Why Colleges are So Selective?

Joined
5/2/06
Messages
12,175
Points
273
Why is it so hard to get into college?

Private institutions that were famous for admitting anyone who could pay are now "highly selective." Public universities whose mandate was to educate all high school students with a C average now wait-list transfer students with A-minuses.

Why is the recession not affecting the college market, the way it has the housing market, consumer spending and other economic sectors? What is the supply and demand dynamic?

Why Are Colleges So 'Selective'? - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com
 
Increasing population....

People are having so many kids these days. This drives up number of applications every year, and thus drives down the acceptance rate for colleges.
 
I agree that population is a factor, but there has also been a change in culture. Education in the form of a degree has become more important and necessary. In my opinion there are jobs today that are being done by people with bachelor degrees that could just as easily be done by people without degrees but with some training.

Another thing is difficulty and studying habits. For example, I'd guess that 40 years ago there were no GRE prep courses or books, and now there are many. These prep resources allow students to do much better on the GRE, but has the difficulty of the test increased dramatically?
 
primarily for 2 reasons:

1) more kids applying - as already stated (though i don't think families are having MORE kids these days than 30 years ago). This is not only a simply matter of population growth but also the growing proportion of eligible candidates choosing college vice the farm, vocational training, military,etc.. the education market is subject to the strictures of supply/demand - Universities cant easily expand to meet demand, esp those schools landlocked in urban centers.

2) Rankings methodologies: considerable wieght assigned to selectivity, faculty to student ratio, SAT/GRE scores, etc. - rankings draw the applicant pool.
 
I agree that population is a factor, but there has also been a change in culture. Education in the form of a degree has become more important and necessary. In my opinion there are jobs today that are being done by people with bachelor degrees that could just as easily be done by people without degrees but with some training.

Another thing is difficulty and studying habits. For example, I'd guess that 40 years ago there were no GRE prep courses or books, and now there are many. These prep resources allow students to do much better on the GRE, but has the difficulty of the test increased dramatically?

There have been studies that these books don't help you that much. Unless you are an international student where english is a second language, these books have been shown to only increase your score by a small marginal amount on average. But I think the reason people are going to school is because when you can't find a job, what better thing to do then to go back to school ? I know several people doing this and I myself am prolonging my education until the market situation gets better.
 
Education is like buying a basket of options, they increase the set of decisions you can make about your career.
Basic Black Scholes tells us that in a more volatile market, the fair price of an option will go up, so we see that the market for education is functioning as we would expect.

'Price' in this context is both cash and grades.

As I have said elsewhere, education isn't just a way of moving forward, it's helps you being pushed down and out. So in the portfolio that earn your living which consists of experience, education and brains, education reduces your downside risk, and is the factor that easiest for you to upgrade.

There is a bigger factor that the job market is an order of magnitude greater than when I graduated.
In the 1980s., India, China, Indonesia, Brazil. Mexico et al simply weren't really part of the labour market. There are now more than ten times as many people, and more than ten times as many jobs.
Even though I've been doing this job for years, I still get CVs from people who have studied at places I have never heard of, and it's hard to value their education.

One effect of this is that the skilled labour market is more liquid, an employer can get work done by choosing from a wider variety of people at a wider variety of skill and cost levels. It's far from a smooth curve, but it's clear to any competent rational person that you are now in a competitive game that will only end when you retire.
The net result of globalisation has been a massive increase in average pay over the whole planet, because although the ability of a workers to exercise monopoly supply power over an employer has gone down, the increase in efficiency and therefore wealth has helped people earn more.
 
primarily for 2 reasons:

1) more kids applying - as already stated (though i don't think families are having MORE kids these days than 30 years ago). This is not only a simply matter of population growth but also the growing proportion of eligible candidates choosing college vice the farm, vocational training, military,etc.. the education market is subject to the strictures of supply/demand - Universities cant easily expand to meet demand, esp those schools landlocked in urban centers.

2) Rankings methodologies: considerable wieght assigned to selectivity, faculty to student ratio, SAT/GRE scores, etc. - rankings draw the applicant pool.

Unfortunately, supply will remain similar, while demand will never go down (at least not in the next 20 years).
 
I'm not sure supply will remain constant, but given that there are forces in both directions, I can see why coolharvard comes to that conclusion.

Western universities are under increasing financial pressure, which may well lead to a decrease in places. But there is the opportunity for them to deliver courses that are both cheaper and more popular. AKA dumber courses with more girls on them. Not all are dumber, maths can be taught relatively cheaply, and the dumbing down of CompSci courses has actually made them very cheap to deliver.
So I expect the net result of this to be more places available at most universities, especially on courses like MFEs where the marginal cost of teaching a student is very low (unlike experimental sciences), but the price is high.
Some may cut numbers to hold quality, but that's a hard line to hold. My old school's Chemistry department tried that, it is not there anymore...

The silent giant here is India.
Although the average Indian education is little better than that of an American evangelical, their IITs are already good and with an increasing % of excellent.
Typically they already teach in English, indeed a good number speak in a form of BBC English which is posher than mine.

Also, they do first world stuff like build nuclear reactors and missions to the Moon, they have a growing manufacturing sector thirsty for engineers and the Indian software sector is truly vast as well. Superstition in the USA means that medical research is moving to places that are both cheaper, and less likely to see biologists as witches.
In Indian culture, scientists are typically seen as wise and useful, in western media we are socially dysfunctional and evil.

But Indian academics are paid at a level that simply would not allow you to live in a Western country, and other resources are similarly cheap.
Already you can commission essays and coursework to be done by Indians, it's a very small step to have them as your personal tutor, who for the cost of a cheap textbook will patiently work through something hard with you until you get it right.

One day, soon, the best place on Earth, regardless of price to study some subjects will be in India, but it will also be cheaper than the worst Western place to study them.

Being a vast country, India can easily handle a serious number of students, and doesn't have the newly demented policies on harassing students seen in many Western countries.

India can do the maths of finance right now, and it would not be too hard to get some well known lecturers and practitioners. An obvious deal is to offer an older one a nice house with staff and access to really rather good affordable medical care, another area which is bringing money into India.

So compelling is the case for this, that I must question my own judgement, since my model cannot explain why it hasn't happened already.
 
The reason that it hasn't happened yet is that although India is in some aspects a first world country, it is still predominantly third world. In many places it is still dirty (no roads/hot water/sanitation!) and poor.
 
Back
Top Bottom