One more view of the NYU orgo scandal

The takes are legion about the NYU organic chemistry professor who was fired after students complained that his class was too hard. I have my own opinion, which I will endeavor to keep to myself. Here’s the best take I’ve read, from Tressie MacMillan Cottom:

“At an expensive private university, however, students do not expect to fail out. The estimated total cost of attendance for an on- or off-campus student attending N.Y.U. over the 2022-23 school year is $83,250. Administrators at such tuition-dependent universities have a lot of incentives to make sure that their students do not fail out. That isn’t about snowflakes but about the economics of modern higher education.”

And here’s a bit of a primary source. The professor’s boss told him in an email that he (the superior) wanted to “extend a gentle but firm hand to the students and those who pay the tuition bills.” I added the emphasis.

I’ve made the point before that colleges are trying hard to earn money. This NYU episode adds an important corollary. Colleges’ goals are sometimes at odds, and they must balance tradeoffs among them. In this case, the short-term tradeoff was between academic rigor and keeping the tuition-payers happy. We know which goal prevailed.

There are conflicting goals in admission too. When colleges are choosing whom to let in, they must please coaches, alumni, professors, the people at US News and World Report who assign rankings, credit rating agencies, the development office, etc. Sometimes those people want different things. There are only so many freshman beds, so each kid admitted for the sake of constituency A precludes the admission of a kid preferred by constituency B.

Here’s what an anonymous dean of admission surveyed in 2011 had to say:

“The hardest part is that everyone wants more of something and it’s a balancing act—it’s a zero-sum game. Size is fixed, but faculty, trustees, etc. want more students of color, more athletes, more great pianists...But who (sic) will you cut out to have more of those people?”

The tradeoff between rigor and revenue, which NYU faced, shows up in admission in the tradeoff between rich kids and smart kids. Of course, this is a simplification. Some are both! But let’s imagine a stylized world where each applicant is either rich or smart.

If a college lets in only smart kids, it can’t keep the lights on. It goes out of business in short order.

If a college lets in only rich kids, in a year or two, the parents of the next crop of rich kids won’t be interested in making donations or paying tuition to a so-so institution. The rich parents will send their kids and dollars elsewhere.

So, there is some optimal allocation of rich and smart kids. At this optimal point, the rich kids’ parents’ money keeps the institution afloat and builds the labs where the smart kids commercialize nuclear fusion, cook up next-generation antibiotics, etc. The smart kids boost the college up the rankings and provide the prestige that draws in the rich parents.

Colleges have been playing this game for many rounds. They’ve had a chance to learn and tinker. I bet many of them know what that optimal point is. Relatedly, I think private-school applicants are so appealing to prestigious colleges because they sometimes allow admission offices to sidestep the tradeoff between rich and smart kids.

Of course, in real life, colleges are optimizing for more than two traits, some applicants align with more than one of those goals, and the super-selective places have huge endowments and so don’t have to operate from cash flow.

What does this mean for your kid?

Admission is about being what colleges want. Sometimes colleges have to make up their minds among conflicting strands of their self-interest.

How can we increase the odds that your child matches one of those strands of colleges’ self-interest?

Start with academics, the sine qua non of admission. That means, to the best of your child’s ability, tough classes, high grades, and high test scores.

To learn the path to those goals that entails the least hassle and wasted effort, you can register for Clarke College Insight’s online classes on academics and standardized tests.

Among modifiable variables, extracurriculars rank next. To learn the checklist of traits that make extracurriculars appeal to admissions officers, you can sign up for the online class.

If you’d like more personalized advice, tailored to your child’s goals and strengths, you can sign up for a one-on-one consultation.

P.S. I can’t help it; here’s a bit of my personal opinion on this story. The students’ petition complained, “We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class.”

If I had one of these kids standing before me, requesting my opinion (unlikely, I know!), here’s I would say. In the real world, nobody cares about the time and effort you put into something. What matters is how effectively you solve another person’s problem. That’s what people pay you for. If any of these NYU students go on to become small business owners, they’ll realize.