The Murphy et al paper on the end of free tuition in England makes a rather brittle argument. Essentially, it says that more people get degrees after expensive tuition was introduced. The problem is that the proportion of the age cohort that received degrees increased in almost every rich country during that period. Not sure anything at all can be learned from it.
The wealthiest students ended up receiving more of the free college tuition subsidies, since they were typically the most qualified and therefore most likely to succeed when competing for limited seats.
Nathan Kurzsays:
“The $45,000 subsidy for each student allows Williams to attract the student body with the highest test scores, thereby maintaining or increasing its prestige ranking and in turn maintaining or increasing ability to attract students with high test scores.”
I haven’t read the Carnevale and Strohl paper, but having attended Williams College in the 1990’s, this quote makes me think their analysis suffers from some fundamental flaws. While the enormity of the college’s endowment (over $2 billion, so more than $1 million per student) does allow a lot of subsidization, Williams emphatically does _not_ attempt to attract the students with the highest test scores.
At least, not only those students. To the contrary, they fear that basing admissions solely on test scores so would ruin the culture of the place. Instead, they (like their peer institutions) try to find a balance between academics and “extracurriculars” that keeps the standards reasonably high while still providing a place for the children of the extremely wealthy alumni whose loyalty and donations they seek to keep.
In practice, at least once students make it through the admission process, I’d say this actually works fairly well on egalitarian measures: talented but poor students are given access to an excellent education, far beyond what what otherwise be their ability to pay.
The Murphy et al paper on the end of free tuition in England makes a rather brittle argument. Essentially, it says that more people get degrees after expensive tuition was introduced. The problem is that the proportion of the age cohort that received degrees increased in almost every rich country during that period. Not sure anything at all can be learned from it.
The argument can be summed up as follows:
“The $45,000 subsidy for each student allows Williams to attract the student body with the highest test scores, thereby maintaining or increasing its prestige ranking and in turn maintaining or increasing ability to attract students with high test scores.”
I haven’t read the Carnevale and Strohl paper, but having attended Williams College in the 1990’s, this quote makes me think their analysis suffers from some fundamental flaws. While the enormity of the college’s endowment (over $2 billion, so more than $1 million per student) does allow a lot of subsidization, Williams emphatically does _not_ attempt to attract the students with the highest test scores.
At least, not only those students. To the contrary, they fear that basing admissions solely on test scores so would ruin the culture of the place. Instead, they (like their peer institutions) try to find a balance between academics and “extracurriculars” that keeps the standards reasonably high while still providing a place for the children of the extremely wealthy alumni whose loyalty and donations they seek to keep.
In practice, at least once students make it through the admission process, I’d say this actually works fairly well on egalitarian measures: talented but poor students are given access to an excellent education, far beyond what what otherwise be their ability to pay.