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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