Late last month, Connecticut College announced their partnership with the newly launched Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success. Essentially a kind of reform of the college application process, the Coalition plans to introduce a number of new tools intended to simultaneously broaden and simplify the college application process, making it more accessible to a wider range of applicants.
While the Coalition asserts their goal is to improve the college application process for all students, there is considerable emphasis on making the process more accessible to students of historically underrepresented backgrounds, particularly those representing lower income households. As a member of the Coalition, Connecticut College joins over eighty institutions of higher education, both private and public, all meeting the Coalition’s definition of “affordable.” For public institutions, the Coalition defines affordability based on low in-state tuition in combination with need-based financial aid. Meanwhile, the private schools within the Coalition mirror Conn in a commitment to meeting to the full demonstrated financial need of every admitted student.
Starting this January, the Coalition will begin introducing a platform of application tools that will be available to students as early as their freshman year of high school. In making their tools available early on, the Coalition hopes to instill early college-minded thinking in all students, particularly those who may not see college as an option. Currently, the Coalition’s plans for a three-part platform which will include a student portfolio coined the “College Locker,” a collaboration platform which students can use to invite counselors, teachers and other academic advisors to aid their admissions process, as well as an application component.
While the Coalition obviously aims to improve the application process for prospective students, the new platform provides benefits on the admissions side of the process as well, particularly with regard to the Coalition’s release of the application portal. Currently, this aspect of the platform is intended to enable members of the Coalition to create a customized application. This updated form of application may enable colleges to get a better idea of an applicant as an individual, as well as how that individual will function in that specific college community. Along with improving and broadening accessibility for students, the Coalition may also help to provide a better fit between students and schools than the more generalized Common App.
While the very name of the reform itself promises only the best of intentions, the Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success has met with a surprising amount of controversy. As a member of the Coalition, Connecticut College joins a number of other prestigious institutions, including all eight Ivy League schools as well as many of our fellow NESCAC schools. While the Coalition claims that this prestigious team aims to encourage the idea that even the most esteemed institutions are a possibility to qualified students – regardless of socioeconomic status – its opponents remain unconvinced.
In a recent article for the Washington Post, Jon Boeckenstedt, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management and Marketing at DePaul University, went as far as labeling the Coalition’s purported goals as nothing more than an “attractive wrapper” under which prestigious universities are attempting to conceal a continued preference for wealthy applicants. Later in the article, Boeckenstedt continues to accuse the Coalition of ulterior motives, reducing its more esteemed members to “a group of America’s most high-profile private colleges, already obsessed with prestige, attempting to grab more.”
Contrary to Boeckenstedt’s bold allegations, Connecticut College does not appear to be using the Coalition as a veil to conceal socioeconomic greed, but rather as a tool to further promote the College’s academic and otherwise merit-based prestige. Andrew Strickler, Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, echoes this sentiment of academic “greed” over social prestige with the slightly tongue-in-cheek assertion, “I’m a selfish jerk. I want 1,900 of the best kids possible at Connecticut College. Not the wealthiest, not the poorest. Simply the best.”
Unfortunately for the Coalition’s adversaries, Conn’s partnership doesn’t appear to be based on anything more underhanded than a desire for all qualified applicants from any and all backgrounds to have the opportunity to receive a Connecticut College education. Essentially, as Strickler clarified in a less provocative statement, “Our decision to join the Coalition is primarily based on creating more options and increasing opportunity for students of underrepresented backgrounds.”
For the time being, it would appear that Conn is living up to the Coalition’s outward portrayal of integrity. However, although both Conn and the Coalition have presented attractive and credible exteriors, the controversy surrounding this new organization and the many prestigious institutions it has partnered with remains active. While it is certainly easy to take the Coalition at its idealistic face value, the surrounding controversy makes it difficult to turn a blind eye to suggestions of underlying motivations. Either way, the Coalition has surrounded itself with an impressive team. The question remains, however, of whether that team is one of prestigious institutions using their prominence to encourage a new era of economic equality in the world of elite universities, or merely one of fast talkers. •
