Will Ivies Expand Class Size?

Applying to College
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I may be a benighted foreigner, but I believed that Lincoln procalimed that the U.S. government is "of the people, by the people, for the people,"</p>

<p>And according to your logic we should stop providing churches tax breaks if they become more selective and refuse to expand.</p>

<p>Private schools are basically like any other business. If the government chose to stop providing them certain priveleges they would still manage. They would simply have less funding for research and would likely charge more for tuition (which would only hurt the students who most likely would still pay the outlandish fees anyway).

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The money is generally DoD or DoE stuff which the public rarely benefits from (although there's eventually a trickle down). I suppose in a roundabout way the public benefits because the work helps their democratically elected government.

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And according to your logic we should stop providing churches tax breaks if they become more selective and refuse to expand.

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If by my logic you mean a twisted and totally unrelated form of my logic, then yes, that's my logic.

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Private schools are basically like any other business.

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No, they're not. Other businesses do not have tax exemptions. With the exception of the MIC (which is generally incestuous with the federal government anyway) the majority of their money does not come from federal grants. Other business are not given land and most of them aren't given authorization to empower their own territorial police force. And the only group besides private universities that are generally allowed to handle petty crime (and somewhat more heinous crime) internally are Indian reservations, which are entirely autonomous.

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If the government chose to stop providing them certain priveleges they would still manage.

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That's laughable. If the government magically shut down federal funding for private schools and redirected the money to public schools the only schools capable of staying open for a decade without closing almost all graduate and professional schools and providing no financial aid would be Yale and Harvard, with the exception of maybe Cornell which would (I'd imagine) opt to become a full land-grant public university. Every private medical school would be closed within 5 years because their budgets are basically NIH</a> grants.

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They would simply have less funding for research and would likely charge more for tuition (which would only hurt the students who most likely would still pay the outlandish fees anyway).

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If they had less funding for research their best faculty would defect to public schools which would in turn eventually dissolve whatever vestige of prestige they had and either make them well-networked vocational schools or former shells of what they once were that are barely functioning.</p>

<p>You really underestimate just how much operating income these universities derive from governmental grants. Especially schools like MIT and CMU that are heavy on the engineering.</p>

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<p>Yes, I've heard the rumors about Yale's expansion as well...</p>

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<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/us/29tuition.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/us/29tuition.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>It would seem that the current population boom is a great thing for colleges just below the Ivys in ranking. If the Ivys can't hold all the top students, they are forced to move to the next set of schools which raises the standards at those schools. For example, Boston College reported that its early action round was the most competitive in history and they deferred students with Ivy-worthy stats. So one could say that a silver lining in all this is that it is creating more Ivy-like schools in the U.S. Isn't that a good thing?</p>

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<p>
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The most elite institutions are accepting historic lows of 10 percent of applicants, and next year the sieve should become excruciatingly finer with applications from baby boomers’ offspring expected to crest.

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<p>Great. Just what a 2013'er needed. More competition, when I thought this year was one of the worst ever.</p>

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<p>But you guys might benefit from more acceptances, if the schools should expand their class sizes. I think universities are recognizing the competitive nature of admissions and are responding accordingly. Too bad this year most schools are only "considering" expanding their class sizes. When it's put to effect is another issue.</p>

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<p>I know that Yale is on the cusp of expanding by adding two additional residential colleges. The cost will be enormous (~$650M) and will be the single costliest construction project in the history of CT. The plan is not just to build two housing units but to increase in faculty where needed, living and classroom space, performance space, etc. so that the new colleges will be fully integrated and be as included as the existing 12. Ongoing forums have sought input from the Y community.</p>

<p>I may be naive but I believe them when they state that they wish to expand because they wish to provide more students with a Yale education. If it were strictly a monetary issue, I'm sure they could hold onto that $650M and continue to roll it into their huge endowment ($23B) with its ridiculous performance (~ +25% last year????).</p>

<p>BTW, completion would be many years away. Maybe elementary school kids will enjoy the extra spaces opened up -- no high schooler now on CC would benefit directly from this one project.</p>

<p>Interesting thread</p>

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<p>


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<p>No one is entitled to an Ivy/top 20 simply because they think they're "qualified". By extension, there is no "onus" on the top schools to increase enrollment simply because of the population boom. </p>

<p>You said that the primary founding mission of every school is to educate. Aren't the people who attend non-ivys getting an education all the same? </p>

<p>It is ludicrous to believe that private schools are obligated to admit and educate a certain number of students in proportion to the size of the federal grants they receive. That money is pumped into them based on their track record of discoveries and breakthroughs, in the hope that more will follow. </p>

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<p>Uh huh. And how do you expect these star faculty to make breakthroughs at the same rate when their teaching loads are two to three times heavier? </p>

<p>I believe the top colleges should expand enrollment, but only because they are acknowledging that they don't have enough space for all the students they want. Not because the federal grants make them obligated to do so. Not because of public need. And certainly not because of all the kids who think they're somehow entitled to a brand-name college. I hope I don't live to see the day when tetrishead's high-handed manoeuvres get implemented, not that they would work anyway.</p>

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<p>
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No one is entitled to an Ivy/top 20 simply because they think they're "qualified". By extension, there is no "onus" on the top schools to increase enrollment simply because of the population boom.

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There is, and you're wrong. There's a reason Harvard did what it did, there's a reason the cascade is happening, and there's a reason schools are starting to introduce expansion plans. There's been grumbling from constituents to Senators. Grassley made reference to something, and people listened.

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You said that the primary founding mission of every school is to educate. Aren't the people who attend non-ivys getting an education all the same?

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If they have a small undergraduate class size, they are artificially withholding some of the most elite faculty from students in this country. If they've been given land by a state, or they were formed as the result of a legislative decision, then they have certain responsibilities. All you have to do is dangle the threat of removing tax-exempt status from these schools to see just how little they "owe" the American population.

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It is ludicrous to believe that private schools are obligated to admit and educate a certain number of students in proportion to the size of the federal grants they receive. That money is pumped into them based on their track record of discoveries and breakthroughs, in the hope that more will follow.

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And as they continue to amass war chests and invest in hedge funds and refuse expansion they reach a place of critical mass where their primary focus can no longer be considered the reason they received tax exempt status (education), but rather it can be interpreted as effectively acting as a holding company.

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Uh huh. And how do you expect these star faculty to make breakthroughs at the same rate when their teaching loads are two to three times heavier?

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More students != greater teaching load. More students = less individual interaction, probably more TAs. That's about the end of it.

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I believe the top colleges should expand enrollment, but only because they are acknowledging that they don't have enough space for all the students they want. Not because the federal grants make them obligated to do so. Not because of public need. And certainly not because of all the kids who think they're somehow entitled to a brand-name college. I hope I don't live to see the day when tetrishead's high-handed manoeuvres get implemented, not that they would work anyway.

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Federal grants don't obligate them, but it's close. Tax exempt status obligates them, charters from states obligate them. When they're withholding a significant amount of money and the class size doesn't expand in response to shifts in the population they're acting as a high-quality research and development investment company that just happens to have some students.</p>

<p>I personally don't think what I was talking about would or even should happen, I was speaking in hypotheticals. I think the correct action is for universities to recognize that the reason they exist is largely a result of tax money from citizens of this country, and the reason they haven't gone bankrupt (but rather, in the cases of some schools, are thriving) is a result of tax exempt status.</p>

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<p>My daughter attends Amherst and I know that they are expanding to accommodate their increase efforts to recruit more low-income and international students. Adding 100 additional students to the student body probably isn't so bad. However, the attraction of a small LAC is its size and sense of community that one can find. Expanding into much larger institutuions will significantly change the character of the institutution. Harvard, Yale and Stanford are much bigger institutuions, so the impact will be on hiring more faculty (which as the article states would mean needing more office and lab space and many other things). Because categories of people are now attending college than in decades past (minorities, lower income, international students, women) as opposed to white men (who colleges were basically founded for in the first place), the competition to get into these places is unbelievable. On other threads many people are claiming they aren't getting accepted because of Affirmative Action, which is ridiculous. The competition for these institutions have gotten so out of control, acceptance rates were in the single digits last year. Other non-Ivy and lesser elite colleges have benefitted from the large number of highly qualified students.</p>

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<p>If the expansion plans are truly due to the grumblings of the public, and not because the colleges are compelled by the sheer merit of the kids they have to turn down, I think it's a darn shame.</p>

<p>I'm not sure if the distinction you're making here is between local and foreign students. Of course they're going to owe an education to the American population - just not everyone who comes along and thinks they deserve it.</p>

<p>Their so-called war chests are partly to fund the education of the students whom the colleges choose to admit. The full tuition fee doesn't quite cover everything, and look how many students are on some kind of financial aid! I don't see why there's an issue with the growing size of endowments - surely you can't expect them to shrink.</p>

<p>Isn't getting less individual attention almost equivalent to "withholding some of the most elite faculty"? </p>

<p>All these perks of federal grants and tax exemption - aren't they granted because of a) the colleges' track records in R&D and b) their grooming of the next generation of researchers? It's a perfectly fair exchange. Unless you'd rather the colleges charge exorbitant amounts of money for the breakthroughs made by their faculty? Say, the hypothetical new cure for AIDS. I bet the demand curve would be pretty inelastic for that...</p>

<p>lmpw: That is exactly the problem. Privileged kids with 2100 SATs, 3.6 GPAs with easy courseloads, lacrosse and horse-riding ECs think they are entitled to spots at top colleges just because they would've gotten in back in the "good old days."</p>

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<p>
[quote]
If the expansion plans are truly due to the grumblings of the public, and not because the colleges are compelled by the sheer merit of the kids they have to turn down, I think it's a darn shame.</p>

<p>I'm not sure if the distinction you're making here is between local and foreign students. Of course they're going to owe an education to the American population - just not everyone who comes along and thinks they deserve it.

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<p>It's not at critical mass yet, but ten years from now we're going to be at a point where if there isn't expansion amongst the elite universities their admissions decisions are going to be completely arbitrary. It's not like if ten million people are born today they're all going to be morons. Some are going to have poor test scores and bad GPAs, some are going to be mediocre, and some are going to be elite. When the day comes that the top 30 universities and let's say the top 15 LACs all have acceptance rates <%12 (which is when, let's be honest, it becomes a crapshoot) there's going to be a tremendous outcry.</p>

<p>Today, schools like Grinnell and Colby benefit from elite kids being 'forced' out of the top 5-10 schools. Tomorrow, Grinnell and Colby could have the same acceptance rates as Princeton today. That's what has to be avoided. There's not going to be some massive boom in elite professors. Schools that exist, primarily, as a result of tax money, charters from states and a tax-exempt status are going to have to realize that they're so far ahead of everyone in resources (both in money and teachers) that they're strangling the rest of the colleges in this country by refusing to increase the size of their student bodies.

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Their so-called war chests are partly to fund the education of the students whom the colleges choose to admit. The full tuition fee doesn't quite cover everything, and look how many students are on some kind of financial aid! I don't see why there's an issue with the growing size of endowments - surely you can't expect them to shrink.

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There's nothing wrong with schools making money. There's nothing wrong with schools making a lot of money. There's something wrong when tax-exempt institutions are beating the returns of brokerage firms and not increasing the amount of students they admit, the quality of aid and the quality of faculty. Part of this recent financial aid mania is to satiate the fear that there are going to be federal mandates on private universities that are tax-exempt demanding they spend x% of their endowment per year or they lose tax-exempt status. They don't want that discussion to even seriously reach the House, much less get picked up by a Senator who's the ranking member of the Senate finance committee.

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Isn't getting less individual attention almost equivalent to "withholding some of the most elite faculty"?

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You've got to do what you can to spread the best teachers to the most amount of students. This is the first time this has ever happened on this scale. No country has ever had to deal with a future where the truly elite schools are completely incapable of making rational decisions. No country has ever had to look down a barrel to a future where the "perfect" kid is passed so far down the chain that he's dealing with a subpar education at a school that has 10x the amount of undergraduates and .2x the resources of other elite schools that are tax-exempt and receive a tremendous amount of grant money for operating income.

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All these perks of federal grants and tax exemption - aren't they granted because of a) the colleges' track records in R&D and b) their grooming of the next generation of researchers? It's a perfectly fair exchange. Unless you'd rather the colleges charge exorbitant amounts of money for the breakthroughs made by their faculty? Say, the hypothetical new cure for AIDS. I bet the demand curve would be pretty inelastic for that...<a href="a">/quote</a> The tax exemption comes because they're institutions of education first, not think-tanks or engineering firms. The track records in R&D are a result of the perks, not the cause. Everyone recognizes that we're going to have more college applicants in the future--both elite and "average," and everyone has to do what they can to try and ease that burden while maintaining (or even improving) the academic standards they have in the now. If really tiny (I'm not actually talking about ivies here), super rich, in the middle of nowhere schools don't want to help ease a burden that'll become a crisis in the country they're founded, then the money that goes to them needs to start being fed back into a state system and federal grants for schools that are willing to work to address the issue.</p>

<p>(b) It's the same as (a), chicken and the egg. They would not exist without perks, therefore they could not have trained great researchers had they never had such perks.</p>

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<p>There is an article in the NY Times today about other institutions feeling negative consequences to these elite schools now abolishing loans and offering more financial aid to middle class parents. Other colleges can't compete with this new development. Higher education continues to change. Issues of admissions and financial aid have now grown to a national debate.</p>

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<p>The wonderful thing about the US system of higher education is the extent to which there is a continuum of quality. If a student is not accepted to HYPSMC there are a substantial number of schools nearly as good (and occasionally superior in one way or another) where the student can go. This issue is much more important from the point of view of the colleges than it is from a societal point of view. They will have to wrestle with the trade offs in terms of residential feel and the opportunity cost of great students passed over. The issue of whether to expand or not is an interesting problem for them but from societies point of view it is of no consequence.</p>

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<p>As for international students, elite colleges have huge recruitments in Asia, Africa and in places like Turkey, etc. I know people in admissions at some of these places and they have staff who recruit in these areas and travel to these countries. Diversity now includes more international students. Amherst has now expanded to include transfers from community colleges - something that has been virtually unheard of in elite colleges. So, the competition continues. The tradition applicant (white American middle-class) will find more difficulty getting into these institutions. There will be many other places they can apply, however. But, if they have their hearts set on the top Ivies or other places like Stanford, they'll need to have Plan B.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
The wonderful thing about the US system of higher education is the extent to which there is a continuum of quality. If a student is not accepted to HYPSC there are a substantial number of schools nearly as good (and occasionally superior in one way or another) where the student can go. This issue is much more important from the point of view of the colleges than it is from a societal point of view. They will have to wrestle with the trade offs in terms of residential feel and the opportunity cost of great students passed over. The issue of whether to expand or not is an interesting problem for them but from societies point of view it is of no consequence.

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The problem isn't that the top 10 will accept a tiny, tiny percent of applicants. The problem isn't that the top 20, or the top 30, or the top 40, or the top 50 will. The problem is when that starts to encroach on 50-100. When there aren't a substantial amount of schools nearly as good because the amount of top-tier applicants has risen dramatically but the size of undergraduate bodies have remained stagnant. This isn't a bottom-up problem, it's a top-bottom problem. Size stays stagnant, applicants increase. There's a trickle down effect where kids will constantly be pushed down a 'tier' in quality compared to what they'd get today, and it's going to land on the doorstep of state systems that are already facing serious issues with the size of their undergraduate bodies.</p>

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<p>I think the only group that should be intensely focused on this issue is alumni.
A legacy at Harvard or Yale has no advantage in applying anywhere else. The increasing standards for admission at these schools bumps a number of legacy candidates who don't just drop to the next school or two down the continuum but drop down a substantial number of places. This is true of no other group of applicants.</p>

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<p>Tetrishead, you're correct. But, now even state institutuions are becoming more elite. My alma mater (University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana) now recruits out of state for top students. As state institutions get less and less funds from the state, they are also looking to enhance their budgets by more active fundraising and attracting students from outside the state (like the UC system and Michigan). I'm not sure what will happen to students who are perceived as average and not coming from high powered high schools and ones with lots of ECs. I guess these students go to community colleges. But, I read where lots of middle-class students are opting to go to community colleges (because of cost of elite colleges) and transfer into these places in their junior year. One has to have a strategy in college applications these days. The days of my generation where you only applied to one or two colleges and didn't have anything like test prep (I never preped for the SAT), are over. There was absolutely no anxiety when I and my friends applied to college.</p>

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<p>tetris:</p>

<p>even if I agree with your discourse, you will likely find 7 of the 8 Ivy towns do NOT want thier colleges to expand.</p>

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<p>@lmpw
It's still a top-bottom problem. Plenty of kids who are solid applicants are going to community college in Florida because of guaranteed transfer admissions to the University of Florida and other state schools if their gpa is x.xx+. The burden has to be eased at the top for the load not to transition down the line to state schools, even if those state schools then transition the load to community colleges.</p>

<p>@bluebayou
It doesn't matter what they want. If it becomes a national crisis then you better believe they'll get in line if the states push down hard on the townships. As I said before, I think people greatly underestimate how much yearly operating income comes from the federal government, and if a town is threatening the well-being of a university because that school can't expand to reach some new federal guideline then they're going to force expansion and probably go to the state for authorization and the courts are going to rule that the universities can make private property seizures.</p>

<p>It's important to note that my argument has nothing to do with a lower quality of applicant--if anything, demand is going to outgrow expansion no matter what. Applicants are going to get more elite. It's about letting in more elite kids, not lowering standards. You do this so the burden isn't continually shifted down to state systems that will eventually break under the pressure and we reach a point where it's impossible for kids to get bachelors from even remotely respectable schools. It will artificially create two separate social classes if the burden isn't addressed at the top of the line.</p>