Why Your Kid Isn't Going to Princeton and a Bunch of
Other Top Schools
The
odds against getting into elite universities have never been higher. But maybe
it's time to recalculate the value of a college education.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN
Many of us likely forgot one of the most
striking things about the last great college sports scandal - I'm not referring
to the illegal early recruiting stings, the under-the-table payments to
incoming athletes and their parents, or even the many perverts caught in the
locker and training rooms. It was a revelation from the Varsity Blues
scandal, where fancy, famous, and affluent parents bribed coaches and other admissions
officers and used fake resumes to get their mediocre offspring
admitted to prestigious colleges through the locker room door by claiming that
they were serious jocks.
As the stories slowly unfolded, what became
apparent is that some of the kids involved didn't even want to go to college.
In each case, the main driving force was a clever con artist named Rick Singer,
who combined his mastery of the college admissions process with his ability to
manipulate and stroke the pathetic parents' egos, their competitive social
concerns, and their desperate need for bragging rights. These folks may have
gone to inferior schools or none at all, but their kids were going to the moon,
and they'd tell the whole world about it. Talk about living vicariously through
your kids. Of course, this isn't exactly unexpected or difficult to understand.
No one associates famous TV or film stars with healthy and happy childhoods or
with being great parents. In truth, though, you don't know what you're capable
of until you have children.
But that's all yesterday's news. There's a
major new storm on the horizon that suggests bad news for millions of
late-Millennial parents with high school aged kids, even though their own
aspirations are far more modest than those of the bi-coastal cheats. From here
on down, it's all uphill. These aren't people seriously looking to get their
kids into Harvard or Yale; they'd be pleased as punch just to be sure that
their kids got into a "good" school - one like they attended
themselves. Ideally, one that was at least as well regarded as their own alma
maters. But their kids most likely won't be headed anywhere near their folks'
old stomping grounds.
The sad realities that will be playing out
over the next several years for millions of families are: (a) as the parents
often sarcastically say, they themselves would no longer be accepted and
admitted to the colleges and universities they attended since the entrance
criteria have been radically raised; (b) the upper middle range of schools (not
Ivy League, but certainly Big 10), which would have been largely "socially"
acceptable for their kids to attend, are now so selective and difficult to get
into that their offspring will have to "settle" for schools in the
next tier down -- not necessarily in academic terms, but certainly in the media
and reputational sense; (c) many of the schools are finally limiting or
discarding legacy admittance criteria, which used to be another sneaky way in,
as well as reducing or abandoning their reliance on standardized tests; and (d)
there are no longer any such things as safety schools for most students where
there is an absolute assurance of acceptance - even including state
universities.
Getting into the top 25 private universities
and maybe another 10 well-regarded state schools has always been difficult, but
it's never been this difficult or as likely that highly qualified students with
exceptional academic results, superior test scores, and extensive
extracurricular and charitable activities would be consistently rejected by top
universities. But that's what's happening. And the clear cause isn't that the
kids’ credentials have changed, it's that the colleges and universities--
trying to meet diversity and equity goals --have moved and changed the goal
posts and literally pulled the rug out from under these kids' futures. The switcheroo
is so patently obvious that the Supreme Court, before the end of its current
term, will be ruling on cases brought by Asian-American students who claim that
they were denied entry based on the admitted fact that seats were given to
other, less qualified but more highly prioritized applicants.
There are other explanations for the increased
student and parental anxiety and concern, including three primary drivers.
(1) The elite colleges refuse to
increase their class sizes and continue to exploit, market and pride themselves
on their exclusivity and the ridiculously small percentage of applicants
accepted each year. They are not too proud, however, to accept costly and
material application fees from tens of thousands of students each year who have
zero prospects of being accepted. Princeton's class of 2025 had 37,601
applicants and offered admission to 1498 students. The
class size issue will be exacerbated by the fact that many students who
deferred or interrupted their studies due to the pandemic now plan to enter or
return to college.
(2) Colleges across the spectrum are
under increasing pressure to increase the diversity of their student
populations and they are setting aside larger numbers of seats in each class
for applicants meeting diversity criteria, who may or may not meet all of the
other admission criteria as well. Assuming that every other criterion is the
same, it's theoretically "no harm, no foul"-- except to the thousands
of aspiring students who didn't make the cut, which is no different in that
regard than at any other time. There's obviously never been room enough for
everyone. But the pending lawsuits allege that the scales were more than a
little tilted in order to preference diverse applicants. This will be the
central issue for the courts to decide.
(3) Financial aid has turned into its
own crazy, sweepstakes-like process with high schools encouraging their
exceptional students to apply for as many scholarships as possible and then the
schools brag and solicit media about the aggregate dollars which these few students have
accumulated. The net effect of these stupid, self-promoting
stunts is to prevent or preclude other qualified students from accessing some
of these awards in a timely fashion, which makes it more difficult for them to
apply to certain colleges and universities without the assurance of financial
support to attend if they were accepted.
So, Sonny or Sally won't likely be going to
old Faber College where Dad was president of the Deltas or Mom was a student
leader. But it's possible that there's a silver lining in all this drama and
angst and, of all things, there's even a lesson to be drawn from the Varsity
Blues scandal itself.
It's far more important to prepare the kids
for the path and its alternatives than to try to prepare the path for the
kids. Maybe the best and biggest favor parents can do right now for their
college-bound kids is to lower the heat, reduce some of the stress, temper the
level of expectations, and then ask their kids what it is that they really
want to do. They may not have a clear or obvious answer, but they are entitled
to a choice.
Maybe they don't care to go to some expensive
four-year school, study whatever, end up with long-term college debt along with
their parents, and graduate with a degree in nothing employable so they can
become the best barista on the block. Maybe they want to explore some high-end
vocational training - learn some real substantive and technical skills -
graduate and jump right into a job paying a solid six-figure income and never
look back at what they allegedly missed. Or they may want to become an
apprentice for some union job that will be here forever, not be exportable to
China or India, likely be based in their hometown, and provide an assured path
to a middle-class, solid and protectable income. In the future, far more
mechanics will be working with keyboards and computers than wrenches and
soldering irons and making $100k plus.
The lesson here is pretty simple. Much like
the fantasy tale of the 80's and 90's that everyone needed to own their own
home, it's increasingly clear that not everyone needs to mortgage their future
to attend a four-year college to obtain a degraded degree in whatever which is
becoming a less and less important factor every day in the successful search to
find gainful and satisfying employment.
Just because we've always seen for centuries
that becoming a college grad was the be-all and end-all in the movies and on TV
and that it was something to be devoutly wished and hoped for doesn't make it
true or even desirable any longer today.
MAY 24, 2022
The
opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of
Inc.com.