America has always had an uneasy relationship with brilliance. Cultural tropes, like the mad scientist or the nerdy computer whiz, show both a respect for high accomplishment and an anxiety about how smart people fit into society.
This cultural uneasiness is most apparent in the educational realm. Schools recognized the existence of students with high academic aptitude by providing them with gifted programs and advanced classes. Outside of school hours, many sponsor honor societies or academic competitions. And the old tradition of publicly recognizing a graduating class’s valedictorian remains strong.
However, the educational industry has never let these programs shake the field’s commitment to egalitarianism. The spending on education in the United States is disproportionately directed towards struggling children. Sometimes this policy is explicit, such as earmarking billions of federal dollars annually for special education and little or nothing for advanced academics.
Other policies implicitly support struggling learners more than students who excel, such as the No Child Left Behind Act and its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which encouraged states to reward schools that help struggling students reach basic proficiency levels. These laws, though, did not incentivize or reward schools for helping students reach high levels of academic accomplishment. As a result, the numbers of high achievers stagnated.
Equity over excellence
This truce of carving out a few advanced programs and classes from a system concentrated on educating the lowest performing students worked reasonably well for decades. However, that arrangement was shattered within the past few years in the United States as districts and states embraced “equity” initiatives with the goal of achieving equal outcomes across individuals as well as groups.
The policies inevitably sacrifice bright and high achieving students to the social goals of activists. The push to hobble high performing students in order to achieve equity can take many forms. In Oregon, the state legislature eliminated the requirement that students pass a high school exit exam to demonstrate proficiency in reading, mathematics, and writing for two years until the state can re-evaluate its graduation requirements.
The reason: the testing requirement was “inequitable” because higher percentages of black and Hispanic students were failing the test. The impetus to eliminate tests that show differing levels of academic success is also apparent in admissions tests. At the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a magnet high school in Virginia often touted as the best high school in the country, admission is no longer based on high test performance.
Instead, a new system assigns seats at the prestigious school so that each region in the school district is evenly represented, and then all students that meet basic criteria (a 3.5 middle school grade-point average) are entered into the lottery. The result is a student body that is more racially diverse (from 73 percent Asian to 53 percent Asian, from one percent black to seven percent, and from three percent Hispanic to 25 percent Hispanic), but much less academically elite.
Magnet schools in Philadelphia and Boston also revamped their admissions procedures to de-emphasize tests and to improve the admission chances for Hispanic and black students. Reducing or eliminating the impact of admissions tests is not unique to high schools. Concerns about equity have also caused universities to make college admissions tests optional for applicants.
College admissions tests show well-known differences in average scores, and applying the same admissions standard to all groups will inevitably admit higher scoring groups at higher rates than lower scoring groups. This mathematical reality makes admissions tests a target of equity advocates. The test-optional movement has been underway for many years, mostly at small liberal arts colleges. Making standardized tests optional seems like a good idea to counteract the unequal admissions rates across groups.
However, research shows that it does not improve the socioeconomic or racial diversity of a student body. It does, however, raise a college’s reported test score average (because low performing applicants choose not to report scores), which improves the school’s rankings. Test-optional universities also increased tuition at higher rates than universities that required test scores. None of these developments help disadvantaged students.
The test-optional movement accelerated recently during the COVID-19 pandemic and in response to growing concerns about equity. The movement to drop testing requirements reached its greatest success when the regents of the University of California system voted to make admissions tests optional for applicants—despite their own faculty making a strong recommendation against a test-optional policy.
Even this move towards lowering standards was not enough. Advocacy groups sued the University of California system, which settled the lawsuit by agreeing to ban the consideration of any test scores in the admissions process. This outcome was exactly what university president Janet Napolitano had previously proposed and what many California politicians had wanted for years. What an amazing coincidence!..Continue reading..
College isn’t for everyone, but education is. With soaring tuition costs, it’s no surprise people are more open than ever to self-teaching methods to learn about what interests them.
YouTube has been a trusted tool for this. YouTube has more than 2.6 billion monthly active users with many turning to the video platform as a resource to gain knowledge on everything from DIY house projects to beauty tutorials. But what some don’t realize is how good some of the content really is on YouTube, like university-level good.
As this Twitter user pointed out, the right combination of YouTube channels might be able to serve as useful supplements to any classes that are already taken, or if you opt out enrolling in college altogether. If you’re not a student, you can gain incredible insight from the comfort of your smartphone, as they can help you to never stop learning.
If you’re struggling with a particular academic subject then Crash Course can help. There’s a myriad of courses explained in digestible ways, including physics, philosophy, games, economics, U.S. government and politics, astronomy, anatomy & physiology, world history, biology, sociology, computer science, film history, mythology, literature, ecology, chemistry, psychology, and U.S. history.
While engineering can easily be thought of as a daunting topic, Practical Engineering, illustrates just how relatable and interesting really is.Practical Engineering utilizes real-scale models and examples to explain engineering concepts. Minimally, the channel will offer a deeper appreciation for engineering and how it makes the world go round. It also teaches basic concepts that can be applied to everyday life.
The brain child of David Kipping, a professor in the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University, this channel lets viewers explore astronomy, exoplanets, astro-engineering, the search for extraterrestrial life and futurism.
A staple on YouTube, Forleo has been creating content for entrepreneurs and small business owners for nearly a decade. A funny, kind and relatable presence, she regularly interview business experts and overall success stories about their entrepreneurial journeys and all the steps they took along the way. She discusses everything from finances to burnout tips.
Blake is an expert on teaching his viewers how to make passive income and grow it, much like a college-level business course. “Being a Creative Entrepreneur is different, you have to balance your art and craft with the challenges of running a business.
I help enable people by helping reinforce or introduce technical skills, creative thinking, but also the practical ways to approach business and deal with clients and customers as a creative. The channel covers everything from tech, tools, techniques, and tactics while also offering encouragement and advice.”
This platform offers inexpensive courses for its more than 3 million students, but its YouTube channel is a great resource to snag some completely free insight. It’s ideal for people who are serious about starting a new business and scaling, because it allows connects viewers to mentors.
TEDTalks are world-renowned for curating the best ideas from prolific thinkers, leaders, and entrepreneurs. This channel hones conferences and some classes that help offer viewers a larger world view.
Self-learning is an approach to learning where the individual makes the effort to identify their own learning needs, set learning goals, find the necessary resources, and evaluate their own knowledge. As opposed to the traditional learning methods, the outcome of self-learning is not measured by any test results, rather it will contribute to improving your skills or knowledge in a particular area, and apply them practically to solve problems, perform tasks, etc.
With all the resources available today, self-learning is no longer an impossible feat as it might have been a few decades ago. With the abundance of free resources online such as online courses, articles, essays, videos, books, and journals, all you need is a proper plan, time, and energy. If you are exploring the world of self-learning like many other students and professionals confined to their homes due to the pandemic, here’s a good way to start:
A clear goal is essential to stay motivated and on track. You can create objectives supported by an action plan to guide you along. Make sure that the goal you set is realistic, attainable, and measurable. For example, if you are learning a new language, your goal can focus on how you can apply what you have learned – perhaps by writing an essay.
Regardless of the subject you want to learn, you can find at least 100 resources with a single Google search. However, you should
Verify your learning resources for credibility. While the internet is flooded with resources, not all of them are accurate in knowledge and reliable. Therefore be skeptical, cross-check references, and make a habit of comparing the information you come across different resources.
Choose academic databases like Google Scholar or JSTOR for they offer reliable resources on varied subjects.
Find relevant online courses with which you can further expand your knowledge on the subject and how to apply it in the practical world. Online learning platforms such as Udemy and Coursera have partnered up with leading educational institutions and academics to offer an abundance of courses that you can choose from.
Look for discussion forums run by academics or experts in the field. Their opinions can help you further enrich your knowledge.
A schedule will help you overcome procrastination and keep track of your learning process. Your schedule can be as simple as a daily to-do list or a weekly or monthly action plan with estimates and deadlines. The best way to retain what you have learned and to test your knowledge is to actually apply it in the real world.
If you are learning a new language, you can practice talking with someone else who is proficient in it or still learning it like you are. If you are learning graphic designing, you can apply what you have learned to create an infographic or a web page. You can also create a presentation, a video, a concept map or a mind map explaining the new concepts you’ve learned to further solidify your knowledge.
In order to share knowledge with another person, we have to make a conscious effort to comprehend the information better. This helps with better internalizing new concepts that you’ve learned. You can connect with like-minded individuals and collaborate with them through online communities, social media platforms, discussion forums, etc. It’ll help you discover more resources, gain new insight into the subject of your interest, and find answers to things you are unsure about.
Anyone can read a book, but when it comes to self-learning, you take a step further and actually internalize what you read. You can take down notes and make connections as you read and learn. The internet is awash with blog articles and books that you can choose from based on your learning requirements. Or you can actually buy books or borrow them from the library, which you can also do online.
Visual note-taking is a method that combines both text and visuals to record information that you come across while learning. The method enhances memory and comprehension by making use of images, illustrations, connectors, and structuring. While studying, listening to a podcast or watching an educational video, you can use this method to quickly take down important information in an effective way. An online visual workspace like Creately can help you easily do this online; you can also start with a premade template to get a headstart.
Summary. Of all the interview questions job applicants prepare for, the most obvious ones sometimes get the least attention. Yes, you came ready to share your biggest flaw, your greatest strength, a moment when you shined, and a concept you learned, but what do you do…
Sometimes the toughest job interview questions are also the simplest and most direct. One you should always expect to hear and definitely prepare for:
“Why do you want to work here?”
Like a similarly problematic interview question — “Tell me about yourself” — “Why do you want to work here?” requires you to focus on a specific answer without any clues, contexts, or prompting from the interviewer. It’s a blank space — but that doesn’t mean you can wing it and fill it with just anything.
How to Answer “Why Do You Want to Work Here?”
Drawing from my 16 years of experience as a communications coach as well as someone who’s sat on both sides of the interview table many times, I recommend three basic approaches:
Express your personal passion for the employer’s product/service/mission.
Explain why you would enjoy the responsibilities of the role.
Describe how you can see yourself succeeding in the role, given your skills and experience.
You can use any combination of these three approaches so long as you keep your answer concise. Here’s how to tackle each approach effectively along with sample answers to use as a guide.
1. Express your personal passion for the employer’s product/service/mission.
Employers want to know you’re passionate about what they do, whether it takes the shape of a product, a service, a mission, or a brand. You can also connect your passion to the company’s core values, which can often be found on their website. Showing you’re passionate about the position is particularly important if you’re applying for a role at a nonprofit where the mission matches your personal values.
But how do you convey this enthusiasm? CEO consultant Sabina Nawaz offers useful tips in her HBR piece, “How to Show You’re Passionate in an Interview.” As she writes, “When you’re passionate about something, it tends to spill over into other aspects of your life.” Identify those examples in your own life and share them during your interview. Expressing enthusiasm is not about “display[ing] the kind of full-throated, table-thumping behaviors companies tend to equate with passion,” Sabina explains. It’s about conveying “what matters most to you.”
And remember to be clear about why you are passionate, not just that you are passionate. Simon Sinek has schooled us all on the importance of “why,” and it’s no less important in a job interview than it is in a sales call or CEO keynote.
Sample Answers
Here are examples of responses that effectively connect passion to mission.
“For most of my adult life, I’ve strongly supported X because I believe that Y…”
“X is very important to me in both my professional and personal life because I strongly believe that…”
“I’m very passionate about X and would be thrilled to work for an organization that subscribes to the same core values…”
2. Explain why you would enjoy the responsibilities of the role.
It’s no secret that we work harder, better, and longer when we enjoy the work, and what employer wouldn’t want that dedication from their staff? But it’s your responsibility to make that connection between job and joy clear. That connection can be as simple as “X is something I enjoy,” but expressing how or why you enjoy it makes that point even more valuable and memorable.
Sample Answers
Here are examples of responses that connect job to joy.
“I always enjoy helping other people learn — from my tutoring work in school to the training experiences I had at my last job — which is why I feel so fulfilled working in L&D.”
“I’ve always loved to write and edit — from my days at the college newspaper to the web content I worked on as an intern — so I’m excited to see that writing is a big part of this job.”
“Analyzing data has always been fun for me — the challenge of using numbers to tell a story and convey an idea — and I look forward to the data visualization work we’ll be doing on this team.”
3. Describe how you can see yourself succeeding in the role, given your skills and experience.
While the interviewer is hiring you for who you are and what you can do now, they’re also interested in what you can achieve in the future. After all, they’re not just hiring you; they’re investing in you.
Express confidence about your ability to succeed and grow in the role. Use phrases like “Given my experience in X, I can see myself succeeding…,” “I look forward to using my skills to…,” and “I think I will contribute by….” The key is to describe how your previous experience has prepared you to hit the ground running.
Sample Answers
Here are examples of responses that paint a peek at what may be.
“I can see myself succeeding in this position because I’ve done similar work in the past and know what it takes to engage these particular consumers.”
“I’ve found I work best in a collaborative environment, so I look forward to working with several departments to align on and achieve our goals.”
“After learning more about this job, I’m sure I can help you find ways to manage projects more efficiently and effectively.”
Combining the Three Approaches: Sample Answer
Here’s a sample answer using a hypothetical marketing position for a health care company where writing, creativity, and collaboration are key priorities:
I want to work here because, with physicians in my family, I’m passionate about helping people address their health challenges and make smart decisions about their bodies and their lives. I also love copywriting and diving into editorial strategy — especially in social media — and enjoy brainstorming with colleagues to come up with the best creative ideas. When I think about the needs of this role and the integrity of the corporate mission, I feel incredibly inspired and can see myself contributing in a big way.
Key Tip: Be Specific
As you develop your answer, understand that the more specific you are, the more powerfully your answer will resonate. Conversely, the vaguer you are, the more generic — or even canned — the response will seem.
In the example above, the writer alludes to health care professionals in their family, focuses on copywriting and editorial strategy — not just writing — and mentions brainstorming, a more specific form of collaboration. These are all examples of specificity that make the answer seem more personal and unique.
What Not to Say
It’s obvious how you shouldn’t answer the “Why do you want this job” question, but it bears repeating. Don’t say you want the job because:
You like the salary
You like the perks or benefits
You like the title
You want to work remotely or in a particular location
You couldn’t get another job you really wanted
Before your next interview, practice your response to “Why do you want to work here?” out loud, not just in your head. And keep in mind that the best answer is less about why you want them and more about why they should want you. If you convey passion, enthusiasm, and optimism with specificity, you’ll connect to the interviewer’s wish list in a way that will leave them thinking, “This is why we want you to work here.”
Universities and colleges across the U.S. are preparing for potential outbreaks of monkeypox this fall as students begin returning to campus amid an upswing in cases nationally, marking another public health challenge for schools to manage after years of grappling with Covid-19.
Dr. Ina Park, a professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, told Forbes that while monkeypox “does pose a risk to students,” the risk is different from that posed by Covid-19 and there is not a concern about catching the virus through everyday activity or passing someone in a corridor.
The main issue is that students live together in close quarters and gather to socialize, including hookups where close contact like kissing, skin-to-skin contact and sex might happen, Park explained, adding that the virus could also potentially be transmitted through sharing clothing or sleeping in someone else’s bed.
Numerous universities told Forbes they are in contact with local and federal health authorities to plan their responses and some schools, such as Texas A&M University, said clinicians at student health services have taken part in CDC training related to the disease.
Other universities, including Georgetown University and NYU, said student health services are able to carry out the specific testing needed to diagnose monkeypox.
Disinfecting desks or public toilets—surfaces the monkeypox virus can live on—could be one way of minimizing the risk to students, Park said, as would vaccinating students who are men or transgender people who have sex with men and expanding access to all college students when supplies permit.
Evidence-based education—especially alerting people to “the fact that monkeypox is transmitted through intimate contact”—will be crucial, Dr. Marina Klein, a professor of medicine at McGill University, told Forbes, as well as training campus health services to be on the lookout for potential monkeypox cases.
Monkeypox primarily spreads through close physical contact, as well as contact with contaminated objects and surfaces like bedding or clothing. While infections are clustered among men who have sex with men—data suggests the outbreak is largely driven by sexual activity—there have also been cases in women and children and experts told Forbes there is a risk the disease could spill over into other groups and obviously these communities are not self contained and members also attend university.
Experts stress the importance of balancing the provision of accurate information about the risks of monkeypox and how it is spreading and avoiding stigmatizing the groups most affected. Campuses also face a number of unique challenges when managing disease outbreaks, the American College Health Association (ACHA), told Forbes, such as how to isolate people with limited housing available and managing the disruption a two-to-four week isolation period can cause to students. The organization said it is working to develop tailored guidance for campus settings.
What To Watch For
How universities communicate about monkeypox. Several universities told Forbes they are following guidance from local health departments and the CDC, though this advice does not specifically address university settings. Many universities have set up informational websites providing resources and guidance on the virus, while some like NYU, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University and the University of Michigan told Forbes they have also emailed staff and students about the outbreak and will provide updates as the situation evolves.
Other universities have gone, or plan to go, further in communication efforts: the University of Florida told Forbes it is increasingly promoting safe sex messaging and Texas A&M University said the school is pushing out information on the disease via social media and flyers in residence halls and high-traffic areas. Guidance and protocols are sure to evolve as the outbreak does; NYU spokesperson John Beckman told Forbes the university is “closely following developments” and staff at the student health center are on “heightened alert” to respond.
There are also broader impacts of monkeypox to be considered, Cornell’s director of media relations Rebecca Valli told Forbes, adding that the school is considering “the potential academic impacts and accommodations which may arise” should a student come down with monkeypox.
There have been 10,768 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the U.S., according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The overwhelming majority of cases have been among men who identify as gay, bisexual or who have sex with men and transmission is suspected to have occurred through sexual activity in most of those infected.
The World Health Organization , the White House and a number of local jurisdictions have declared the outbreak a public health emergency and a vaccination campaign is underway to target groups most at risk of the virus. Supplies of Jynneos, the only vaccine licensed against monkeypox in the U.S., do not come close to meeting demand for the shot and U.S. officials have greenlit a dose-saving strategy to stretch the stockpile.
Though the outbreak is largely, though not exclusively, limited to men who have sex with men and spread through sexual activity, concern has grown among officials that the disease could spread more widely. The close-contact campus environment, notably dorms, contact sports and sex, have flagged colleges as more likely to experience outbreaks. At least five schools—Georgetown University, George Washington University, the University of Texas at Austin, Bucknell University and West Chester University—have already reported monkeypox cases, according to STAT News.
McGill’s Klein said it is “inevitable” that monkeypox will spillover into populations other than men who have sex with men, which could happen more easily in situations where people are living in close quarters. “There is no need for panic,” Klein stressed, urging strong and sensible messaging on how monkeypox is transmitted and reinforcing “messages about how to be safe when having sex,” especially with casual contacts. “Making vaccines easily available in safe spaces for those at risk would also go a long way to helping stem any potential outbreaks on campus,” Klein added.
I am a senior reporter for the Forbes breaking news team, covering health and science from the London office. Previously I worked as a reporter for a trade publication
One of the first public health measures triggered by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was mass closure of daycares and schools. Indeed, the proximity with which students and teachers congregate in close quarters means that viruses are more apt to spread in such conditions, which made school closures a sensible means of slowing the spread of COVID-19.
Then, last week, news broke that an Illinois daycare worker tested positive for monkeypox. While the worker is isolating, it remains unclear how many children — if any — were exposed to the virus while the infected person was at work. The news raises questions over whether schools, daycares, and the like are safe — from monkeypox — for both workers and their charges.
“An adult at a day-care center in the Rantoul area has tested positive for a case of monkeypox,” Dr. Sameer Vohra, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said at a news briefing. “Screening of children and other staff is taking place now.” As parents gear up to send their children back to school, should they expect monkeypox outbreaks to occur in school and daycare settings?
The answer to that requires understanding the way that monkeypox spreads, and how it differs from COVID-19. Monkeypox symptoms start within two to three weeks after exposure to the virus. The primary mode of transmission for monkeypox is skin-on-skin contact or contact with contaminated items.
Currently, there are more than 7,500 confirmed cases in the United States, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is nearly double the number of cases since late July. Last week, the Biden administration declared the monkeypox a public health emergency. While transmission is mostly occurring in adult men, in the United States there have been at least five reported pediatric cases.
Yet experts are optimistic about the safety of schools. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases and associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California–Davis, told Salon he doesn’t anticipate K-12 schools to be particularly rife with outbreaks this school year.“Since transmission is primarily via prolonged skin to skin contact,” Blumberg said. “So of course children horse around and they might have skin to skin contact, but usually it’s not prolonged during most activities.”
Blumberg added that another way monkeypox could be transmitted in a school setting is via contaminated linens or bedding. Unlike COVID-19, which is more transmissible but usually less severe for children, monkeypox is less transmissible but can pose a higher risk of severe disease for children under the age of 8.
“I suppose during nap time if kids are sharing bedding or linens, it’s possible that there might be transmission,” Blumberg said. “But most schools and daycares, for now, have their own dedicated area, their own dedicated space, for nap time.”
Dr. Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist University of Illinois–Chicago, told Salon via email that monkeypox could potentially spread at school “by touching someone’s rash/lesions, exchanging body fluids via kissing or prolonged face to face contact, hugging, etc.”
“So, it’s best (for [monkeypox virus] and for COVID-19 reasons) to emphasize giving each other space in the classroom and not touching one another,” Wallace said. According to the CDC, monkeypox spreads through direct contact with body fluids or sores on the body of someone who has monkeypox. It can also spread through sores that have been in contact with someone who is infected, or materials that have touched body fluids — for example, clothing or bedsheets.
Monkeypox may also spread through respiratory droplets when people have close face-to-face contact. However, experts say this is not the main mode of transmission. According to data from the World Health Organization, 91.4 percent of cases have been linked to sexual contact.
Wallace agreed it is possible for a monkeypox outbreak to occur in communities like college campuses. Understandably, this raises questions about college students in a university setting. “If students are having prolonged skin to skin contact with many others, such as having sex with multiple partners, that will be a risk factor for transmission,” Blumberg said. “And in that case, it’s easy to prevent transmission — if somebody has a rash, then they shouldn’t have prolonged skin to skin contact with others until they get that rash diagnosed and make sure it’s non-infectious.”
Wallace agreed it is possible for a monkeypox outbreak to occur in communities like college campuses.”It is important that colleges and universities are prepared to provide public health education/information about monkeypox to students, have testing/medical resources available to if students develop symptoms, and have an isolation protocol ready,” Wallace said.
Still, there are reasons to protect younger children from any exposure to monkeypox. Unlike COVID-19, which is more transmissible but usually less severe for children, monkeypox is less transmissible but can pose a higher risk of severe disease for children under the age of 8, as noted by the CDC based on limited pediatric data on infection.
“Children who have monkeypox are at higher risk for severe disease and higher fatality rates have been reported in children less than eight years of age,” Blumberg said. “There’s a variety of complications that may occur, including inflammation of different organs, myocarditis, meningitis” — hence the concern about young children being infected.
Notably, there are vaccines for monkeypox, although supply is limited. As Salon previously reported, the U.S. has released the Jynneos vaccine against monkeypox from the Strategic National Stockpile. Meanwhile, those who received the smallpox vaccine before it stopped being regularly given in the 1970s will likely have protection against monkeypox. While the Jynneos vaccine isn’t being publicly offered to kids nor is it licensed for children, those who have been exposed to it can be vaccinated if it is recommended by the local health departments.
As noted by CDC, Jynneos has been used in studies as part of vaccines against other diseases including tuberculosis, measles, and Ebola. These studies included children as young as five months old, and were found to have no adverse health effects or safety concerns. For worried parents, Blumberg said it is a good idea to make sure that daycares and schools and policies are in place to prohibit potentially infectious staff and students.
“Most schools and daycares do have policies in place so that if somebody is suspected to be infectious to others, they are excluded — and for monkeypox, the key would be an undiagnosed rash,” Blumberg said. “There are many different infections that may cause rashes that may be transmitted to others — so schools and daycares should be pretty experienced with screening for rashes.”
Wallace emphasized how different monkeypox is from SARS-CoV-2, stating bluntly: “this is not COVID-19.””It spreads very differently and is nowhere near as contagious,” Wallace said. “If your child develops symptoms, definitely see a health care provider before sending the child back to school.”
In early March, a 17-year-old high school senior I’ll call Ethan got a text message from Ursinus College, a small, private liberal arts school located about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. It said, “Great news, [Ethan]! Ursinus College has awarded you additional money! Log into your portal to view your updated financial aid award.”
A few days later, Ethan got a letter from Ursinus repeating the same offer. “The Office of Student Financial Aid recently received additional information regarding your application for financial aid and, as a result, a change has been made to your original award,” it said. In December, Ursinus had offered Ethan a “Gateway Scholarship” of $35,000 to offset the college’s listed price of more than $72,000 for tuition, room, and board. Now it had added a “Grizzly Grant” (Ursinus’ mascot is a bear) of $3,500 to the mix.
It was puzzling. Ethan is not financially needy. One of his parents is a nonprofit executive and the other is a public school teacher in suburban Maryland. They own their home outright and earn well over $200,000 per year, putting them comfortably in the top 10 percent of household income nationwide. Ethan’s standardized test scores were good and grades were fine, but mostly not in the kind of rigorous Advance Placement–type classes that are mandatory for admission to selective universities.
All of this was in the application he sent to Ursinus last year, and he hadn’t talked to them since. What “additional information” were they talking about? Meanwhile, Ethan has a cousin who is also a high school senior. I’ll call her Ashley. Her overall academic profile was better than Ethan’s—higher grades and lots of AP courses, somewhat lower SATs. But her economic circumstances were not.
Ashley also lives in Maryland. Her mother, a single parent, dropped out of community college and works in the back office of a local restaurant chain. Her income is well below the median for someone with college-age children, and she has no real financial assets to fall back on.
Yet Ashley wasn’t getting unsolicited text messages offering her more financial aid. Penn State, a public land-grant university that allegedly has a mission to provide broad access to college, had recently sent her a financial aid letter. Like Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II, their offer was this: nothing. Tuition, room, and board would be $49,200—almost $16,000 more than private Ursinus College wanted to charge her wealthier cousin. To pay, she was welcome to get a job, or take out loans.
Ethan and Ashley were learning a lesson about the way the business of higher education actually works in this country: College financial aid is largely an illusion. Government financial aid is real, if inadequate—federal Pell grants and state appropriations to reduce tuition at public universities definitely exist. But the financial aid purportedly provided by colleges themselves is mostly fiction.
The whole public-facing system of college admissions—in which admissions decisions are based on rigorous academic standards and financial aid is supposedly provided to those who are most academically and financially deserving—is an elaborate stage play meant to flatter privileged families and the reputations of colleges themselves. The real system, hidden behind the scenery, is much closer to the mechanics of pure capitalism, driven by an industry of for-profit consultants and relentlessly focused on the institutional bottom line.
That’s a huge problem for students and parents trying to make expensive, life-changing choices about higher education. Many families make bad decisions based on the misleading vocabulary colleges use around financial aid, leading to broken futures and, increasingly, unaffordable student loans. If you have children and are planning to help them go to college anytime soon, understand this: Much of what colleges are going to tell you about money isn’t true.
There are, to be sure, a few extremely wealthy institutions that really do provide financial aid. If you are among the small number of low-income students that Harvard chooses to admit after filling much of its class with legacies, athletes, and the children of wealth, status, and power, you won’t have to pay tuition. The Ivies and a handful of other elite schools have “need blind” admissions, which means they consider your application regardless of your financial circumstances, and offer generous aid to those who need it.
Parents can also find good, reasonably priced public options in some states, which allow them to avoid the shell games involving financial aid. Public universities in North Carolina remain very affordable, for instance. And some states also provide grants to students that are in fact based on their financial needs or academic achievements.
Tuition and fees for the State University of New York system are relatively low to begin with, roughly $8,000 to $10,000 for in-state students. But the state of New York also runs a state need-based scholarship program that, combined with a federal Pell grant, can be enough to cover tuition and part of room and board.
But if you live in a less generous part of the country and your kids are applying out-of-state, or they have their sights set on a private college without an Ivy League endowment, then you have wandered into a very different kind of market, one that has a lot more in common with airlines hawking seats or dealers selling cars than you might realize.
The language of admissions and financial aid suggests that colleges review every application with two questions in mind: “Does this applicant meet our academic standards? If so, how much scholarship aid, given their financial circumstances and academic merit, do they deserve?”
In reality, the large majority of undergraduates attend a college that accepts most or all applicants. And while the “sticker price” for tuition at some institutions exceeds $50,000, most colleges don’t have enough market power to charge anything close to that. For them, the real concerns are, “How likely is this applicant to enroll, if we accept them? And what’s the most amount of money they’d be willing to pay?”
To answer those questions, many colleges hire expensive consulting firms to help them manage a complex process of marketing, admissions, and pricing. The firms design social media campaigns and produce the flood of glossy brochures that pours through the U.S. postal system every year.
They take the wealth of detailed financial information that parents are required to disclose on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, and feed it into the same kinds of complex algorithms that airlines use to constantly change the price of seats in the months, weeks, and days before a flight.
They also use a probabilistic strategy for deciding whom to admit, based on a combination of how much they think parents are willing to pay and how likely students are to enroll. Because of online systems like the Common App, it’s easy for students to apply to many colleges. At less desired colleges—the safety schools and fourth choices—“yield” rates, meaning the percentage of admitted students who enroll, are often below 20 percent.
So they admit 3,000 students to fill a freshman class of 600 and hope that past statistical patterns hold. If too many students enroll, there’s no room in the dorms. Too few, and the college goes broke. The whole process is called “enrollment management.” To understand how important enrollment management is in the higher education industry, look to administrative hierarchy:
Ursinus College, for example, has a director of admissions who reports to a vice president and dean of enrollment management and marketing. When Washington College mailed Ethan three “VIP admission” tickets and an all-access lanyard with his name printed on it for an “Admitted Students Day Music Festival” in April, it was trying to increase its yield.
When one college after another sent Ethan a letter offering him tens of thousands of dollars in scholarship money, in most cases it probably had nothing to do with their evaluation of Ethan’s achievements. It was more likely because market research told them that students like the feeling of being awarded something, and the enrollment management algorithm suggested that full tuition minus $25,000 or $30,000 was a price his parents might be willing to pay.
The Ursinus College Office of Student Financial Services did not receive any additional information regarding Ethan’s application. That was a fib. An Ursinus spokesman confirmed for me that the extra award was based on his original application and “other financial considerations.”
It would not be surprising if those “other financial considerations” included a report from an enrollment management consultant—the firms Ruffalo Noel Levitz and EAB are two of the biggest—showing that acceptance and pricing projections as of early March were looking soft. When colleges find their enrollment numbers lagging, they act like a car dealer with too many of last year’s models on the lot, and put tuition on sale.
Like most colleges, Ursinus’ $72,000 list price is an imaginary number; on average, it charges students only about one-third of that. It is not providing Gateway Scholarships and Grizzly Grants from a pot of actual money. It’s just pretending to, because that’s what students and parents like to hear.
Colleges, unsurprisingly, are shy to discuss the consultants that shape the inner workings of their aid process, and will resort to linguistic contortions when asked about it. When I asked Ursinus whether it awarded its “Grizzly Grants” based on a report from an enrollment management consultant, a spokesman responded that it works “in partnership with a financial aid leveraging firm” and that “we monitor the progress of the first-year class on a routine basis throughout the enrollment cycle.”
A spokesman from Clark University, which tried to entice Ethan with a “$68,000 Robert Goddard Achievement Scholarship,” told me that the school “does not rely on an enrollment management consultant.” Instead, they said, it “occasionally” hires “outside analytical support” that does “not tell us how much aid to offer any student or group of students” but does “crunch large volumes of data in a timely manner that we then use to assess our progress toward our enrollment goals and estimate/project our total aid expenditure through that enrollment cycle.”
So, not an enrollment management consultant. Just, you know, a consultant that helps them manage enrollment. But while schools may not love talking about it, nothing about this system is a secret within higher education. For instance, after taking a job in the enrollment management industry, former Ursinus vice president for enrollment Richard DiFeliciantonio wrote an essay for Inside Higher Ed in which he explained that the “financial aid matrix” colleges rely on is essentially “the same pricing technique taught to M.B.A.s and commonly used by corporations for commercial products.”
He noted that the formula considers a student’s academic achievement mostly as a “proxy” for their willingness to pay for college (as opposed to a measure of merit). This is also why, despite her financial need and solid high school achievement, Ethan’s cousin Ashley was not being inundated with texts and letters offering her more money. As DiFeliciantonio wrote: “Wealthy families are more able and less willing to pay for college while the poorer families are more willing and less able.”
In other words, parents of means who themselves have finished college are often sophisticated consumers of higher education and are able to drive a hard bargain, whereas lower-income, less-educated parents feel an enormous obligation to help their children move farther up the socioeconomic ladder and blindly trust that colleges have their best financial interests at heart. So colleges obey the algorithm and offer more financial aid to the Ethans than to the Ashleys, one of many problems identified in a recent Brookings Institution report.
Ashley submitted financial aid forms with information about her family’s modest income because everyone and everything about the process told her college aid is based on how much money you need, or deserve. She had no idea that information could be used against her. In May, New York University offered her admission if she would agree to delay enrollment until spring 2023—when, maybe not coincidentally, her good-but-not-stellar academic record would not count in the rankings data NYU submits to U.S. News & World Report.
Their price? $79,070. Their aid offer? $0, take it or leave it, with 96 hours to respond. Federal statute limits how much the Department of Education can lend to undergraduates. Freshmen can only borrow $5,500. But there is no limit on how much the department can lend to parents through a program called Parent PLUS. Nor does the department check to see if parents have the means to pay PLUS loans back.
So NYU “offered” Ashley the opportunity to borrow $5,500 and take a $1,500 work-study job. Then it offered Ashley’s mother the chance to take out a $72,099 Parent PLUS loan—more than her gross annual salary, before taxes—for the first of four undergraduate years.
Fortunately for Ashley and her mother, they knew someone who offered sensible financial advice. They turned down NYU and its offer of gargantuan loans and chose a less expensive public university. But as the countless individual stories that compose the nation’s $1.7 trillion student loan crisis show, many families make different choices. They are drawn in by a combination of optimism, blind faith, and familial obligation, and end up with debts they cannot repay. Colleges know this will happen.
Colleges do this because they want and need money. The business of filling up a class has gotten more difficult as the number of new high school graduates continues to recede from the peak millennial years, with further declines expected starting in 2025. Small, private colleges are especially vulnerable, and some have gone bankrupt in recent years.
Understanding the true nature of the college market should reduce some kinds of student stress. If you’re a high school graduate in reasonable academic standing, there are scores of good colleges ready to admit you. The real market tuition price in the big middle of the higher education sector is probably about $25,000, not the $50,000 or $60,000 you might have heard. Applying to college there isn’t like being vetted to join an exclusive social club. Nobody is really judging your worthiness for financial aid. College is just another service with a price.
The words colleges use in the admissions process, embedded in the broader portrayal of higher education in popular culture, tell a different tale, leaving first-generation students with the least money and social capital most vulnerable to exploitation. Colleges are full of great educators who want to help you learn. But when it comes to money, you’re on your own.
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
