COLLEGE ADMISSIONS AND FEDERAL ANTITRUST LAW

Over the years, a number of folks have proposed ways to try to fix what many deem a flawed college admissions system. Certainly the college admissions process in America isn’t perfect — far from it. Highly selective colleges discriminate against Asian American applicants. They admit the children and grandchildren of alumni (and particularly major alumni donors) at often absurd rates. They so often claim to be need-blind when debating a student’s case for admission yet the vast majority of college supplements — which admissions officers are privy to — ask if students need financial aid. There is hypocrisy in the college admissions process. There is discrimination. And there is some real unfairness — particularly, we’d argue, for children from middle-income families.

There’s an interesting piece by Jeffrey Selingo in “The Atlantic” entitled “The Best Ways to Fix College Admissions Are Probably Illegal” that we figured we’d share with our readers. In the piece, Selingo proposes a few ideas to improve the college admissions process, to make it more equitable for all. We happen to think his ideas aren’t particularly good at all and, as his title implies, they surely run afoul of federal antitrust law. Side note: hey, but that hasn’t stopped the CEO of the lowly Independent Educational Consultants Association, Mark Sklarow, from — we believe — openly violating federal antitrust law. As the United States Department of Justice investigates the prestigious National Association for College Admission Counseling (to which Ivy Coach is a member), we invite them to turn their attention to the CEO of the IECA’s public remarks that so brazenly, we believe, highlight his organization’s failed attempts to illicitly restrain trade. But how we digress…back we go to Selingo’s ideas for fixing the college admissions system.

Selingo writes, “Plenty of ideas to fix the system—to make it more bearable for students, parents, and even colleges themselves—have been floated in recent years, including restructuring the whole process to be a somewhat randomized lottery, or implementing a matching system akin to how medical-school graduates are placed in residencies. They are promising, but they have something problematic in common: In all likelihood, they’d be illegal.” They sure would be! The matching system used to pair medical school graduates with residency programs is exempt from federal antitrust law. This federal antitrust exemption was issued in 2004. Colleges are not exempt from federal antitrust law. At the end of the day, colleges are businesses. They cannot price fix. They cannot share information on students so as to facilitate price fixing. In short, they cannot team up. So, yes, a matching system is out.

And a randomized lottery in which each college picks qualified students from a hat? Hey, let’s let Selingo shoot down his own idea. As he correctly writes, “A lottery system would also, in all likelihood, not pass muster with the Department of Justice, which enforces antitrust law, because depending on how it was administered, it likely would require colleges to share information about applicants with each other.” It’s also just plain silly, irrespective of federal antitrust law. The American Dream wasn’t built on a lottery. Our nation is a meritocracy. Merit is by no means random.

Have a proposal of your own to improve the college admissions system as we know it? Share your thoughts, your ideas, and what you ate for breakfast by posting a Comment below. We look forward to hearing from you!