An Elite Education: Hierarchies in American Universities

The glossy brochures began arriving fall of my junior year.  I remember walking eagerly to the mailbox every day after school, anxious to examine the smiling faces on each pamphlet, enticed by the thick card stock and images of well-groomed quads.  The enduring maxims in Times New Roman font glowed with allure – “Lux et veritas”,  “Ours the Task Eternal”, “Knowledge and Spirit” – and my expectations for my college experience grew.  I envisioned myself on a pilgrimage, my professors holding the lanterns of enlightenment.  I saw classrooms filled with enthusiastic voices, and imagined the fulfillment I would find in courses that challenged my ideas.  Perhaps, I would resist at first, but with time my professors and fellow students would lift me to heightened awareness.  I would come to measure myself against the texts to which I was exposed. I would be confronted by my own intellect.

Photo from Flickr.com, Uploaded by agnesdeer

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the pictures I was shown were carefully chosen by astute marketers, that the timeless maxims were functioning as catchy slogans.  I was unaware that the very choose-and-consume mentality that permeates our every decision was also operating in the hallowed halls where I had expected that I would be challenged.  The American university has come to reflect an America that is increasingly un-American.  In universities across the country, the ideals Americans have always spoken of – accessibility, equality, challenging of ineffective structures – are being continually negated.  In their place are corporatist hierarchies in which systems managers are valued above great thinkers, and money above knowledge.  If upper-tier universities continue to regard wealth and branding above the building of community of worthy students, the leaders of our nation will be the richest or most well-connected, not the best thinkers or innovators.

The very admissions process at many of America’s elite schools runs in opposition to American ideals of egalitarianism.  While these schools boast of diversity, it is often diversity of race and ethnicity, not social class.  According to Chris Hedges, the combination of tuition costs and “reliance on standardized tests and the demand for perfect grades [fills classrooms] with a disproportionate percentage of the rich and well connected”. At many elite universities, SAT and ACT scores are used as the indicator of analytical intelligence in an effort to compare students impartially.  There are, however, unfair advantages for some groups, most notably the ability of middle and upper class families to hire tutors and take part in test-prep programs.  The Princeton Review SAT deluxe preparation package is priced at $7,000, and other leading programs are not far behind.  These tools are quite helpful for those who can afford them, in many cases promising score increases of 200-400 points or a full refund.  Can these jumps in score really be used as indicators of increased intelligence?  Should they give the prepped students advantages when it comes time for admissions decisions?

According to Hedges, the generally well-off, analytically minded students who end up at elite schools maintain their privileged status by sending their children to their Alma Mater.  Fourteen percent of Yale’s student body in 2000 was composed of legacies, children of alumni.  The admission of Al Gore’s son to Harvard despite a poor disciplinary record, multiple charges of driving under the influence, and “unimpressive” grades and test scores is just one example of this situation among many.

Perhaps worse is the ability of money to buy entrance at such universities.  Even with extremely low acceptance rates at Harvard, the 340 donors who have given more than $1 million have 336 children who are or were previously enrolled at the school.  Daniel Golden, author of The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges – and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, states that Harvard “keeps a list of twenty-five to fifty well-connected but academically borderline students” who are promised admission if they defer for a year, ensuring that the university will be on good terms with prospective donors.

Lists like the one above and legacy admissions contradict the idea of America as a “land of opportunity”.  They ensure that if you are wealthy enough you can secure admission to the most prestigious institutions, and often prevent promising candidates from less privileged backgrounds from gaining admittance.  In doing so, they discredit the idea that colleges foster upward mobility and equal opportunity. Golden calls these practices the hallmarks of the legacy establishment:  “elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves”.  In part due to self-propagating “preferences of privilege”, like the ones seen above, today between just 3 and 11 percent of students at America’s top-ranked colleges come from families in the lowest income quartile.

According to Mark Edmundson, graduate of Princeton and Harvard Divinity School and professor at University of Virginia, the elite universities have become more glittering summer camps than rigorous hubs of academia.  Edmundson describes the changing uses of university funds at UVA:

Our funds go to construction, into new dorms, into renovating the student union. We have a new aquatics center and ever-improving gyms, stocked with StairMasters and Nautilus machines. Engraved on the wall in the gleaming aquatics building is a line by our founder, Thomas Jefferson, declaring that everyone ought to get about two hours’ exercise a day. Clearly even the author of the Declaration of Independence endorses the turning of his university into a sports-and-fitness emporium.

Edmundson believes such changes are the result of the increasingly cutthroat competition between universities seeking to attract the richest and most intelligent candidates.  Universities must maintain noteworthy facilities and meet consumer demands to stay afloat in their market.  If this means spending dollars on new amenities instead of on scholarships for less privileged students, then so be it.

A recent incident in California illustrates this trade-off excellently.  When the UC regents announced that because of a budget shortfall they would be unable to accept thousands of qualified students, a professor at UC Berkeley drew up a plan under which one percent of the salaries of each professor making over $100,000 would be taken by the university.  His plan would have allowed for the coverage of tuition for 2,300 potential students.  Unfortunately, the regents ignored him, and that same year announced plans to raise $1 billion for the athletic endowment.

The importance of maintaining educational establishments as democratic institutions extends beyond the need for socioeconomic diversity in the classroom.  More often than not, the leaders of our country come from universities like the ones mentioned above – Al Gore was a legacy at Harvard, George W. Bush at Yale.  In a vision of America as a meritocracy, there is little wrong with this – the smartest, most diligent students have access to the most highly acclaimed universities, and rightfully so.  The problem lies in the increasing turn away from a meritocracy and towards favoritism and double standards in the admissions process. Rather than opening up new opportunities, these tactics reinforce the gaps between socioeconomic groups and contribute to rising inequalities.  Our country was founded on a belief in independence and democracy, but the widening gulfs between classes and privileges granted to the upper social stratum are, to paraphrase Daniel Golden, returning us to the days of aristocracy.  When substantial donations, legacy status, or well connectedness can guarantee a place at the most distinguished universities, academic merit falls by the wayside.  If universities continue to value donations and branding above building a community of worthy students, our elites in Congress, or on Wall Street, will be the wealthiest or most well-connected, not the best thinkers or most innovative leaders.