The Daily - Affirmative Action for the 1 Percent

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

A major new study has revealed just how much elite colleges admissions in the U.S. systematically favor the rich and the superrich.David Leonhardt, a senior writer for The Times and The Morning, walks through the data and explains why the study is fueling calls to abandon longstanding practices like legacy admissions.Guest: David Leonhardt, a senior writer for The New York Times and The Morning.Background reading: From the Upshot: A study of elite college admissions data suggests being very rich is its own qualification.Here’s David Leonhardt’s article for The Morning discussing the results of the study.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, a major new study has revealed in staggering ways just how much elite college admissions in the U.S. systematically favor the rich and the super-rich. My colleague, David Leonhardt, walks us through the data and explains why the study is fueling calls to abandon long-standing practices like legacy admissions. It's Thursday, July 27th.

David, welcome back to The Daily. Thank you, Michael. David, after the Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action in college admissions a few weeks ago. It said it was unconstitutional. A lot of people's attention quickly turned to other features of the college admissions process that feel, in a way, like alternative forms of affirmative action and preference, giving people a clear set of advantages in the process. And a lot of those people started asking, why aren't we talking about all the ways that college admissions favor the privileged? Yes. And I think that makes sense because college admissions are about to change more than they have in a long time. And so it makes sense for colleges and for society as a whole

to ask, well, what features of the current system should remain and what features should change, not just affirmative action, but really the whole process. Right. And in the midst of that debate comes a study. And we get a lot of studies in the world of journalism. But this study stood out. And it's what we want to talk with you about

because it seems to offer a really authoritative, perhaps even the most authoritative ever look at how systems of advantage for those with a lot of advantages already play out in the college admissions process. So David, tell us about this study. I do think it's the clearest look we've gotten behind the scenes at college admissions at these elite schools. And the reason is that it combined admissions records, internal admissions records that several of these colleges gave the researchers access to with tax returns, which gives us hard data on who it is that is applying to these schools. And that allows us, in a way that we really haven't before, to get a very clear sense of who's applying,

who's getting in, and who's going. And I've gotten to know this study really well because I've been reporting on these same issues for 20 years and talking to these researchers who are at Harvard and Brown who did it. And I'm actually an informal, unpaid advisor to them. I give them thoughts about what are the questions that those of us who aren't economists want answered by data like this. And I really do think, after years of writing about this, that this has given me and all of us a better sense of what actually happens inside admissions offices than we've had before. And so with all this information, what did the researchers who did this study find? What's the headline result? I think the headline result is that we live in an extremely

unequal society, and college admissions in some ways makes it more unequal. So affluent kids are on average much more qualified than less affluent kids. They have better academic qualifications by any measure, grades, SAT scores, essays. And so, of course, because colleges need to think about which students are prepared to do the work, colleges are going to end up admitting more affluent students for those reasons. And yet, even on top of that, colleges give large advantages in admissions to privileged kids over similarly qualified middle and low-income kids. And it's that last thing. It's that idea that when you're looking at two kids who have similar grades, similar test scores, similar academic qualifications, that the affluent kid, and particularly the very affluent kid, is nonetheless more likely to get in. It's that idea that has caused this study to get so much attention. And David, can you quantify the advantage that this study found? Walk us through some of the numbers that this study produced. So the way that I find most helpful is when they

look at a typical class at an Ivy Plus college, so those are the eight actual Ivy League schools, plus Duke, the University of Chicago, Stanford, and MIT, when you look at the typical class at one of these colleges, about 9% of the students come from the top 1% of the income distribution, meaning they come from families earning more than $600,000 a year, and didn't get in because of their academic qualifications. Didn't get in because of their academic qualifications. Or didn't get in solely because of their academic qualifications.

These are still kids who do extremely well in school. But when you compare them to kids with less money who didn't get in, they don't do better. And in many ways, that is the core finding of the paper. So David, let me make sure I understand this. This study finds that 9% of the college students enrolled in these highly selective elite colleges, in a sense, they don't deserve to have ever been admitted and enrolled based on their qualifications versus any other kid who applied. It's just that they were very, very rich. I think the colleges would push back

on that characterization. Colleges would say, no, these students are still extremely qualified. But I also understand why people would look at the study and make that statement. Because if decisions were made based solely on academic qualifications, then 9% of the students at these schools wouldn't be there, and they would be replaced by kids with similar academic qualifications who come from less affluent backgrounds. Right. And there would therefore be greater economic diversity in these colleges. Precisely. And it gets even starker when you look at the richest of the rich. So let's imagine two different applicants with the same academic qualifications, one of whom comes from a family with average income, one of whom comes from a family with income in the top 0.1%. So imagine a family making about $3 million or more a year. That applicant from the top 0.1% is more than twice

as likely, more than twice as likely to be admitted than a child with the same test scores who comes from a family with an average income. And I think it's that difference, this idea that even after a kid from a middle class or poor background has managed to do as well on the SAT, on these other academic measures, they are still less likely to get in than a kid from a more affluent background. It's that that has people looking at this data and saying, how is that fair? Right. Because what this data establishes is that when it comes to college admissions, there really is a form of affirmative action for

the nation's wealthiest kids. Perhaps people suspected that was the case and maybe even acted as if it were the case, but here it is formally and pretty authoritatively documented and established. Yes, that's right. they say, and they say it very proudly, that they are need-blind when it comes to admissions, which means that, technically speaking, they are not making admissions decisions based on income at all. In fact, they're supposed to be,

as that phrase suggests, blind to it. So how does the study explain this level of advantage for those who are rich when the process is supposed to be blind to their financial background? What does it cite as the causes of it? That's right. It's not wealth directly. It's three other factors that correlate very much with wealth and end up giving wealthy kids an advantage. And the first of those three will be familiar to many people. It's called legacy admissions. It's the idea that if one of the applicant's parents went to the same school, that applicant gets a leg up in the admissions process. Right. It's a formal process.

It's not secret. And it's been around for a long time. That's right. It's the official policy of most of these schools. And of course, legacy students almost by definition are likely to be coming from well-off families, not all of them, but many of them. So this policy kind of guarantees a preference for a fair number of rich applicants. That's right. The legacy population skews more affluent than the population as a whole. And this study tells us that legacy applicants get a leg up. Now, it's nuanced, and I think this surprises many people. If you went to one of these schools and looked at the students, as this study did, the average legacy student has higher academic qualifications than the average non-legacy student, which again is a reflection of American inequality, if you have a parent who went to one of

these schools you often will have had a better education growing up and in fact many of the most qualified students at these schools the students who do the best not only in college with grades but after college with the kind of graduate schools they go to or the jobs they get, they do really, really well. The issue is the colleges also admit a fair number of legacy students who are not there solely because of their academic qualifications, but they're there because of a mix of their academic qualifications and their legacy status. And what the researchers estimate is that about half of the legacy students at these schools wouldn't be there without the legacy advantage. One of the other things that the study shows, and we know this, is that the American elite comes disproportionately

from these Ivy Plus schools. And so the students who are being admitted are absolutely qualified in terms of a basic sense. Can they do the work? Do they have truly excellent academic outcomes in high school? They do, including the half of legacy students who wouldn't be there without the boost. But the issue is that this is a scarce resource. And what colleges are doing, the researchers argue, is they are concentrating opportunity among people who already get opportunity. And that is something that is worth grappling with. Okay, so that is legacy admissions

as a force for reinforcing privilege in the admission system. What is the next factor that the study cites to explain how these schools are perpetuating privilege. I describe the second factor as private school polish. And that's the idea that the students who are applying from private schools, both day schools and boarding schools, so think of Andover, or in New York City, think of Dalton. In Los Angeles, think of Brentwood. What happens is these schools are very good at making their students look good. They're very good at writing teacher recommendations at these schools. They're very good at helping the kids

think about their essays. They're very good at helping the kids think about how to package their extracurriculars and to give them really great extracurricular options. So what ends up happening is that when colleges are faced with two applicants, again, let's imagine two with identical academic qualifications, test scores and grades, one of whom comes from a public school and one of whom comes from a private school, the private school applicant is more likely to get in than an equally qualified public school applicant. And just to say something in defense of the admissions officers who are trying to make these decisions, sort through thousands of applicants of really insanely qualified teenagers,

they understand that private school polish exists, and they think they're able to control for it. But actually, the polish is so effective that they can't or don't fully control for it. But actually, the polish is so effective that they can't or don't fully control for it. Well, David, let me push back against that defense because I want to better understand it. Admissions officers at these colleges, they know when a kid comes from a private school versus a public school. It says so right on the application. I went to Dalton. I went to Andover. So isn't this something that an admissions officer could actively seek to compensate for? They can and they do. They just don't do it as effectively as they think they do.

So let's think about it this way. The applicant who is coming from a private school has teacher recommendations that really bring out exactly who that student is. They have a guidance counselor recommendation that makes the kid feel like a full person. It's almost like a newspaper profile. The kid who's coming from public school is working with a guidance counselor who maybe has 150 or 200 kids for whom they have to manage that kid's high school to college process. The recommendation about the public school kid just doesn't pop off the page. Now, your skeptical question is absolutely fair. Could they do it? They could. This study shows they're not. Perhaps the best metaphor for this, as I'm hearing you describe this, is two identical

products. We shouldn't think of two identical college applicants as products, but stick with me for a minute. Same quality, same qualifications, but one has a better package. And you're saying these college admissions advisors, they know that they should be thinking about the packaging, but it's so persuasive that they can't unsee it. That's exactly right. And I should say, when we talk about private schools, that does not include religious schools, like Catholic schools. So the private school bonus really applies to students who go to these independent schools,

the private day schools, and the boarding schools that tend to be concentrated in places that also tend to be wealthier. Okay, so that's private school polish. What is the third factor, according to the authors of the study? The third factor is athletics. And I think people understand that sports and recruiting are big parts of college admissions.

I don't think they understand quite how big they are or how sports interact with economic privilege. So how does it? Well, I think if you said to someone who tends to be on the sailing team or the golf team or the fencing team, they would say, oh, I assume it's kids who come from affluent backgrounds. Right. But actually, it's almost every sport today that kids come from affluent backgrounds. every sport today that kids come from affluent backgrounds. Some of the only exceptions happen to be the two highest profile sports, which is part of how I think our impressions are a little off here. They're football and they're basketball. They're the sports that people watch on TV.

But if you look at almost any other sport, be it volleyball, be it soccer, be it baseball and softball, what has happened because of the rise of quite expensive, high-level travel sports in high schools, that even in these other sports, I don't think most of us think of baseball as a sport of the elite. these colleges tend to come from quite affluent backgrounds because that's who is able to do travel sports when they're young and then get so good at baseball that they can be good enough to play at one of these colleges as well as having the academic qualifications to get in. And how big a factor does the study say that sports and athletic recruitment are when it comes to reinforcing the privileges of the privileged? They're big. So if you look at one of these Ivy Plus schools and you look at the kids who come from the top 1% of the income distribution,

about one in every eight of those kids is a recruited athlete. So one in every eight of the very affluent kids at these schools is a recruited athlete. Compare one in every eight of the very affluent kids at these schools is a recruited athlete. Compare that to lower income or middle income kids. Among those kids, only about one in 20 is a recruited athlete. So really, sports do skew quite affluent. And as those numbers show, it's not just on the margins. It really is a meaningful part of the larger advantages to affluence in the admissions process. It feels worth noting, David, that I think a lot of us not only didn't know that sports played this role in college admissions, but I think many of us, I'll just say I thought physical talent is physical talent. Speed is speed, right? Agility is agility. And that the best athlete, no matter class, no matter finances, would find their way to these colleges. And that understanding or perhaps wishful thinking just turns out to be wrong. Money actually does create better athletes. Yes, it is just the case that we have so much inequality

in our country that the better players in these sports tend to be the kids who come from more affluent backgrounds. And there's something else going on here as well, which is to be a student athlete at one of these schools, you also have to clear a high academic bar. Now, it's not as high for any of the other categories we're talking about. I mentioned before, legacy students have higher than average academic qualifications. Athletes have lower than average academic qualifications at these schools. But what they're doing is still kind of amazing, right? They are both really top athletes, and they are truly excellent students. So in the individual basis, I really want to emphasize this. These students are incredibly impressive and accomplished people. The issue is that when you look at it from a

society-wide basis, this is a pattern that seems to be perpetuating advantage. So it's pretty obvious, David, from all this data, who most benefits from the three factors we just talked about? It's the rich and the super rich. Who, according to this study and all this data, is most disadvantaged by the power of the factors that we've just been talking about? I think there are a couple different answers to that question, and this is a really complex subject. If we restrict ourselves to the students who actually apply to these schools, the most disadvantaged is what we would call the upper middle class. It's the students from roughly the 70th percentile to the 95th percentile of the income distribution. And so what happens is when the colleges are looking at students who all have the same academic qualifications,

the biggest advantages go to the very wealthy kids for the reasons we've talked about. And the colleges also give an advantage, a smaller one, but still an advantage to lower income kids. And I think a lot of people, including college leaders, would say that's appropriate. These kids have been running with wind in their face their entire lives, and they nonetheless excel. Who that leaves out are the upper middle class kids, who they don't have the advantages of the very rich. They haven't overcome disadvantage like low-income kids have. Think of a kid who maybe is not an athlete, not a legacy, and doesn't attend private school. So going to a big public school in a city or a suburb and who's applying to one of these

places. It is true that once that kid goes into the process, that kid is the least advantaged. And I think it's important to talk about that. I would just be careful. It's not the case that upper middle class children growing up in America have less opportunity overall than poor children. Right. Because we're already restricting ourselves to the children who apply to these schools. Poor kids have much less opportunity to do well in school.

Actually, even if they do well, they're less likely to apply to these schools than upper middle class kids are. So depending how you look at it, you can either argue that poor kids are the most disadvantaged, or if you look at just the admissions process, you can argue that upper middle class kids are the most disadvantaged. What's clear is that very wealthy kids, the top 1%, and particularly the top 0.1%, are the most advantaged. Right. But just to linger for a moment on the upper middle class kids who are applying to college and hearing this conversation or hearing about this study, it may very much pain them and their families to discover that what they believed was an economic position that conferred opportunity has, in terms of college admissions and enrollment, become a kind of disadvantage given the way the system is now constructed?

Yes. And I think another way to think of that is that if the privileges for the top 1% in this process were to go away, the beneficiaries would not merely be low-income kids. In fact, some of the biggest beneficiaries for these large advantages for the very rich might be the merely affluent. I think that if all colleges did were change their approach to private school polish, or all they did was get rid of legacy, or all they did was change their approach to athletics, we shouldn't assume that that would immediately allow a lot more low income kids to come to these colleges. We shouldn't assume that it would allow a lot more under represented minorities to come to these schools. It would certainly make that easier by opening up more spots, but it wouldn't guarantee it. And so what happens on these college campuses is really

going to depend on the full picture of what colleges do after the Supreme Court ruling. And how many of the systems that we've been talking about, they are willing to take on, fix, reform? Change, yes. And one of the things colleges will tell you is that some of these things are harder to change, in their view, than many outsiders think they are. We'll be right back. So, David, let's talk about why all these systems of advantaging the well-off, it turns out, are harder to change than we might think. And I think we have to start with legacy admissions, which very much seems like low-hanging fruit

if you want to reform the stuff we're talking about. So how do colleges think about legacy admissions, and why wouldn't they be pretty quick to just eliminate it? I think when a lot of people look at legacy, they say, how could this possibly exist? Part of the answer is, it's not something that colleges invented. It's actually the norm in American society. If you look around your company, there probably are

people who work there whose parents also worked there. If you think about Hollywood or the top singers, a strange percentage of them had parents who were in the same business. Think about labor unions. One of the main ways that people have gotten labor union cards over the decades, going way back to the early 20th century and the rise of unions, was because a plumber had a dad or an uncle or a brother who worked in that same union. That was legacy admissions for plumbers. Right. And same for fire departments and police departments. Absolutely. That's the way the world works. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a legacy politician. So was Winston Churchill. Martin Luther King was a legacy minister. And I think,

although we can look at that and we can say, wait a second, is that fair? It actually has enormous benefits when people feel a long-term investment in an institution. We saw this during Trump's impeachment. Who were the Republicans willing to stand up and actually vote to convict Trump? Many political analysts pointed out they were people whose parents had been in politics. Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney are legacy politicians who felt a larger commitment to the enterprise that made them willing to do something that was hard. This exists in a very real way for colleges. The people who are willing to volunteer their time, the people who attend sporting events of the college, the people who volunteer in all kinds of ways and raise

money for the colleges, the people who help make connections to help recruit a faculty member or help the college in some other ways, are often people who don't simply feel a one-time connection to that school because they went there, but they feel a multi-generational connection to the school. And yes, fundraising is part of this. It absolutely is. It's an important part of it. A family that has sent multiple generations to the same school, if that family happens to have someone who goes off and gets really rich starting a new company, they're much more likely to give money to that school. But I think people misunderstand it when they think of it as just a financial transaction. And they misunderstand it when they ask,

just a financial transaction. And they misunderstand it when they ask, why are colleges doing this? The answer is, healthy institutions in all kinds of realms of society tend to have people and families who feel a long-term connection to and investment in those institutions. So in the minds of these elite, highly selective colleges, there's a real and tangible virtue to legacy admissions that's, as you're saying, not just financial, but cultural and institutional, despite the pretty clear ways in which it furthers the advantages of the rich. Yes. And let's also think about the way that these schools have changed. These schools have become a lot more diverse over the last several decades. So yes, legacy still disproportionately benefits white applicants. But with each passing year,

it benefits white applicants less. And the colleges will tell you, we have specifically heard from alumni of ours, alumni of color, who say to us, wait a second, you kept us out of your institution for centuries, and right after you let us in, you're going to get rid of a benefit that might let our children go here as well? Fascinating. That is another way in which the politics of this are quite complicated internally for colleges. So given all that, do we think that legacy admissions, however much people see it as contributing to all this privilege in the process, is likely to persist forever?

Not necessarily. The outcome here is genuinely uncertain, which is part of what makes this so fascinating. Political pressure against legacy admissions really is rising. Wesleyan University, an elite college in Connecticut, just announced that they're getting rid of it. The Biden administration just announced that it is launching a civil rights investigation of Harvard's use of legacy admissions. We don't know what's going to happen, but I think it's fair to say that the legacy system is more vulnerable than it has ever been before. Okay. What are other ways that the colleges we've been talking about can mitigate against the advantages this study has identified? Well, there's one that's really counterintuitive, which is the SAT.

We think of the SAT as perpetuating advantage because high-income kids do better than low-income kids. White and Asian kids do better than Black and Latino kids. But the question is, if colleges aren't going to use the SAT, and many of them are moving away from it, what are they going to use? And this study suggests that they may end up using a set of factors that are actually more skewed than the SAT is. So essays and extracurricular activities and teacher recommendations are actually more skewed in favor of the affluent than the SAT is. And I think one of the things that this study suggests is that, yes, the SAT reflects a lot of inequality in our society, but it also is a very good predictor of how students will do in college

and after. It is an imperfect measure to be sure. Rich kids can take the test more than once. They can get private tutoring. But the benefits of all that stuff tends to be modest. And if colleges want to identify really promising lower and middle-income kids who can go there, there is no tool quite as reliable as the SAT, even though when they're using it, they need to remember that poor and middle-class kids aren't likely to have quite as good scores as rich kids. So you're saying of all the gameable metrics that colleges currently rely on that have resulted in so much advantage for the rich, the SAT and the ACT, it might be, in a sense, the least gameable test of someone's qualification, and therefore colleges perhaps should be relying

on it more than they are. Yes, and I know a lot of listeners will say, well, what about grades? And grades are a good measure. The problem with using grades alone is we've had so much grade inflation in recent years, and there's so much inconsistency about what an A means at one high school than another, that grades end up being really noisy. And so you're left with standardized tests as an imperfect measure, but maybe the least imperfect measure of all the options. David, it feels like another way to fix this preference for rich applicants is for colleges to explicitly seek to take more applicants from public schools than from private schools,

given the private school polish problem established by this study. That feels highly achievable, and it feels like it would have a pretty big impact on the economic mix of students who attend these colleges. Yes, I think that's right. I think if colleges focus on the fact that right now they are disadvantaging many public school kids, that right now they are disadvantaging many public school kids, they could fix this themselves through the admissions process. But there's a downside for these colleges whenever we're talking about them replacing affluent kids with much less affluent kids, which is affluent kids tend to pay full tuition. Much less affluent kids do not. They tend to receive large scholarships from the colleges. And there are a few colleges out there that have such huge endowments that

you might say, well, they don't need any of the tuition money. But really, most of these colleges do not have endowments that are so big that they can simply ignore the tuition money. And the tuition money is so large that all of these colleges would need to find a way to make it up if they were to change their student population to admit fewer affluent kids and more lower and middle-income kids. Now, it's important to say some colleges have done this. Several colleges have become much more economically diverse over the last decade or so. One of them is Vassar College in New York, which does not have a truly enormous endowment.

And so what Vassar did was it looked for other cuts to make to its budget. Its food wasn't quite as fancy as the food at other colleges. You could imagine that colleges might try to cut back on some of the really nice facilities that they now have for students. You could imagine that colleges would decide to cut back on the amount of administrators they have. The number of administrators who work on college campuses has really soared in recent decades. So there are ways for colleges to find savings if they decide it is really a priority for them to admit and enroll more low-income kids. They just have to decide what's a priority for them. Right. And it feels like the big question that hovers over this conversation, and I want to end on it, is based on your reporting, do you think these colleges want to make these kinds of changes and want to open up more spots

for more economically diverse students? Because in talking to you, it becomes clear that the current system works in some ways for these highly selective schools, right? It works for them financially to have lots of rich kids who pay full tuition. It works for them in that legacy admissions reinforces their culture in ways that are tangibly beneficial. And let's be honest, big change is hard, and people may not want to undertake it. So I'm curious if you think the people who run these schools are deeply invested in getting rid of the three things we've been talking about, or if they're looking for ways to preserve them and maintain a status quo that functions pretty well for them, even if it's very unfair. I've been interviewing college administrators about these subjects for 20 years now, and I think they are legitimately torn. The current system does have tangible benefits for colleges, as we've been discussing. But the people running these colleges also care

about their larger social mission, which is educating people to help run American society. And they want those people to come from a very broad cross-section of backgrounds. And so we see these cross-currents right now, which is for the colleges, the current system has a whole bunch of advantages, and they have internal pressure from alumni groups and others to keep the status quo. On the other hand, there is external pressure now coming onto these colleges to make changes. And I think they're trying to grapple with where do they end up with all of this. I think what many critics of the current system would say, including some of the researchers who did this paper, is they really

have room to move toward more fairness. Raj Chetty, who's a Harvard economist, is one of the people who did this research. And what he said to me was, we don't need to put a thumb on the scale in favor of the poor. We just need to take the thumb off the scale that colleges, perhaps inadvertently, have put in favor of the rich.

colleges, perhaps inadvertently, have put in favor of the rich. Now, I don't think we know exactly what's going to change, but the fact that they have had a thumb on the scale in favor of the rich, and that we now know they have had a thumb on the scale in favor of the rich, when you combine that with the politics of the Supreme Court decision, I think creates a lot of pressure on them to make some changes in response to the concerns that people have about whether they are fulfilling the mission that colleges themselves say that they have. Well, David, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thank you, Michael. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. In a dramatic court hearing on Wednesday, the judge overseeing what was expected to be Hunter Biden's guilty plea to two federal tax charges put the proceedings on hold after a disagreement erupted between Biden's lawyers and prosecutors. Biden's lawyers and prosecutors. The disagreement centered on whether Biden's plea, which involves no jail time, would protect him from future prosecution over his business dealings. Biden's lawyers said that it would offer such protection, a prospect rejected by the judge. It was the latest twist in a case that has raised questions about whether Hunter Biden has been treated too harshly or too leniently because he is the president's son. The Times reports that the judge could still approve the legal agreement in the coming weeks. Today's episode was produced by Aasla Chaturvedi, Ricky Nowetzki, and Stella Tan, with help from Jessica Chung.

It was edited by Lisa Chow and Devin Taylor, fact-checked by Susan Lee, contains original music by Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.