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Why Don't Elite Universities Enjoy Broader Public Support?

  • James Ron
  • Apr 5
  • 3 min read


The Trump administration has declared war on elite universities, mostly of the East Coast variant.


In the name of combatting anti-Semitism and "woke" ideologies, the US government has threatened and/or followed through with drastic cuts to federal research grants for Brown, Columbia, Harvard Johns, Hopkins, the University of Pennsylvania, and several others.


The crackdown has also included the arrest and/or deportation of students who allegedly engaged in pro-Hamas or extreme anti-Israel speech.


Scholars and pundits have decried the clampdown, saying it is a clear sign of Trump's authoritarian tendencies and intent to dominate centers of independent learning and research.


The US public doesn't seem all that enraged, however. Although there is broad public concern with the administration's cuts to federal programs, the threat to elite universities is not as contentious. It strikes me that this dearth of public outrage may be caused by these universities' business models and opaque admission criteria.

As a parent of two college-age children, I have learned that an excellent high school GPA and a respectable list of extra-curricular activities do not necessarily put you in the running for admission to top US schools.


Instead, admissions officers use a frustratingly opaque and imprecise set of yardsticks. What makes one straight-A high school student a serious Harvard contender while rending another with the same grades entirely uncompetitive? It's entirely unclear.


A few years ago, I paid for a college admissions advisor to help my daughter and me figure all this out. Even he didn't really know what the criteria were, however, and the whole thing was a waste of time and money.


And when the advisor counseled my daughter to craft an overly dramatic personal essay, she refused and insisted we terminate the relationship. I was so proud!


Luckily, both my kids resolved to eschew the US route and focus instead on Canada, where they are also citizens. There, the criteria are reasonably straightforward - GPA plus the difficulty of the courses you took in the specific area you'd like to study in.


Some Canadian universities such as the University of Victoria go so far as to guarantee specific amounts of merit-based aid to any student who rises above specific GPA numbers.


In addition to being opaque, US schools publicly boast about their rejection rates, taking pride in announcing they reject 92-96% of all applicants.


They also charge $80-$95,000 annually for tuition, room, and board. Although many students receive financial or merit-based aid, a substantial portion are forced to pay full price, or close to that.


Combine these rejection rates and prices with the frustratingly opaque rules for admission, and you get a business model and brand that all but guarantees a lack of broad public support.

This is just a theory. It will be hard to know if I'm right until Trump starts coming after public universities and community colleges. If my theory has merit, a move of that sort should provoke more of a backlash.


About James Ron

Learn more about James on his website and LinkedIn profile. To read his scholarly articles, please visit James' ResearchGate and Academia.edu profiles. To learn how other scholars have used his work in their own research, visit his Google Scholar page. You can read James' social science blog here and his personal blog here. 

 

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