Education Law

Now accepting: The best and brightest? Not really

BoardBuzz was quite disheartened by this article in the New York Times today about how many private colleges are taking into consideration a potential future student’s ability to pay when deciding to accept that student into their school. Result being that lower performing, high income students will have more of an opportunity to get into college than their more deserving but lower income classmates.

BoardBuzz knows that there are many colleges out there — especially public colleges — where this isn’t the case but it still doesn’t sound right to us. BoardBuzz lives in the real world and knows many students can’t attend the college of their dreams simply because they can’t afford it, but at the very least shouldn’t that decision be up to the student and their family if that student is accepted?  Sure, we know we are going through the worst economic crisis of our time, but we don’t think that means that colleges should close their doors to students who are capable of achieving.   Moreover, colleges are closing their doors to some students that we as a nation need to support in order to help turn around this economy and be the future leaders of this country.

BoardBuzz doesn’t only feel for these high-performing lower-income students who are having the door shut in their face by many of our institutions of higher learning, we also feel for the teachers, administrators, and school board members who have been working so hard to prepare all students — regardless of their income — for college. For these colleges to decline admission to students based simply on their ability to pay is a stab in the back to these students and the hard work being done in the schools they attended.

Our nation’s K-12 public schools have taken a lot of criticism from our nation’s colleges for not preparing their students for college work, although it appears now that the real problem is that colleges are actually accepting students based on their on their ability to pay and not on their academic abilities.  Thankfully, we can rest easy knowing that our K-12 public schools, unlike our nation’s private colleges, accept all students no matter their income level.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on March 31, 2009 (boomark / email).