A Contentious History of Admissions Policies at American Colleges and Universities: Issues and Prospects

Abstract

Historically, American higher education has favored admitting children of affluent parents. Founded by English and Western European Christians, the earliest private colleges, among them today’s Ivy League, enrolled alumni sons. With westward expansion and the formation of public universities and colleges, policies broadened nationally to admit by examination qualified applicants, often first in their families to attend college. But beginning with Columbia University in the late 1910s, elite institutions used quotas to exclude children of Eastern and Southern European immigrants, especially academically competitive Jews. After World War II, as Americans began to welcome population diversity, colleges and universities became coeducational and increased their admission of African Americans, Asians and South Asians, Latinx/Hispanics, and Native Americans. In reaction, white parents complained that racial preferences denied their children admission. Experiencing growing numbers of Asian applicants, colleges and universities curbed their admission to give seats to alumni children and to selected racial minorities. Such admissions policies seemed to value affirmative action over meritocracy. Although narrowly tailored affirmative action policies have been upheld from Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College (2019), the issue will again go to the Supreme Court. Since the spring of 2020, the impacts of Covid-19 on college and university admissions policies and enrollments have altered plans of students and their families.