March 18, 2019--The College Retention Game

For the past week we've understandably been focusing on college admissions. 

The public is learning about how our society's ultimate expression of meritocracy, where if you have the goods, no matter your background, opportunities await, is in large part a corrupt, hypocritical scam. 

Pay-for-play in its many forms is how college admissions works when it comes to admitting students to many of the nation's elite colleges. The truth is that the process is not a competition on a level playing field where merit wins out, but a rigged system where the already successful and entitled have two legs up.

But then there is another game--how students admitted to the Ivies and similar institutions are coddled and protected even when they don't deserve it.

Allow me to illustrate by an example from my own undergraduate years at Columbia.

What did I know. I was an inexperienced, striver kid from a Brooklyn immigrant family. But I did notice that a few of my classmates, who associated with each other, had family names that were familiar.

There was Arthur MacArthur IV (the general's son), Peter Fairchild (whose family were scions of the aircraft industry), and others whose people founded some of America's most successful businesses and whose surnames revealed that they came from the world of Who's-Who.

At freshman orientation the dean welcomed us by among things indicating that now that we were Columbia Men (women were not yet admitted) the college would do all it could to help us succeed. 

He went on to tell a story about an orientation he attended at a large state university. Its dean told the assembled class, "Look to your left," which everyone did, "Now look to your right," which the freshmen did. "By this time next year, one of you will have dropped out or been expelled."

The Columbia dean continued, "Though this was that university's policy--admit many and then prune the class based on academic progress, or lack thereof--Columbia's policy was just the opposite. "We expect all of you, 100 percent of you, to thrive. And we will do what we can to help assure that."

To already cynical me this sounded like cheerleading. I intended to work hard and do well all on my own and not wind up in academic trouble.

But this was not true for all my classmates. In fact, I came to know a few, including some from prominent families (neither Peter nor Arthur, who did well), who majored more in carousing and beer drinking than literature or mathematics or sociology.

I knew one quite well. At the end of the first semester he had not completed all his courses and for the ones he did finish he earned straight Ds.

He was summoned to meet with the dean who told him though it is not unusual for freshman to fall pray to campus enticements, he needed to work harder and do better or he would find himself at the end of the academic year on probation.

Which is precisely what my friend did not do--he continued to get Ds and was as promised placed on probation.

He did not do much better during his sophomore year and once again was invited to meet with the dean, who informed him that unless he improved he would be faced with the possibility of academic dismissal.

The dean this time remind my friend that his family sent generations of their sons to Columbia and all had done well and graduated. For that reason, and because of his family's generosity to the college, he was making an exception. He would get one final chance to raise his grades.

But again my classmate failed to do so and he (and I) expected him to be expelled. 

He wasn't.

The dean one final time time told him that since he was going into his third year and that the college had a policy of not expelling students who were versions of juniors. "Versions" because he had not completed enough courses to be an actual junior. 

The dean shrugged and told him that he therefore could continue until he graduated.

I wondered about how my friend would have fared in that midwestern university we heard about at orientation. The answer is obvious. And I wondered about his family's generosity. What they must have been doing to show their "appreciation" to the dean and the college for their "understanding" treatment of the son who was expected to enter the family business after four years at Columbia. 

The answer to that is equally obvious. 

If I had thought to search, I likely would have found a lecture hall newly inscribed with his family name.