I’m about 8 pages back so maybe someone made this same rebuttal already but to this point from @TheGreyKing
"All of these colleges MEET FULL DEMONSTRATED NEED of all admitted applicants, and give need-based aid, and are among the most generous colleges in the nation, so the argument by some posters that some applicants cannot afford ED because that would mean they cannot shop for higher merit aid makes no sense. If the student has financial need, his/her needs will be met by the same package whether ED or RD. If the student does not have financial need but the family wants the student to try for big “merit” aid, then that would not be an option at these need-based aid schools anyway; the student would not apply early decision to one of these, but rather would apply regular decision or early action or rolling decision to less selective colleges that might offer them merit-based aid.
So who would be protected if schools did not enforce ED agreements? Only the cheats and the liars."
What about the full-pay families who would be willing to fork over the $70K per year for Brown if the next-best offer was not a full ride somewhere but say ‘just’ a merit scholarship of $15,000/year at a school like St. Olaf? If my kid’s options are Brown at $70K/yr vs St. Olaf at $55K/yr, I’m going to go ahead and send him to Brown if he really wants to go there. Now if he gets a lot more merit money than that, I’d probably push for St. Olaf. But his odds of getting into Brown are what, like 3x higher if he applies ED?
I understand that a 25% boost from 8% to 10% is significant overall. It would be very significant to a gambler playing many hands, or to a trader executing thousands of trades. To a kid who has exactly one transaction with a college, it’s not meaningful.
You know what else isn’t meaningful? Overall rates, ED or RD, even if you adjust them to back out recruited athletes, legacies, whatever. We all know that applicants are not fungible. Some go into the pool with a near-100% chance of being accepted; some are around 50 or 60%; others – lots of others – are effectively 0%. That’s not determined by their stats, although their stats play into it. ED may make a meaningful difference to the 50-60%ers; probably it’s the difference between 50% and 65%, or something like that. A higher percentage of that pool may be admitted ED vs. RD. ED doesn’t have any real benefit for the 100%ers or the 0%ers.
How does a thread like this go so much off topic? The DOJ case relates to colleges sharing ED information with other colleges. It is not an attack on the ED process itself, which is used by many colleges to manage yield by cherry picking qualified applicants and by many students to get a bump in chance for admission. The process works for many, but schools should not be sharing information and the DOJ has an interest in preventing that.
@frozencustard: Although the Justice Dept. has certain issues & concerns when initiating antitrust inquiries, this is just the initial public stage of an antitrust investigation.
Don’t you think that ED & SCEA (& restrictive EA) affect competition ?
Isn’t binding ED by some of the wealthiest & most prestigious educational institutions who engage in information sharing practices regarding applicants a clear restraint of trade ?
Conversely, do you think that ED & SCEA promote competition in the marketplace ?
Do you believe that a cessation of cartel like information sharing practices about ED applicants by some of the wealthiest & most prestigious educational institutions would curtail the Justice Dept.'s antitrust investigation without a more comprehensive examination on the effects of ED on competition in the higher education marketplace ?
What would the Justice Dept.'s view be if all colleges & universities offering an ED option resulted in a full ride (tuition, fees, room & board & books & a computer) to each & every accepted ED applicant ? What if acceptance via ED only meant a full tuition scholarship ? Keep in mind that the Sherman Act (formerly known as the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890) is also concerned with artificial raising of prices.
I could easily pose another twenty or more issues that might be of initial concern to the Justice Dept. in light of the stated goals of the Sherman Act.
One thing that I find odd about this thread is that no one seems to be supporting the actions the colleges took. There’s been a lot of discussion around the positive and negative aspects of ED, and the legal aspects of the actions, but not too much around supporting or rejecting a college’s right to ensure that the applicants that they are considering in the RD round haven’t already committed to another school through ED.
I haven’t seen any numbers, but I tend to agree with most people on this thread that the number of ED “cheaters” is relatively low. The matriculation percentages that have been called out would seem to be a good proxy for this, but they can’t really tell us how many students accepted to their ED school applied RD to other schools anyway and ended up enrolling at the ED school after all.
I would expect this to be a concern for anyone lamenting the low acceptance rates for RD at many top schools. A large number of ED-admitted students that applied to other schools through EA or RD would exacerbate the problem.
@shortnuke: Such a defense could be raised by the colleges & universities engaging in the information sharing practices if found not to be a per se violation under the antitrust laws & therefore subject to a rule of reasonableness standard of review. But, is that really a problem ? Or would raising such a defense under a rule of reasonableness standard of review simply highlight the weakness of the “cartel schools” justification for entering into an information sharing agreement ?
If the colleges claimed/could prove that the number of cheaters were high, I would possibly support the sharing of information (with full transparency.) But I don’t believe that it is … the risk of getting rescinded is just too high IMO.
I’m surprised that they aren’t looking at the sharp increase in percentage of seats filled during ED over the last five years. At what point is it really not a “choice” to pick a “favorite” school? When they fill 70% of the seats ED? 80%? 90%?
@frozencustard: Although the Justice Dept. has some concerns & issues in mind, I suspect that even they do not yet know what issues will be raised in this antitrust investigation until the requested information, and any follow up discovery/information requests, are received.
P.S. As an aside, I think that due to burgeoning endowments & ridiculous bankruptcy laws making discharge of student debt unnecessarily difficult accompanied by never ending increases in tuition & on campus housing prices, that the higher education industry is due for a wake up call.
As an example of wealthy educational institutions which use huge endowment wealth to decrease their price relative to their competitors, look at what Phillips Academy at Andover & Phillips Exeter Academy charge as a comprehensive fee (tuition, room & board). Among approximately 300 US boarding prep high schools, Exeter & Andover have the largest endowments (St. Paul’s School has the largest endowment per student, however).
@frozencustard As many people have pointed out, if the ED rules are OK, sharing the limited information shared will also be OK, even necessary. For the information sharing to be illegal, the whole ED system has to be illegal. That’s why people wind up discussing the benefits and drawbacks of the ED system.
That ain’t the way the Justice Department works. To get to the point of a public investigation and subpoena, someone has a very specific theory in mind of what the evidence is likely to show and how it amounts to a violation of antitrust laws, and multiple higher-ups have signed off on it. They don’t do pure fishing expeditions. Of course they can and will change their approach depending on specific information they turn up, and authorizing the investigation is not the same as authorizing a prosecution. But this isn’t anything like disinterested academic research.
“If the colleges claimed/could prove that the number of cheaters were high, I would possibly support the sharing of information (with full transparency.) But I don’t believe that it is … the risk of getting rescinded is just too high IMO.”
Remove that stick and I bet the number of cheaters would increase measurably.
“I’m surprised that they aren’t looking at the sharp increase in percentage of seats filled during ED over the last five years.”
At the schools I tend to follow (mainly LACs) the numbers haven’t really changed much in the past 5 years. The NYT used to track all the data until a few years back. The numbers were pretty similar to current percentages. ED isn’t that new. Acceptance rates have dropped for sure, though.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. To me, 25% boost is a 25% boost. At a meets-full-need school. Well worth the price of the lottery ticket – as the ads say, ‘ya gotta play to win’.
Not a lawyer, (and ‘I don’t play one on tv’), but I don’t see the connection. When I apply and am admitted to JHS’ Uni, I have a ‘contract’ with JHS-U (to enroll assuming finaid is close to the npc). (Of course, that assumes a 17-year-old can enter into a contract.). My contract is enforceable by JHS-U.
Why is it “necessary” to share my supposedly confidential contract with doschicos-U, with whom I may never have heard of, much less applied?
There has been a pretty big change since I started paying attention, which was around 2004. The norm was that schools would fill 30-40% of their classes ED, and some had explicit policies of limiting it to 25% or 30%. Princeton regularly accepted 50% of its class ED – Princeton had ED then – and it came in for a lot of criticism for that. (That was the end of the Fred Hargadon era there, and part of his legacy.)
Now, 50% seems to be the norm, and colleges cheat upwards from that a lot, especially those with ED-II.
Also any ramifications of the investigation could impact all colleges that practice ED. Do I think Hillsdale and Kalamazoo College “share” ED admittance…probably not. Do I think that the kid who has Hillsdale as their first choice is impacted by limited choice…No. Hillsdale is a bad example because they do not take federal monies, but Hillsdale and Kalamazoo are the only two private colleges in Michigan that have ED I believe. Kids that apply ED to these colleges probably would like to have one and done. The concept of one and done is a very reasonable concept in this mad, mad world of kids applying to ten or more colleges. This investigation is really about a group of colleges where kids would if they could apply ED to more than one because their primary driver is being accepted to one of these colleges regardless of the differences and the fact that so many, many kids apply to this small group of colleges in my opinion and that after acceptances and deposits they share the names. Personally I do think there are more pressing issues, but this is the crazy world we live in these days where everyone feels slighted over something. I am also personally opposed to SCEA…that just feels like a restrictive policy in my opinion.
A few of the comments to the WSJ article were amusing to me though I can’t seem to open that article again, e.g. “we had to collude to enforce the contract.”
@JHS Please read my post more carefully. Of course, the Justice Dept. has an initial issue or issues in mind when it opened the investigation, but when engaging in discovery/information requests often parties are surprised as to what the requested info. reveals & where the investigation is headed.
I read it carefully. It’s not just having “in mind” “concerns” or “initial issues” in this kind of situation. It would be a specific theory of a violation that could be established from the information likely to be produced. Of course, that information could be different than expected, and lead to more, or different theories of liability, or even fail to support the initial theory. I think they are likely way past the stage of “I wonder whether there’s something worth looking at here.”
You’re the one who seems to believe there is a viable such theory. I, frankly, don’t. This seems ludicrous to me.
“When I apply and am admitted to JHS’ Uni, I have a ‘contract’ with JHS-U (to enroll assuming finaid is close to the npc). (Of course, that assumes a 17-year-old can enter into a contract.). My contract is enforceable by JHS-U. Why is it “necessary” to share my supposedly confidential contract with doschicos-U, with whom I may never have heard of, much less applied?”
Each school is free to have ED or any other admissions policy it wants. The AT issues start to arise when a group of competitors all start adopting the same policies and prices. Often that happens without any explicit agreement (so-called “conscious parallelism”).
CP alone is usually legal. Collusive CP is illegal, but it is hard to detect and to prove. But an information exchange between competitors is a flashing red light to a regulator that there may be something fishy going on. So this was probably a pretty dumb thing for the schools to actually do. There’s a 90+% yield on ED offers, with many of those declined offers being due to finances or other non-cheater reasons (or at least claimed to be such). So the cure adopted is likely worse than the disease.
The problem, though, with the ED “contract” with JHS-U is that it really isn’t easily enforced by JHS-U by itself against an applicant that is determined to cheat.
I doubt that DOJ is interested in taking down the whole ED system, unless the data would show that the ED system as a whole (rather than just the info sharing piece) is collusive. I’d think that would be pretty tough to prove. Since you have a variety of admission plans (SCEA, ED, REA, unrestricted REA, RD, rolling) from various schools out there in the market competing with each other. And also various pricing schemes (need aid, merit aid, in-state tuition).
But if ED cheating by applicants is really a thing, banning the info exchange could theoretically undermine the whole ED system. If savvy applicants (and their college coaches) know that Williams can’t rat you out to Amherst any more, then maybe those savvy applicants start to cheat more. Implausible I think, but possible.
ED reduces competition among colleges, even in the absence of information sharing. If these colleges are allowed to share certain information, it would further diminish competition. ED itself and how it’s practiced deserve to be looked into, IMO.