NASFAA Mention: Reinventing Admissions to Enhance Racial and Ethnic Equity? That's the Big Idea
"The admissions process is cumbersome, inequitable, and screwed up beyond belief. Enrollment officials often say such things at their national conferences. They wring their hands, trade advice with colleagues, and sometimes brainstorm big-picture solutions to familiar problems. And then everyone goes back home and gets buried in work," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.
"It’s no secret: Reforming a complicated system is hard. And it would be hard even if all the thousands of colleges involved in that system were (a) pretty similar, (b) not beset by intensifying enrollment challenges, and (c) in agreement about what’s really broken and how to fix it. But as long as many people believe that the admissions process isn’t fair — and it’s not — there will continue to be great interest in seeing the blueprints for Something Better.
A new set is on the way. On Monday two prominent associations announced a joint initiative to reimagine the admissions and financial-aid system. Their goal: redesign those processes to promote racial and ethnic equity in higher education. How would the processes work if enrolling more underrepresented minority students were the primary goal?
The eight-month project, financed by a grant from the Lumina Foundation, will bring together the National Association for College Admission Counseling and the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. The groups plan to form a panel of — you guessed it — thought leaders in their respective memberships, as well as policy experts, legislators, college presidents, and representatives of technology companies.
... Justin Draeger, president and chief executive of the financial-aid administrators’ group, believes that higher education’s culture can work against the goal of enrolling more underrepresented students: 'We’re enmeshed in a culture and tradition that doesn’t always align with the core objective to get more low-income people of color into college. We think about taking limited resources and allocating them in the most equitable way, but sometimes that very reasonable thought process doesn’t align with how students and families think about higher ed.'
One question Draeger hopes the panel will take up: Does higher education even need an aid application? 'We’ve relied on the same data and proxies for decades, and maybe there is a legitimate reason to continue to do so,' he said. 'But we ought to tackle the question of whether we have the policies in place for determining and defining who the neediest students are.'"
NASFAA's "Notable Headlines" section highlights media coverage of financial aid to help members stay up to date with the latest news. Articles included under the notable headlines section are not written by NASFAA, but rather by external sources. Inclusion in Today's News does not imply endorsement of the material or guarantee the accuracy of information presented.
Publication Date: 11/10/2020
