Poll: US split on college admissions fairness

(24 Apr 2019) As a sweeping bribery scandal reignites debate over US college admissions, a pair of new polls reveals that many Americans think the nation's universities place too much emphasis on factors such as wealth, family ties and athletic ability.

The surveys, conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Higher Education Analytics Center at NORC, finds Americans about evenly divided on the overall fairness of college admissions, but their views on individual selection criteria reveal a rift between the factors they see as important and the factors they think colleges value.

The polls were conducted in March and April, weeks after federal prosecutors accused 33 parents of paying bribes to cheat on their children's college entrance tests or get them into elite schools including Stanford, Yale and Georgetown.

In some cases, investigators said, parents paid bribes to get their children labeled as recruited athletes for sports they didn't even play.

Against that backdrop, some college counselors said they expected wide distrust of the admissions process. Instead, the results were mixed: about 4 in 10 say they think the process is fair, while a similar share said it's unfair. About a quarter are neutral.

Overall, Americans are most likely to say they think high school grades and standardized test scores should be important in admissions, and majorities agree that colleges value those factors too.

Similarly, many think that extracurricular activities should play a role and say that colleges take them into account.

But on other criteria, there's a clash between the way Americans think students should be picked and the way they think colleges actually operate.

Nearly 4 in 10, for example, say they think colleges give significant weight to legacy status, or whether a student has a family member who attended the school, but just 11% say they think it should be important.

Many similarly think colleges consider whether a student's family has donated money to the school, but few say it should matter.

When it comes to athletic ability, about a third say they think it should be an important factor, but a slim majority think it actually is.

Overall, Americans show little support for the consideration of race in admissions. Just 27% say race and ethnicity should be an important factor, while 4 in 10 say they think it is.

That's alarming to backers of affirmative action, which has faced a flurry of legal challenges recently.

A federal judge is now weighing a lawsuit arguing that Harvard should stop using race in its decisions amid allegations of bias against Asian Americans.

At the same time, the Trump administration has opened inquiries into the use of race at Harvard and Yale, and it recently ordered Texas Tech University's medical school to stop considering applicants' race.

Still, the polls find the issue is largely drawn down racial lines. About half of black Americans say racial background should be important, while just 22% of white Americans do.

Americans appear to be divided by age when it comes to the importance of standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, the polls find.

Among those 50 and older, three-quarters say test scores should be important, while just about half of those under 30 agree.

Such tests have come under scrutiny following accusations that some parents in the bribery scheme paid to rig their children's entrance exams.



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