“Harvard and Yale’s intense selectivity is one reason why their affirmative action policies have come under attack. But these colleges could also easily choose to take in more students.” …
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/ivy-league-acceptance-rates-so-low/571678/
I don’t agree with the author’s conclusion that affirmative action policies would be helped by increasing the acceptance rate. Schools are going to continue to admit who they want for a balanced class. 200 more students isn’t going to make a hill of beans difference in the overall school profile, nor the odds for applicants.
More students? :-/ :-/ I guess whoever wrote the article needs to be re-educated. Those Midwest state schools which depend on Chinese students are the ones need to admit more students since the numbers of “spies” are likely to decrease. (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/09/politico-reports-trump-called-most-chinese-students-us-spies)
[quote]
At Yale University, where just 6 percent of 30,000 applicants are accepted,** the foreign share of the freshman class has grown from single digits to 11 percent. As Yale’s undergraduate enrollment has edged upward since 2004, foreigners have accounted for almost all of the growth**, reflecting a deliberate strategy to deepen Yale’s engagement with the world./quote
Hmmm… Stanford with 4.3% acceptance rate (2018) is more “intense” in selectivity than Harvard at 4.6% and Princeton at 5.5% is more intense over Yale’s 6.3%, yet neither Stanford nor Princeton is under attack for affirmative action policies. This article is so misguided. In the year 2006 to 2018, the selectivity among top 50 schools in the U.S. has nearly ALL intensified (i.e., decreased in acceptance rate) by whopping 81.1% at U of Chicago, 73.8% at Northwestern, 72.2% at Duke, etc. There are, as of 2018, 14 institutions with a single digit selectivity rate. I don’t know where this article is coming from or going with.
I know! They can buy off a few colleges with enrollment problems across the states, and name them Yale California Campus or Yale 2, 3, 4. Something like that. Shouldn’t be a problem because;
Right?
Too funny.
Sometimes I think, “Know what the Ivies need?”
To be freaking left alone.
Being left alone means the following:
This is the Hillsdale model, and any college is free to adopt it. But since #2 means hundreds of millions each year to each elite college, I won’t hold my breath that any top 20 college will do that.
If the schools in question increased the number of students on campus dramatically enough to increase their acceptance rates dramatically, then they no longer would have their current character and benefits. A small college has a different culture from a mid-sized college which has a different culture from a gigantic college.
My own kid chose Williams for its small size. Brown and Princeton remained on his potential list prior to his ED acceptance at Williams. He did not like Cornell; it was too big for what he wanted in a college. The difference between Princeton’s size and Cornell’s size is significant. Making Princeton as large as a giant state university would make it no longer Princeton!
In short, I think the idea to expand the elite colleges’ size is terrible idea.
And who is to say that the number of students who think it might be worth taking the chance to apply would not increase if the number of students being admitted increased, thus keeping perentages low?
Personally, I wish two things would happen.
Parents and students would stop looking at the Ivy leage as the holly grail of college education. If people would truly accept that you can get an excellent education at hundreds of colleges around the country, it would alleviate lot of anxiety and suffering for these kids.
We need to figure out a way to make college affordable outside of the ultra generous HYP+. Many people are looking to these schools because the FA available there is unrivaled anywhere else. Even the other “meets full needs” schools don’t come close. So, for some families who are hoping to see their kids get a fine education at a price they can afford these chools may be one of the few choices out there.
There is no way that the Ivies could admit enough kids to make a dent in the problem. The real issue is the way we expect families to finance education in this country.
I have a son at Cornell (mascot “Big Red”). I saw a poster call it Big Red Machine recently.
Cornell is a good example of what’s wrong with expanding enrollment. I feel we are getting not much better than a public school education at private school prices. The peers are what make it better, but not the professors and administration. Son has a course now with 45 students and 3 TAs. Prof teaches nothing, material is complicated, TAs unavailable and not sufficiently familiar with the material. Labs consist of waiting your turn to see these TAs so they can spend a minute troubleshooting faulty technology. Not the first course like that. You only get a personal experience involving profs in small unpopular courses/majors. Psych intro course uses a 1000 person auditorium. They don’t have enough dorms to house on campus, and off campus is expensive/old due to short supply. All these things could be improved with lowering enrollment, but instead enrollment has expanded over the years. If they want to expand, hire more faculty, build more dorms, and then expand enrollment.
It is not necessary nor useful to have a handful of schools educate as many as possible while other schools struggle to fill seats. We had a college in my hometown close recently leaving kids scrambling for a place to transfer. Really, only the top 100 colleges are worthwhile ?
Cornell Psych 101 has always been taught in Bailey Hall with 1000 students. (Even back in my day in the stone ages). Hands down one of the best classes at Cornell. Size doesn’t necessary mean poor quality. I would be more concerned about the other class with 45 students, the prof that doesn’t teach, and the TAs that suck. 
My D1 is at a lower ranked school generally considered a true safety. Her classes are small. The professors are wonderful. Not only do they know her by name, but they are constentaly sending her internship and employment opportunities. She has never been taught by a TA. We didn’t qualify for FA but the merrit aid was truly generous. Its true that not all of her peers are intellectual superstars. There is a sizeable cohort who probably just don’t care. On the other hand, there are plenty of smart, motivated kids just like her. I doubt she would have been better off at an Ivy and possibly far worse. Its time for people to start looking outside of the box.
^^Agree that affordability is a big issue, but here we also need to look at why colleges have become so expensive and not just how to help families finance the cost. In fact there is a credible argument that the ease of obtaining government subsidies and subsidized/guaranteed loans has contributed to college cost inflation. Here is a good summary piece from the NYT https://nyti.ms/1MQnAKs. Some highlights:
"In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general… If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000…
Interestingly, increased spending has not been going into the pockets of the typical professor. Salaries of full-time faculty members are, on average, barely higher than they were in 1970. Moreover, while 45 years ago 78 percent of college and university professors were full time, today half of postsecondary faculty members are lower-paid part-time employees, meaning that the average salaries of the people who do the teaching in American higher education are actually quite a bit lower than they were in 1970.
By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions…Even the explosion in administrative personnel is, at least in theory, defensible. On the other hand, there are no valid arguments to support the recent trend toward seven-figure salaries for high-ranking university administrators…"
Why?
Consider the University of Michigan. Including its medical system, it has a budget of about $8B per year and about 50k employees. How much would a CEO running an equivalent for-profit business make, and how much less, in your opinion, should Michigan’s President make?
There’s no mystery here. The 14 colleges with admission rates in the single digits coincide with the 14 or so colleges with the highest discount rates (also known as financial aid.) For some families they are more affordable than their own state flagship university. The solution to low admission rates is more fundraising everywhere else dedicated to financial aid.
^^ That was just a direct quote from the article. IMO, the Presidents of major universities should be paid on the same scale as CEO’s of businesses of similar scale and complexity. In fact I cringe when I see how much the football or basketball coaches make at a lot of these schools in comparison. The question is the necessity and compensation of the administrators one or more layers down. Given the growth of admin payroll relative to faculty payroll, there is clear bloat at many institutions. Don’t know if U of M is among them.
I think admin bloat is something we can’t get a grip on, just from media summaries or a report on a few
top salary figures. Imo, that misleads. Some top positions are revenue generating. Some, as pointed out, manage thousands. Some top positions are mostly on the go, raising funds, representing the college. You’d need to get further into it: who’s got admins sitting around vs scurrying.
We tend to focus on those dollars vs the ROI, both to the school and the student services/actual environment.
Mental health resources are a thing now. Schools are touting their student per counselor ratios in the same way they showcase their student:faculty ratios.
A lot of campuses are burdened with a lot of very old buildings that they can’t tear down and replace because they’re historic. Renovations that keep the historic character of a building cost a ton, especially if you have to remediate asbestos. And you can get donations for scholarships or for new buildings but few want to donate the cost of fixing up the old buildings.
Would Harvard and Yale be Harvard and Yale if they let in more students? If they let in twice as many, would they be as desirable because they would be less exclusive?