The Emergence of the Fifth Wave in American Higher Education

摘要

The increasing selectivity of the top private research universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States no longer surprises anyone. Harvard, Stanford, and the rest compete on the basis of this selectivity, proudly announcing to the world that they accept a mere 4% or 5% of applicants each year. Their top positions in the US News & World Report rankings are in part a reward for this selectivity. And despite growing enrollment demand, the leading public research universities are becoming more and more selective as well. Although some selective schools go to great lengths to recruit socioeconomically dis-advantaged students, the fact remains that the scale of such efforts is negligible and admission to these elite institutions is most strongly predicted by students' so-cioeconomic status-as captured by zip code-than by any assessment of their future potential.