively stop prioritizing students from advantaged backgrounds who can pay, or add athletic prowess to the schools, or whose families might become big donors (even though all of those things directly benefit the college). The fact that these colleges don’t simply auction off their spots to the highest bidders, which is what many businesses with scarce supply and high demand do, is the reason why well-heeled parents at top private high schools get frustrated that they can’t simply buy admission. It’s no wonder that a group of people who can afford the $54,000 tuition bill at Dalton are crazed to understand how they can achieve what they want (even if they are sometimes going about it the wrong way).
Don’t mistake our position here: we do believe that college should be a place for leveling the playing field and offering as much opportunity as possible, regardless of a student’s economic circumstances and social class. But it’s unfair to demand the solution just from the private colleges that are so sought after. Why is it that the mission of social equality should arrive at their doors, as their sole responsibility to remedy, when so many of the advantages their often successful applicants receive happened in the previous eighteen years? Why not demand more from early education? Why not address the income and opportunity inequalities among families with similarly-aged children? If we want to change what the college admissions process looks like, it is going to take a lot more than nodding disapprovingly in the direction of colleges or hand-wringing about the behavior of rich high school parents.
