Congress allows Ivy League antitrust exemption to expire

[billhoward]

IIRC, among the Ivies, they collud—sorry, came to agreement, with the best interests of students in mind—that if the Ivies provided equal or equivalent aid packages to those admitted to more than one Ivy, this was a great advantage to the admitted applicant because he or she then could choose the best fit based on academic reasons.

Critics and free-market types made the point that some student might believe that if, say, Brown was a slightly better school than Dartmouth for their needs, but if the Dartmouth famly contribution came in $5,000 less, that student might decide Dartmouth was the better place to go.

I thought the Ivies in this older suit got their hands slapped and were told to stop "helping" accepted applicants by offering them essentially the same aid package for all the Ivies.

The current lawsuit seems to be a consensus-on-aid challenge but of a larger group of schools. (Brown, California Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern, Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, Rice, Vanderbilt and Yale.) It says some of the schools are not really need-blind, which they claim to be:

The suit claims that nine of the schools are not actually need blind because for many years, they have found ways to consider some applicants' ability to pay.

The University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt, for example, have considered the financial needs of wait-listed applicants, the lawsuit says. Other schools, the lawsuit says, award "special treatment to the children of wealthy" donors, which, given the limited number of spots, hurts students needing financial aid.

The wait-list thing suggests it's not 100% need blind. But maybe the wait-list kids should be happy they got in even if they're getting less of a discount.

The part about wealthy donors, well, okay, that's the way the Ivies have worked. And when a rich kid gets in, that leaves a fractionally bigger pot of money to aid the scholarship students.

[Troyfan]

IIRC, among the Ivies, they collud—sorry, came to agreement, with the best interests of students in mind—that if the Ivies provided equal or equivalent aid packages to those admitted to more than one Ivy, this was a great advantage to the admitted applicant because he or she then could choose the best fit based on academic reasons.

Critics and free-market types made the point that some student might believe that if, say, Brown was a slightly better school than Dartmouth for their needs, but if the Dartmouth famly contribution came in $5,000 less, that student might decide Dartmouth was the better place to go.

I thought the Ivies in this older suit got their hands slapped and were told to stop "helping" accepted applicants by offering them essentially the same aid package for all the Ivies.

The current lawsuit seems to be a consensus-on-aid challenge but of a larger group of schools. (Brown, California Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern, Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, Rice, Vanderbilt and Yale.) It says some of the schools are not really need-blind, which they claim to be:

The suit claims that nine of the schools are not actually need blind because for many years, they have found ways to consider some applicants' ability to pay.

The University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt, for example, have considered the financial needs of wait-listed applicants, the lawsuit says. Other schools, the lawsuit says, award "special treatment to the children of wealthy" donors, which, given the limited number of spots, hurts students needing financial aid.

The wait-list thing suggests it's not 100% need blind. But maybe the wait-list kids should be happy they got in even if they're getting less of a discount.

The part about wealthy donors, well, okay, that's the way the Ivies have worked. And when a rich kid gets in, that leaves a fractionally bigger pot of money to aid the scholarship students.

GM and Ford used to set prices like that too.  It was also to allow their customers to pick what car was best for them free of cost considerations.

Need blindness doesn't sound like a difficult condition to meet.  Figure out how much a family can pay, subtract it from your cost, and give aid for the difference.  To get around the collusion aspect, the universities just have to supplement this aid amount with additional enticements to get kids they really, really want, be it for athletic or academic or artistic prowess.

In any case it doesn't seem like very fertile ground for a lawsuit even if it's well-intentioned.

[billhoward]

In any case it doesn't seem like very fertile ground for a lawsuit even if it's well-intentioned.

You might underestimate the rage engendered when somebody feels somebody else got a good deal based on old school connections or being a legacy.

I'm still working my way around how, if more affluent families who can pay more of the list price, are admitted, how that substantially disadvantages poorer applicants, because the pot of scholarship money expanded fractionally for each rich kid/needs no aid admitted.

Maybe some school will be truthful (mercenary?) and say, 10% of our entering class will comprise students who ask no financial aid, and against that we'll make 10% of the slots available to students whose families are unable to pay anything.

Maybe the Ivies should run campaigns saying, "There's nothing wrong with Colgate, Bowdoin, Lafayette or the U of R."

[abmarks]

I'm still working my way around how, if more affluent families who can pay more of the list price, are admitted, how that substantially disadvantages poorer applicants, because the pot of scholarship money expanded fractionally for each rich kid/needs no aid admitted.

I think you are conflating two different issues here. (For discussions sake, let's assume there is a fixed number of students admitted in a given year and a fixed amount of financial aid.)

This isn't about the affordability of the school once you're admitted; It's about getting admitted in the first place. If you are preferencing more affluent students in the admissions process, you are likely to admit fewer less affluent students than you would with a need-blind policy.

 
FYP:

You might underestimate the rage engendered when somebody feels that somebody else got a good deal could take their spot, because they were a rich kid,   based on old school connections or being a legacy

[Troyfan]

I don't have a problem with using ability to pay as an admissions criterion provided it doesn't get carried to extremes.  For one thing, it leaves more money to be distributed among kids who need aid.  Also, except for Harvard, which could eliminate tuition entirely and not miss a beat, every college has to be aware that, hey, we can get this kid for free and his parents might have a little left over for us on top of it.  

Even if the kid is a little weak academically, so are many others that are admitted anyway because they meet other admissions goals.

[billhoward]

Are we in violent agreement here? Yes, this is about the admissions process and getting admitted. That's the year when the university figures out how much aid money there is for how many students. It probably assumes that on average, family need doesn't change between the admissions year and the four years as a student.

Whether it's a good thing or not, if a university gives admissions preference to some cohort of students who do not need aid, then that fixed pot of aid money is fractionally higher for those in need.

A lot of grousing on campus, all campuses, is preferences or quotas, and some group that isn't preferenced enough, gripes that they're being harmed. The current most contentious issue may be the percentage of admissions of Asian students. The U.S. population is ~7% Asian, Cornell's is 21%, Harvard's is 28%. Yet there are lawsuits alleging Harvard should have more Asian students if it paid more attention to academic prowess. The Students for Fair Admissions lawsuit is being heard by the Supreme Court Oct. 31. There are two similar cases, another versus University of North Carolina, which suit was to be heard jointly but then severed b/c new Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson had served on Harvard's Board of Overseers. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/9/12/scotus-affirmative-action-october/

[osorojo]

All this bushwa about the "best" ranked colleges/universities is an exercise comparing wrestlers to high-jumpers. e.g.: Which is better, Cornell's Veterinary School or Harvard's Foreign Language Department?

[billhoward]

All this bushwa about the "best" ranked colleges/universities is an exercise comparing wrestlers to high-jumpers. e.g.: Which is better, Cornell's Veterinary School or Harvard's Foreign Language Department?

There is money to be made rating colleges. There is intense interest among high schoolers and parents in knowing which is the best school to attend – or "give me 10 good schools to pursue" students – and so people want to know how the school is, overall.

Columbia is the latest well-ranked school to apparently try to game the rankings, in this case by reporting small class sizes. US News then dropped them from #2 to #18, and if that was the only metric that was off, that seems a LOT of weight to give to one item. A Walter LAFeber (RIP) lecture to 300 was a highlight, for many.

[Dafatone]

All this bushwa about the "best" ranked colleges/universities is an exercise comparing wrestlers to high-jumpers. e.g.: Which is better, Cornell's Veterinary School or Harvard's Foreign Language Department?

There is money to be made rating colleges. There is intense interest among high schoolers and parents in knowing which is the best school to attend – or "give me 10 good schools to pursue" students – and so people want to know how the school is, overall.

Columbia is the latest well-ranked school to apparently try to game the rankings, in this case by reporting small class sizes. US News then dropped them from #2 to #18, and if that was the only metric that was off, that seems a LOT of weight to give to one item. A Walter LAFeber (RIP) lecture to 300 was a highlight, for many.

Class size is a weird one. I understand the value of small classes, but it gets wonky at the extremes. I was in a three person class that I wished had more people. Also, if a huge lecture has 200 people, it's not gonna be much worse if it goes up to 500.

[nyc94]

if that was the only metric that was off, that seems a LOT of weight to give to one item.

A large issue seems to be spending per student, ten percent of the rankings. The whistleblower suggests that Columbia was lumping in the cost of patient care at their teaching hospital as instructional costs. Another issue was percent of full time faculty with PhD or terminal degree in their field. Columbia was claiming 100 percent while their own website listed about 10 percent with masters or bachelors degree. Peer schools like H-Y-P are in the low 90s.

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~thaddeus/ranking/investigationversion1.html

[billhoward]

About rankings, criteria: I have some modest interaction wiht media companies doing best colleges, best doctors, best places to live ratings. IMO the rankings might be a bit better with more data factors. For instance, in the emerging Best Places for Boomers to Retire then Die category (if I ran the place, that'd be the headline), no one as yet has let the user mark their political standing and then set a comfort dial for how far that from you do you want the community to be. Old liberals are having second thoughts about many parts of Florida.

[osorojo]

The words, not the class size, are the key to excellence in teaching. British Scholar Dr. Samuel Finer once taught a history class in Goldwin Smith to a half- full lecture hall. When the word got out even those enrolled in the course had to show up ten minutes early to get a seat.

[David Harding]

All this bushwa about the "best" ranked colleges/universities is an exercise comparing wrestlers to high-jumpers. e.g.: Which is better, Cornell's Veterinary School or Harvard's Foreign Language Department?

There is money to be made rating colleges. There is intense interest among high schoolers and parents in knowing which is the best school to attend – or "give me 10 good schools to pursue" students – and so people want to know how the school is, overall.

Columbia is the latest well-ranked school to apparently try to game the rankings, in this case by reporting small class sizes. US News then dropped them from #2 to #18, and if that was the only metric that was off, that seems a LOT of weight to give to one item. A Walter LAFeber (RIP) lecture to 300 was a highlight, for many.

James Maas regularly filled Bailey Hall for Psych 101.  https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/09/bailey-hall-debuts-anew

[osorojo]

If only there were fewer applicants with both intellectual and physical talent the organization, operation, and finances of colleges and universities would be greatly simplified. We could have universities for athletes and separate universities for scholars.

[Trotsky]

We could have universities for athletes

We do.

We do.