Attacking The Elites What Critics Get Wrong and Right About Americas Leading Universities Derek Bok Full Chapter PDF
Attacking The Elites What Critics Get Wrong and Right About Americas Leading Universities Derek Bok Full Chapter PDF
Attacking The Elites What Critics Get Wrong and Right About Americas Leading Universities Derek Bok Full Chapter PDF
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Attacking the Elites
Attacking the Elites
What Critics Get Wrong—and Right—
About America’s Leading Universities
Derek Bok
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
PREFACE
PART I. The Role of Elite Universities in America
CHAPTER 1. Why Have Our Leading Universities Been So Successful,
and What Responsibilities Do They Owe in Return?
CHAPTER 2. A View from the Bridge: Why Elite Presidents Are Proud
of Their Universities
PART II. The Liberal Critique
CHAPTER 3. Choosing Whom to Admit to Elite Universities in an Age
of Extreme Inequality
CHAPTER 4. Student Protests and the Role of Elite Universities in
Combating Evil and Injustice in the World
CHAPTER 5. Reparations: The Bitter Legacy of Slavery and an
Attempt to Repair the Damage
PART III. The Conservative Critique
CHAPTER 6. Are College Students Being Indoctrinated by Liberal
Professors?
CHAPTER 7. The Campaign against Racial Preferences as Elite
Universities Seek to Diversify Their Student Bodies
CHAPTER 8. Have Elite Universities Sacrificed Freedom of Speech in
Their Effort to Provide a Supportive Environment for All Students?
PART IV. Beyond the Ideological Divide
CHAPTER 9. Should Our Leading Universities Do More to Improve
the Quality of Education?
CHAPTER 10. The Many Sins of Intercollegiate Athletics
CHAPTER 11. Dire Thoughts before Daybreak about the Future of
Elite Universities
CONCLUSION: What Elite Universities Could Do
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
PREFACE
Note
*Let me make clear at the outset that I regret having to use the word elite to
describe the universities featured in this book, because it has connotations of
smugness and superiority that I do not wish to convey. Nevertheless, elite has
been used so often to describe the universities in this study that, after
experimenting with several substitutes, I had to agree that no other word was
equally suited to my purpose. I recognize, however, that there are other colleges
and universities that are fully as worthy of praise and recognition for the
outstanding work they do. Some in particular have had remarkable success in
educating students who are much harder to teach and much more likely to drop
out than the academically gifted students who populate our leading research
universities. With little money to spend, these institutions literally change the lives
of many who come to them for an education. In doing so, they do a different job
but one that is just as hard and just as praiseworthy as the work of the more
famous universities featured in this book.
CHAPTER 1
Why Have Our Leading Universities Been So
Successful, and What Responsibilities Do They Owe
in Return?
Notes
*Oxford and Cambridge both receive public funds from the British government,
but they are self-governing, the bulk of their resources are private, and their
faculties are not civil servants or appointed by the government, as they are in
most of Europe.
*I discuss this subject in greater detail in my book Higher Expectations: Can
Colleges Teach Students What They Need to Know in the Twenty-First Century?
(2020), pp. 80–95.
CHAPTER 2
A View from the Bridge
Why Elite Presidents Are Proud of Their Universities
Note
*According to one widely cited study, students in the most selective colleges
tend to devote more hours per week to their classes and coursework and improve
their writing and critical thinking skills more than students at other colleges.
Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College
Campuses (2011), pp. 72, 93. Similar findings are reported by Wendy Fischman
and Howard Gardner on the basis of interviews with several thousand college
students; The Real World of Colleges: What Higher Education Is and What It Can
Be (2022), pp. 129–30.
PART II
The Liberal Critique
A BETTER APPROACH
Even if leading universities were to follow this advice and do away
with early-action admission and all preferences for legacies, children
of donors or faculty, and athletes in minor sports along with a limited
and judicious use of SAT scores, it is doubtful that many of the
additional places created in the most selective colleges would be
filled by students from low-income families. Although such students
can attend most elites without paying anything, few may apply, and
many who do may lack the grades and test scores to be admitted.
A straightforward way to enroll more low-income applicants would
be to give them a preference in admissions comparable to what
virtually all highly selective colleges have long given to minority
students. As with minorities, the life experiences of these students
will add to the diversity of the student body and thereby enhance
the quality of education for everyone. Moreover, students who grow
up poor will often have been raised in single-parent families, lived in
neighborhoods beset by crime and drug addiction, and attended
schools that are greatly inferior in resources to the schools typically
found in more affluent communities. Selective colleges should surely
give low-income applicants with strong high school records some
extra credit for having displayed the resilience and determination to
overcome a series of disadvantages unknown to students who have
lived their lives in much more favorable environments.
Until 2000, highly selective colleges rarely gave low-income
students any discernible preference in the admissions process. By
now, however, it is likely that many, if not most, of these colleges do
try to take some account of the special disadvantages that these
applicants have had to overcome. Yet little is known about how
much of a preference is currently being given, and there is no
consensus on how much should be awarded. Under these
circumstances, selective colleges need to experiment carefully with
awarding preferences to discover how much they can do without
putting the students involved at too much risk of failing to succeed.
While an effort of this kind seems promising, there is
disagreement over how many qualified high school graduates from
low-income families would decide to attend very selective colleges if
they were given a chance to do so. In a widely publicized study, two
economists, Caroline Hoxby from Stanford and Christopher Avery
from Harvard, found that up to 35,000 high school students from
low-income families graduate each year with grades and test scores
sufficient to compete for admission to the most selective colleges,
but that only a few enroll or even apply to an elite school.7 In a
subsequent study, Hoxby claimed that many of these students would
apply if they simply received literature from selective colleges
describing the institution and inviting them to submit an
application.8 Subsequent studies have not confirmed these findings,
however, leaving the actual number of willing, academically qualified
low-income applicants in considerable doubt.9
There is a good deal of anecdotal evidence that many talented
low-income students do not want to attend a highly selective
college. Admissions officers who have made special efforts to recruit
such students believe that it is much more difficult to attract them
than one might think. Some of these students cannot imagine that
they would actually be admitted. Others may feel that they would
not feel welcome or be happy at highly competitive institutions filled
with classmates from backgrounds so different from their own. Still
others do not want to go to college so far from home or cannot do
so because they are needed to stay and help their families.
For reluctant students such as these, merely sending them
literature is unlikely to suffice. Admissions officers must track them
down and try to convince them to apply. Conducting such
conversations, however, is complicated by the fact that the students
involved do not appear to be concentrated in a few big cities but are
widely scattered. Elite colleges that have sent admissions officials
into the field to recruit low-income applicants have thus far either
been unable to locate as many of these students as Hoxby’s
estimate might suggest or have failed to interest a great many of
them in applying to a highly competitive college.
One enterprising nonprofit organization, the Posse Foundation,
has worked successfully for years to identify students from inner-city
neighborhoods who have the determination and ability to succeed in
a highly selective college.10 The foundation has persuaded several
dozen selective private colleges and universities to admit and give
full scholarships to small groups (or “posses”) of these students.
Posse has gradually expanded its operations to include more cities
and increase the number of colleges that agree to accept its
students and give them the financial aid to finish. The vast majority
have graduated. By now, a few other nonprofit organizations are
also attempting to find low-income applicants and encourage them
to apply to highly selective colleges.
Critics who urge very selective colleges to admit many more low-
income applicants seem to assume that any students with
reasonably good high school grades would succeed in a highly
competitive college if only they were admitted. It is instructive,
therefore, to take note of how the Posse Foundation goes about
selecting the students who qualify for its programs. Posse does not
simply choose students with good grades and board scores. In fact,
the foundation does not pay much attention to grades and scores. It
begins by asking inner-city high school teachers, guidance
counselors, and principals to recommend juniors in their school who
they believe have the character, resilience, ambition, and other
personal qualities to flourish in a highly selective, competitive
college. It then asks these students to take special tests that are
devised to identify candidates who truly possess the qualities of
initiative, leadership, and determination that Posse deems essential
to success. The students selected attend weekend classes during
their senior year in high school that prepare them to make the most
of their college experience both in and outside the classroom.
Finally, the students are sent to a selective college in small groups,
or “posses,” so that they can support each other in adjusting to their
new and challenging environment. Approximately 90 percent do
graduate. Some of them not only finish but also become student
body presidents or achieve other positions of leadership. What
Posse’s success suggests, however, is that finding suitable students
and preparing them to succeed is a good deal harder than simply
persuading highly selective colleges to alter their admissions policies.
Supporting Posse students is not inexpensive. In addition to all-
expenses-paid scholarships, the foundation needs a lot of money to
locate, evaluate, and prepare inner-city students who have the
perseverance and determination to succeed in selective colleges.
Private institutions with ample endowments can help pay these costs
by providing the necessary scholarships, but other colleges may lack
the money to participate. Moreover, programs such as Posse’s have
concentrated their efforts on cities. Whether ways can be found to
reach students living in smaller towns and rural communities,
persuade them to apply, and prepare them to succeed remains to be
seen.
To summarize, critics of current admissions policies have correctly
identified several practices that are unfair and should be eliminated.
It is unlikely, however, that removing these methods, by itself, will
lead to significant increases in the number of low-income students
admitted to elite colleges. Several of the dubious practices do not
have as great an effect on admissions as critics tend to assume.
Moreover, most of the students who would be next in line to fill the
added vacancies if the needed reforms were adopted would probably
look very much like the students already being admitted. This fact is
not a reason to continue the objectionable practices. But it does
suggest that making admissions procedures more fair will not do
much by itself to gain the objective that critics hope to achieve.
Added progress might be made if selective colleges gave a greater
preference to students from low-income families, but only if these
colleges can succeed in locating promising candidates for admission
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