Innovation and Justice: Reinventing Selective Colleges
April 2021
COVID-19 has been disastrous for colleges across the country. But it has also created extraordinary opportunities to reshape a higher education system that is highly inequitable and in dire need of reform.
This white paper from Making Caring Common, Innovation and Justice: Reinventing Selective Colleges, makes the case that America’s selective colleges can and should educate far more—and far more diverse—students. Rather than gaining status from how few students they admit, these colleges should tout a far more just and democratic metric—how many students they educate.
How to achieve this? Selective colleges could substantially increase the size of their undergraduate populations, creating exciting, rigorous pathways to bachelor’s degrees that are more accessible, appealing, and affordable for a greater diversity of students. Selective colleges could combine—in myriad ways that are just as rigorous as their current model but more affordable and appealing for many students—traditional residential experiences, field experiences domestically and/or abroad, online learning, satellite campuses, and rich and varied internships.
The paper explores the many benefits of these new pathways; feasible strategies for building them; and potential challenges and suggestions for responding to them.
Will colleges step up?
Authored by Richard Weissbourd and Jake Weissbourd with Jake Murray, Trisha Ross Anderson, Tara Nicola, and Brennan Barnard
“For too long, selective colleges—and especially the 80 highly selective colleges that accept less than 25% of their applicants—have relied on a scarcity model to convey their value. ”
Key benefits for colleges
Deeper learning experiences in fields such as public service that advance the public good. Selective colleges can create pathways that are far more effective at realizing what they often declare as central to their mission--cultivating students' ethical character and civic purpose.
Greater attunement to the strengths and challenges of racially, economically, and culturally diverse students. New pathways would be more affordable for students and could better align with the realities of students’ lives.
More varied, engaging, and deeper learning experiences for diverse learners. Innovative models can be constructed that harness insights from learning theory and are more responsive to diverse learners.
More opportunities for people with parenting responsibilities, people engaged in part-time work, and people at different stages of their career. Pathways that are partly or fully online could broaden access to parents and soaring numbers of non-college age adults who are seeking degrees.
Greater appeal to employers. Experiential pathways are likely to make students more appealing to prospective employers looking for real-world experience.
Reduced student cost. There are myriad ways of creating pathways that are less costly for students and colleges.
Reduced harmful achievement pressure in high school. One important way to reduce achievement pressure is to markedly increase the number of spaces available at selective colleges.
Leadership in the online and hybrid learning space. Selective colleges, given their expressed commitment to high-quality pedagogy, could lead in designing innovative online and hybrid learning experiences.
Related reading
Join Making Caring Common for this free one-hour webinar for school counselors, in which participants will learn about recent research conducted on the school profile with admission officers and counselors, as well as practical suggestions and concrete tools for building effective school profiles.
School profiles are a critical tool for addressing equity in college admissions. By providing admission officers with essential context about students' high school environments, they can help level the playing field. Join us for this one-hour webinar where we will share insights from recent research on school profiles.
Inside Higher Ed took a look at key findings from our On Edge report that found young adults report twice the rates of anxiety and depression as teens.
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Scott Carlson and Ned Laff make the case that meaning and purpose—not future employment—should be at the heart of the college experience.
College isn’t the only path to success, and it’s important for the adults in teens’ lives—family members, teachers, coaches, and others—to acknowledge the value of diverse paths that don’t include four-year degree. Here are 20 questions to ask soon-to-be graduates that celebrate a wider range of options for life after high school.
Traditionally, colleges look for students with good grades and test scores, but this approach might not identify those who will flourish on campus. The Thrivers Study suggests a more holistic approach.
The Thrivers Study involves a team of staff and faculty from various departments like admissions, student life, and alumni engagement. Together, they define what it means to be a thriving student at their college and identify current students who exemplify this.
By interviewing and surveying these thriving students, the college can understand what factors attracted them and helped them succeed. This might be unique academic programs, strong support systems, or a vibrant campus life.
How can changes to college recommendation requirements help level the playing field in college admission? Brennan Barnard weighs in in Forbes.
College admissions officers face pressure to build a diverse and interesting student body, especially with evolving application trends like grade inflation and test-optional policies. Focusing on non-academic traits can be helpful, but it requires clear communication. Clearer and more engaging supplemental essay prompts can promote a more equitable admissions process and help admission offices gather the information they need to admit students who will thrive in their unique campus environment.
The college admissions process often relies on vague terms like "grit" and "resiliency" to assess applicants' non-cognitive traits. This lack of clear definitions can lead to miscommunication and bias among admission officers. To address this issue, colleges should develop a shared understanding of the qualities they value and how to identify them in applications. This can be achieved by defining these traits clearly, anchoring them in research, and providing examples of how they might be demonstrated. By being more explicit about what they are looking for, colleges can create a fairer and more equitable admissions process for all applicants.
An initiative led by Making Caring Common and Common App aims to give credit to college applicants for demanding home and family commitments, similar to how traditional extracurricular activities are considered. Read more in the Hechinger Report.
As educators, we can get caught up in focusing on individual goals that we forget to step back and consider a shared vision of what success looks like. In other words, what does a thriving student look like at our institution? What characteristics does a thriving student bring to the table? And how can we create the conditions to cultivate that across our learning community?
MCC’s Trisha Ross Anderson speaks with The College Essay Guy about how Making Caring Common helps colleges figure out what they are looking for; how some colleges are working to increase access and equity in admissions; and advice to parents as they navigate this process with their students.
New changes to the Free Application for Student Aid (FAFSA) have resulted in widespread confusion and delays in getting colleges the information they need to award financial aid to students. We’ve got the latest.
What's on the horizon in college admission this year? Forbes’ Brennan Barnard hopes it's revolutionary.
From advances in AI to our pilot of a new student context inventory with Common App colleges, there were a few bright spots in an otherwise “warped” year in college admission, Brennan Barnard writes in Forbes.
From delving into the complexities of parenting to forging meaningful connections across diverse fields, 2023 has been a year of profound learning and growth for us at Making Caring Common. Here are five key takeaways that have shaped our work and continue to inspire us.
This exercise guides young people through a series of questions about their “narrative identity”—or the stories we tell ourselves that shape our sense of who we are and what our future holds.
In our new report, On Edge: Understanding and Preventing Young Adults’ Mental Health Challenges, over half of young adults (58%) said they had experienced little or no purpose or meaning in their lives in the previous month. So how do those of us with young adults in our lives support them in developing a sense of meaning and purpose? We offer five data-driven suggestions in this blog post.
The high school profile provides college admissions officers with a high-level overview of a the school and community context from which a student is applying. Making Caring Common has collaborated with Dr. Nicola to create a series of resources that assist counselors and school leaders in improving the quality and equity of their profiles.
Holistic review in college admission is based on the assumption that admission officers know the context of every applicant’s high school and community. But many small or under resourced schools don’t provide the contextual information most valuable to admission officers. In this blog post, MCC’s Julius DiLorenzo outlines 14 critical, contextual components all schools should include on their profile.
Can a focus on character in admission help colleges and universities maintain a level of racial and economic diversity after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on race-conscious admission? Jon Edelman explores the idea in this piece for Diverse Issues in Higher Education.
Veronica Fernandez-Alvarado explores MCC’s college admissions work in this piece for Diverse Issues in Higher Education.
"There will be major losses in diversity on college campuses," MCC's Rick Weissbourd told the Harvard Gazette about one impact of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision about race-conscious admission practices. "Diversity is so important for the prospects of many kids, and it’s also important in terms of having a healthy community, where people learn about themselves and the world.”
Read more about how admissions processes may change and what it may mean for colleges, universities — and the nation itself.
Today, much of higher education is predicated on gaining a competitive advantage. But what if colleges and universities could cooperate instead of compete for applicants?
A new tool that Making Caring Common piloted with the Common App will allow college applicants to provide more diverse information about their life circumstances — information like time spent taking care of siblings. Through the Common App, the most-used college application platform in the country, students can apply to multiple colleges and universities at the same time.
College admissions decisions can trigger complex emotions for students and families alike. In this piece, MCC offers five tips for what to say to your child when they receive disappointing admission decisions.
If the United States Supreme Court does ban race-conscious college admissions as is widely expected, then what can admission offices consider? This Inside Higher Ed piece from Tom Bear and the late David Holmes highlights efforts to refocus admission on ethical character, including MCC’s work with the Common Application.
