Fairness and Naiveté

I had manifestations of a head cold last night.  My throat was sore.  I've done some things to alleviate that symptom this morning, but I'm still more crabby than usual. So I may be blunter in this piece than I otherwise would be.

People who have been decrying legacy admits in college admission should consider a few counterfactuals to test the consistency of their own beliefs.

1.  This a a world where there are no alumni contributions and indeed no gifts to the institution at all from outside sources.  Tuition is a "full price" value to cover both operating and capital costs of the institution.  If you did a ballpark estimate of that number, it might be a useful calculation to perform.  The number I suggest has no basis in reality, it is just easy to remember, $100,000 a year, or roughly double the current tuition at the ritzy schools.  (This does not include room and board, nor other costs, such as textbooks.)

Now imagine into this world you introduce a second category of student, one with very wealthy parents.  The school admits these other students at a price of $1,000,000 a year and does so  specifically so it can lower the tuition some for the other students.  Once admitted, the students are to be treated equally regardless of the category. 

Would the students in the first category (and their parents) favor this move or not?  Does it matter for answering that question how much their tuition goes down?  Does it matter whether the overall number of students goes up so the number of those admitted in the first category stays the same?

2.  This is a a different world where each student signs a lifetime contract and agrees to make an alumni gift each year, with the magnitude determined by income, family status, health and well being, and a variety of other factors.  In this other world, then with a sufficiently large alumni base the revenue from these gifts could be forecasted with good accuracy, so some of it could be used to cover operating costs of the institution, including reducing tuition or even grantig full scholarships to low income students.   But now consider alumni who themselves don't have children and have largely lost connection with their college classmates.  Would they breach this contract, because they don't see the benefit from sticking to it?

Now let's imagine modifying this world some by making it an implicit contract (that means it is self-enforcing) rather than a legally binding contract.  What is it that makes alumni willing to make their  contributions.  Does having a winning football or basketball team matter?  Does living within the vicinity of campus and making an annual trek to campus matter?

3.  In this third world let's consider that a "no frills" university is started which does both open enrollment and offers free tuition.  It is funded entirely out of tax dollars, a mixture of state and federal funding.  Do any of the families who had sent their kids to ritzy institutions in the past now send their younger offspring to this no frills university, so they can save on the tuition payment?  Or do they continue to shell out the bucks for tuition at their ritzy institutions, because they still consider it a good deal giving the chances for a high lifetime income?

Further, imagine this happens for a while and that largely the well off families opt out of the no frills university.  They start to be grumpy from having to pay taxes to support an institution from which they get no benefit.  Won't the no frills institution start to experience budget cuts as a consequence?

4.  In this world there are no private universities and colleges.  They are all public.  This is a world that applies the principle of Medicare for all to Higher Education.   What then governs curricula at particular institutions?  Likewise, what then governs admissions?  Do we end up with homogeneity of institutions or are they tiered, more or less according to selectivity, as they currently are.  If there is this tiering, do the more elite institutions claim more resources on a per student basis?

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Fairness is an aspiration.  In college admissions, naiveté is to assume that fairness can be fully maintained without any consideration for the revenue side of the institution.  Bringing in the revenue side, the issues become messier.  So be it, for the issues are messy.  Ignoring them may be satisfying near term.  But, invariably, they will come back to bite you when the fuller picture imposes itself.