![]() ![]() “Because the exposure in those four years is so broad that the possibilities will be incredibly broad. Whitney Soule, dean of admissions and financial aid at Bowdoin College, a small, highly selective liberal arts college in Brunswick, Me. “You will be employable on the day you graduate, but it’s impossible to say what you’re going to do,” said E. The market value of a college degree may be less tangible than the value of technical certification in a field like welding or auto mechanics, but college advocates say there is strength in versatility. “They walk differently, they dress differently, they think differently, they talk differently,” after going to college, he said.īeyond the economics, proponents of college education point out that there is value in loving to learn, and in knowing how to learn. Bird focuses on retaining first-generation and disadvantaged students at the college.Ĭollege is transformational, he added. Bird, an associate dean at Washburn University, a public university in Topeka, said the other day. “If there is class mobility in America, it exists through the vehicle of education,” Sean C. That gap has been growing since the 1980s, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, not so much because wages for college graduates have risen, but because the average wage for everyone else has fallen. Is it worth their while to go to a four-year institution? Or should they choose a two-year degree, technical school or the work force instead?įrom an economic point of view, studies show there is little contest: The pay gap between people with four-year college degrees and everyone else is bigger than ever. Because the nonprofit does not admit students, it is unlikely to be a target of litigation.As they look to graduation, many Topeka High seniors are debating the value of a college education. The Common App will continue to collect racial information for its own purposes, like looking at trends in applications among different groups, regardless of how the Supreme Court decides, Rickard said. If discussion of a student’s race were fully barred, he said, a white applicant to an Ivy League school might be able to write about being the child of an alumna, while a Black student might not be able to “to talk about his or her background, whose grandparents weren’t let into schools like the Ivy League, and how that has impacted their choices.” “We certainly do believe that student applicants should have a First Amendment right to be able to speak about their background if they choose to do so,” Crawford said. Isiaah Crawford, president of the University of Puget Sound, said he hoped the court would agree with Strawbridge on that point. “It tells you something about the character and the experience of the applicant other than their skin color.” ![]() Strawbridge said it would be harder to object to a thoughtful essay that invoked the student’s race in the context of a highly personal story.Īn essay about overcoming racial discrimination could be permitted, because it “obviously indicates that the applicant has grit, that the applicant has overcome some hardship,” Strawbridge told the justices. “Race in a box-checking way, as opposed to race in an experiential statement?” Justice Amy Coney Barrett, one of the conservative majority expected to be sympathetic to the plaintiffs, elaborated. “What we object to is a consideration of race and race by itself,” Strawbridge told the justices. He suggested that much would depend on the context of the revelation. Patrick Strawbridge, a lawyer for Students for Fair Admissions, sparred with the justices over when it would be appropriate for admissions officers to know the race of an applicant. ![]() Some variant of the phrase “checking the box” was used more than 30 times during the five hours of argument before the justices last October. “There is a colossal, well-organized, well-funded attack agenda,” said Art Coleman, managing partner of Education Counsel, a consulting firm working with universities on the Supreme Court cases.ĭuring oral arguments, the Supreme Court justices spent considerable time discussing the race box and the application essay. As a practical matter, it would be hard to redact mentions of race from the many thousands of application essays that colleges receive every year, with more than 50,000 applicants at Harvard alone.īut more litigation around the broader issue of diversity, like scholarships for Black students, seems likely. Masking the race boxes on the Common App could give universities a measure of plausible deniability, legal experts said, and perhaps some protection from lawsuits.Įssays are a less likely target for lawsuits. “If racial preferences are determined to be illegal, then it must follow that racial classification boxes should not be allowed on college application forms,” he said.
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