To increase the socioeconomic diversity of their campuses, selective colleges should create a "poverty preference" for high-achieving low-income applicants, a new report says.
The report, released on Monday by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, urges institutions to make the admissions process more equitable. The authors describe the current system as "a classic case of interest-group politics gone awry," in which poor students lack champions and face long odds of being admitted. According to this pointed critique, today’s admissions outcomes boil down to a series of "preferences" — for athletes, legacies, wealthy students, and so on — that stack the deck against the underprivileged.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Foundation-Urges-Admissions/234868