The Market Economy Distorts Educational Priorities

[Excerpts from article in New York Times]

And the Rich Get Smarter

April 30, 2004
By DAVID L. KIRP

BERKELEY, Calif.

.... Teenagers from wealthy families are beating out middle-
and working-class youngsters, both at top private colleges
and flagship state universities ....

In pursuit of competitive advantage, well-off parents spend
thousands of dollars on test prep courses, college
admission summer camps and "dress for success" counseling.
They are more adept than their less well-heeled rivals at
working the system ....

At the other end of the spectrum, the inequity is worsening
as cash-starved state schools are forced to raise tuition ....

Those who run universities bear considerable responsibility
for creating these inequities - and not only in admissions.
These trends are just the most visible sign of how much the
market ethic has come to dominate higher education. To be
sure, dollars have always greased the wheels of academe.
What is new and troubling is the raw power that money
exerts over all of higher education, including the emphasis
on research that adds less to the storehouse of knowledge
than to the institutional coffers, and the shift from
liberal arts to the "practical arts." ... [E]mbedded in the
very idea of university are values the market does not
honor: the belief in a community of scholars and not a
confederacy of self-seekers; in the idea of openness and
not ownership; and in the student as an acolyte whose
preferences are to be formed, not a consumer whose
preferences are to be satisfied. ...

Admissions decisions are, more and more, based on
statistical models that leave little room for hunches about
character and potential. The paper credentials of students
- A averages and high SAT scores - don't necessarily
translate into intellectual fireworks. Many top-performing
high school students are burnt out by the time they're
freshmen, while working- class teenagers and community
college transfers with less sterling records arrive with a
hunger for learning and often fare at least as well.

These new models are also intended to increase revenues by
shrinking scholarships - what the new breed of "enrollment
managers" calls the discount from the tuition sticker
price. In an environment where admissions offices are
sometimes referred to as profit centers, the "full payers,"
students from wealthy families, are in greatest demand. In
addition, aid, which has historically been based on need,
is increasingly being granted on academic merit. A dozen
states have also adopted this approach, awarding millions
of dollars a year in merit scholarships to students who
would have attended college anyway ....

The bottom line is that five out of every six qualified
seniors whose families earn more than $75,000 - but fewer
than half of those whose families earn less than $25,000 -
enroll in a four-year college. ...