Economic Scene: Top Colleges, Largely for the Elite

Like it or not, these colleges have outsize influence on American society. So their admissions policies don’t matter just to high school seniors; they’re a matter of national interest.

More than seven years ago, a 44-year-old political scientist named Anthony Marx became the president of Amherst College, in western Massachusetts, and set out to change its admissions policies. Mr. Marx argued that elite colleges were neither as good nor as meritocratic as they could be, because they mostly overlooked lower-income students.

For all of the other ways that top colleges had become diverse, their student bodies remained shockingly affluent. At the University of Michigan, more entering freshmen in 2003 came from families earning at least $200,000 a year than came from the entire bottom half of the income distribution. At some private colleges, the numbers were even more extreme.

In his 2003 inaugural address, Mr. Marx — quoting from a speech President John F. Kennedy had given at Amherst — asked, “What good is a private college unless it is serving a great national purpose?”

On Sunday, Mr. Marx presided over his final Amherst graduation. This summer, he will become head of the New York Public Library. And he can point to some impressive successes at Amherst.

More than 22 percent of students now receive federal Pell Grants (a rough approximation of how many are in the bottom half of the nation’s income distribution). In 2005, only 13 percent did. Over the same period, other elite colleges have also been doing more to recruit low- and middle-income students, and they have made some progress.

It is tempting, then, to point to all these changes and proclaim that elite higher education is at long last a meritocracy. But Mr. Marx doesn’t buy it. If anything, he worries, the progress has the potential to distract people from how troubling the situation remains.

When we spoke recently, he mentioned a Georgetown University study of the class of 2010 at the country’s 193 most selective colleges. As entering freshmen, only 15 percent of students came from the bottom half of the income distribution. Sixty-seven percent came from the highest-earning fourth of the distribution. These statistics mean that on many campuses affluent students outnumber middle-class students.

“We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,” Mr. Marx says. “Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.”

I think Amherst has created a model for attracting talented low- and middle-income students that other colleges can copy. It borrows, in part, from the University of California, which is by far the most economically diverse top university system in the country. But before we get to the details, I want to address a question that often comes up in this discussion:

Does more economic diversity necessarily mean lower admissions standards?

No, it does not.

The truth is that many of the most capable low- and middle-income students attend community colleges or less selective four-year colleges close to their home. Doing so makes them less likely to graduate from college at all, research has shown. Incredibly, only 44 percent of low-income high school seniors with high standardized test scores enroll in a four-year college, according to a Century Foundation report — compared with about 50 percent of high-income seniors who have average test scores.

“The extent of wasted human capital,” wrote the report’s authors, Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, “is phenomenal.”

This comparison understates the problem, too, because SAT scores are hardly a pure measure of merit. Well-off students often receive SAT coaching and take the test more than once, Mr. Marx notes, and top colleges reward them for doing both. Colleges also reward students for overseas travel and elaborate community service projects. “Colleges don’t recognize, in the same way, if you work at the neighborhood 7-Eleven to support your family,” he adds.

Several years ago, William Bowen, a former president of Princeton, and two other researchers found that top colleges gave no admissions advantage to low-income students, despite claims to the contrary. Children of alumni received an advantage. Minorities (except Asians) and athletes received an even bigger advantage. But all else equal, a low-income applicant was no more likely to get in than a high-income applicant with the same SAT score. It’s pretty hard to call that meritocracy.

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Amherst has shown that building a better meritocracy is possible, by doing, as Mr. Marx says, “everything we can think of.”

E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com; twitter.com/DLeonhardt

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Hopes Rise in South as Waters Do Not

Flood-estimate maps showed water reaching depths of up to 20 feet and pooling out into every part of the floodway within eight days.

A week and a half later, those maps appear to have been a bit pessimistic. The water has taken an unexpected trajectory as it moves out into the floodway, and some areas will probably be spared significant flooding. The flooding has also moved more slowly than anticipated, forcing local officials to recalibrate by the day.

Mandatory evacuation orders have been lifted and then reinstated in some areas, and lifted altogether in others. At least one shelter has closed for lack of evacuees.

The promising outlook does not mean that all is clear. The water is rising, if slowly, and in some places is spreading over roads and moving toward homes. Backwater flooding, which occurs when tributaries, bayous and small bodies of water overflow, is a concern throughout the basin, and there is still an enormous amount of water that must funnel out into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening Morgan City and the other communities at the basin’s spout.

A barge that was sunk in a bayou just outside of Morgan City in an effort to protect populated areas from an influx of backwater appears to be working for the most part, said Bill Pecoraro, a member of the Morgan City port commission.

But the crest of the flood is not expected to reach Morgan City until Monday, and water will stay high for some time. It remains to be seen how well the barge, a temporary fix, will hold up over several weeks, Mr. Pecoraro said.

He added, however, that it appeared the flooding would not be as significant as some had feared. “It looks like it’s going to be anticlimactic,” he said.

It is too early to tell with any certainty why the flood projections in south Louisiana have diverged with reality, officials said.

“There’s probably not going to be one definitive answer to that,” said Jeff Graschel, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service.

But the outlook was improving even before the spillway, about an hour north of Baton Rouge, was put into use. While officials with the United States Army Corps of Engineers at one point anticipated having to send water out through the spillway at 300,000 cubic feet per second, or half its capacity, that projection was cut in half by the time the first gate on the spillway was opened.

The water is currently gushing out at 114,000 cubic feet per second, less than a quarter of capacity, and corps officials do not expect to use any more gates than the 17 that are now open. They might start closing gates in as soon as a week, in the same gradual manner as they were opened.

The floodwaters were originally expected to fill up the Atchafalaya River Basin within several days, curling around levees and threatening towns like Krotz Springs and Melville that lie in the western part of the basin.

But, Charles Shadie, the head of water control for the Mississippi Valley Division of the corps, said “the flows tend to be hugging the eastern side of the floodway.”

St. Landry Parish, which sits due west of Morganza, rescinded a mandatory evacuation order for certain areas on Monday, though a voluntary order was still in effect. With all these changing orders, residents are not entirely sure what to do.

“We’re frustrated, like many of the citizens here, with not being able to get a definite timeline,” said Lisa Vidrine, the director of St. Landry Parish’s Department of Emergency Preparedness.

Mr. Graschel explained that the flooding models were based on the last time — the only time — the Morganza spillway was opened, in 1973. There are a number of reasons the comparison is not perfect, he said.

In 1973, the floodway had already been pounded by heavy rainfall when the spillway was opened. As a result, the Atchafalaya River was running high, soils were saturated and pools and other potential water storage areas were full. The spillway itself was opened much more quickly in 1973, as opposed to the gradual opening that took place this month.

“It’s kind of comparing apples to oranges,” Mr. Graschel said.

Residents in the floodway have been trying to adjust.

“It’s sort of yo-yo living,” said Charlene Guidry, 57, who has left her riverfront house in Butte La Rose. A mandatory evacuation order was declared for Butte La Rose last week, then was lifted, then went into effect again on Tuesday at noon.

“It gets a little frustrating,” Ms. Guidry said. But, she added, better to leave and have nothing happen than to stay and experience the worst.

“When you look at people in Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., we’ve got nothing to complain about,” she said.

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Ahmadinejad Backs Out of Key Role at OPEC

Mr. Ahmadinejad had announced nine days earlier that he would assume the position of oil minister on a caretaker basis in time to attend the OPEC meeting to press for higher oil prices. Now that a lower level minister will take the podium, most energy experts say the meeting is unlikely to produce any sudden shifts in OPEC pricing or production policy.

The move by Mr. Ahmadinejad to take over the oil ministry and project himself on the world stage at the June 8 meeting in Vienna was seen as the latest skirmish in a confrontation with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that surfaced a month ago and put a sharp public focus on the widening cracks within Iran’s ruling elite. The reversal suggested that his ability to exert independent power in either domestic or foreign affairs is diminishing.

“The leader has drawn a bright red line around Ahmadinejad’s continued power grabs,” said Cliff Kupchan, a former State Department official who is now an Iran expert at Eurasia Group, a consultancy. “Ahmadinejad has been severely weakened.”

A senior oil ministry official, Shojaoddin Bazargani, was quoted by the official Islamic Republic News Agency on Monday as saying that Mr. Ahmadinejad had made “his own decision and will appoint one of his cabinet ministers to attend the meeting.” A Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed the report on Tuesday, putting to rest days of conflicting accounts on whether Mr. Ahmadinejad would be attending the OPEC conference.

Iran experts say that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s faction has been weakened as parliamentary elections approach next year, and that a more pliant figure would likely be favored by conservative religious leaders for the next presidential election in 2013.

The intrigue surrounding Mr. Ahmadinejad’s political position deepened Tuesday when a mysterious explosion jolted Iran’s largest oil refinery just as he was scheduled to arrive for the inauguration of an expansion project. At least 20 people were injured in the blast, which Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency attributed to a gas leak.

Mr. Ahmadinejad went ahead with a nationally broadcast speech from the facility.

The power struggle broke out in the open last month when Mr. Ahmadinejad dismissed Heydar Moslehi, the chief of the intelligence ministry. Ayatollah Khamenei reversed the decision, a sign that he would retain control over the powerful ministry.

Two weeks ago Mr. Ahmadinejad appeared to make another move to consolidate power by firing three ministers in a cabinet streamlining. But last weekend the Guardian Council, a powerful body of clerics and jurists responsible for upholding the constitution, ruled that the president had overstepped his authority.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s aides have insisted so far that he is retaining his additional post as oil minister, but his decision not to travel to the OPEC meeting suggests that he is no more than a caretaker of the oil ministry, which is responsible for more than three-quarters of the country’s revenue.

Iran experts say that while he is wounded politically, Mr. Ahmadinejad is still powerful and likely to challenge Ayatollah Khamenei again.

“I don’t see him as being on the ropes,” said Jamie Webster, a Middle East expert at PFC Energy, a consultancy. He noted that while Ayatollah Khamenei has the power to dismiss Mr. Ahmadinejad, the president retains support among many rural and poor Iranians. A shift in government fuel and food subsidies late last year protected the rural poor from costs that have been otherwise borne by the urban middle class.

Iran holds OPEC’s 12-nation rotating presidency, a position that normally means that the country’s oil minister delivers the opening remarks and presides over the proceedings.

With tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia already heightened by the Saudi troop deployment in Bahrain to help repress mainly Shiite demonstrators, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s presence at the meeting would have almost certainly threatened to cause verbal hostilities and disrupt meaningful policy planning, global petroleum experts said.

“Ahmadinejad’s absence leaves Saudi Arabia free to conduct the agenda as it sees fit,” Mr. Kupchan said, “without the distraction of this spotlight-grabbing leader.”

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Democrat Wins G.O.P. Seat; Rebuke Seen to Medicare Plan

The results set off elation among Democrats and soul-searching among Republicans, who questioned whether the party should rethink its commitment to the Medicare plan, which appears to have become a liability as 2012 elections loom.

Two months ago, the Democrat, Kathy Hochul, was considered an all-but-certain loser in the race against Jane Corwin. But Ms. Hochul seized on her Republican rival’s embrace of the proposal from Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, to overhaul Medicare, and she never let up.

Voters, who turned out in strikingly large numbers for a special election, said they trusted Ms. Hochul, the county clerk of Erie County, to protect Medicare.

“I have almost always voted the party line,” said Gloria Bolender, a Republican from Clarence who is caring for her 80-year-old mother. “This is the second time in my life I’ve voted against my party.”

Pat Gillick, a Republican from East Amherst, who also cast a ballot for Ms. Hochul, said, “The privatization of Medicare scares me.”

The district, which stretches from Buffalo to Rochester, has been in Republican hands for four decades, producing influential Republican figures like Representative Jack Kemp. The campaign drew intense interest, with both major parties in Washington and their allies flooding the district with radio and television advertising. Total spending exceeded $6 million.

On Tuesday, Republicans were already debating the factors that shaped the outcome of the race. The mood inside a meeting of the House Republican caucus in the Capitol was anxious, and some members suggested that it would be oversimplifying to attribute the results to one cause.

Some said Ms. Corwin proved a less nimble and ultimately less appealing candidate than Ms. Hochul, who was an energetic campaigner and seemed to connect with audiences on the trail.

So, when Medicare erupted as a driving issue in the race, Ms. Corwin, a wealthy former Wall Street analyst, was knocked off balance and struggled to respond.

In the closing hours of the race, Ms. Corwin admitted as much, saying about her rival’s attacks: “When she started making these comments, I thought, ‘This is so outrageous no one would ever believe it.’ Apparently some people did.”

Others cited the presence of a third candidate, Jack Davis, who ran on the Tea Party line after failing to win the Republican nomination. Mr. Davis not only drew conservative support away from Ms. Corwin, but also turned his aggressive attacks on her in the end, contributing to her negative numbers.

And Ms. Hochul seemed genuinely well-liked by the public. As the clerk of Erie County, she oversees the autos bureaus, which issue driver’s licenses; she became more prominent in 2008 when she challenged former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to issue licenses to illegal immigrants.

“I remember when she was in the auto bureau in Buffalo, she did a lot with the license plates,” said Jim Van Wagner, a Republican and former auto worker from Albion, adding: She’s a good one.”

Still, given the makeup of the district, one of four in the state that John McCain carried in 2008, Republicans said they needed to understand if they had misread the public.

“It’s a Republican district with a solid Republican candidate,” said Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island. “What went wrong? We definitely have to determine the extent to which the Medicare issue hurt us.”

The seat became vacant in February when Representative Christopher Lee, a Republican, abruptly resigned after he e-mailed a shirtless photo of himself to a woman and it was published on the Internet.

Top Republicans, including House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and the majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, traveled to the district to provide support to Ms. Corwin. At the same time, the national party and its allies, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a group tied to the Republican strategist Karl Rove, jumped in, spending at least $1.1 million on radio and television ads supporting Ms. Corwin.

Democrats brought out their heavy hitters too, including Bill Clinton, who recorded a phone message that reached homes throughout district; and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, who sent out fund-raising solicitations casting the race as an opportunity for Democrats to win in the backyard of Republicans.

The race also marked the debut of House Majority PAC, a group recently established by Democratic strategists as a counterbalance to the conservative organizations that helped Republicans make significant gains in the 2010 elections. House Majority PAC spent nearly $400,000 on advertising in the race.

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Tornadoes Strike in Oklahoma and Texas

An official searched for a missing child near a lakeshore after a tornado ripped through the Falcon Lake area in Piedmont, Okla., on Tuesday.

A series of tornadoes struck central Oklahoma on Tuesday, wiping out homes and businesses and killing at least four people. Officials said the number could rise as search and rescue teams started to fan out across a state already battered by storms over the weekend.

A half-mile-wide tornado moving towards Piedmont, Okla., on Tuesday.

The largest and most severe of the tornadoes struck around midday, touching down in Caddo County and then sweeping from the southwest to northeast corners of Canadian County, where it devastated El Reno, a town of 15,000 people about 25 miles west of downtown Oklahoma City.

Cherokee Ballard, a spokeswoman for the state medical examiner, said four people had died in Canadian County, where a weather-monitoring site recorded winds of 151 miles per hour, The Associated Press reported.

At least 60 people were reported injured across central Oklahoma, many along the Interstate 40 corridor that runs past El Reno.

The tornado left a trail of shredded and overturned cars along I-40, destroyed livestock, set off a gas line explosion and spurred people across El Reno to evacuate their homes. Amy Brandley, the Canadian County flood plain manager, said emergency crews had only just begun to assess the damage.

“Our county commissioner’s crews are out with heavy equipment clearing roads right now so search and rescues can take place,” she said.

The tornado that struck in El Reno was one of several twisters across the state on Tuesday. By 8 p.m., the National Weather Service had tornado watches in effect across 11 counties and was warning that “supercells,” which can spawn some of the most violent twisters, had developed across the central part of the state and were moving eastward. The agency posted an urgent alert on its Web site predicting an “outbreak of strong tornadoes” throughout late Tuesday.

“Plan now where you will seek shelter,” the notice advised.

In Kansas, the police said two people died when high winds threw a tree into their van around 6 p.m. near St. John, about 100 miles west of Wichita, The A.P. reported.

The news agency said that funnel clouds were reported across the northern suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth around sundown Tuesday, with brief tornado touchdowns in Corinth, Saginaw and Bedford.

Other brief tornadoes were reported near Springtown and Azle, just northwest of Fort Worth, and near Muenster, 65 miles north of Fort Worth. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Even the National Weather Service was not immune from the danger. Earlier in the day its Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., about 20 miles south of downtown Oklahoma City, had to be evacuated as one of the day’s tornadoes approached.

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