Washington Monthly - September/October 2023 - 45

schools. Last year, Sage Scholars, a student financial aid
company since 1995, signed up 23 private universities for a
direct admission program, including Loyola University and
Washington & Jefferson College. Also in 2022, Niche, another
private admission platform, launched a direct admission
partnership with 15 more universities.
E
xperts who study direct admission praise its potential
to simplify the college application process and help
students who traditionally have been at a disadvantage.
" We know from decades of research that the current
college search and application process is too complex, " Taylor
Odle, an assistant professor of educational policy studies
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told me, " and
that this complexity disadvantages already underserved students,
especially first-generation students, students of color,
those from low-income families, and those in rural areas. "
In a post-affirmative action world-where colleges can
no longer consider the race of applicants-direct or reverse
admission platforms may offer an additional advantage. Concourse
already kept the race of applicants hidden-as well as
their names and surnames, which also could introduce bias.
As long as the programs operate in communities that serve
students from historically underrepresented groups, colleges
will have another way to draw applicants from diverse
backgrounds. This year, Augsburg College, near Minneapolis,
experimented with admitting all students through direct admission,
a rousing success in terms of both increasing enrollment
and attracting underprivileged students. Inside Higher
Ed reported that students of color made up 73 percent of this
year's accepted class at Augsburg, up from 62 percent the prior
year, and Pell Grant recipients rose from 48 to 61 percent.
Still, Odle, Delaney, and others caution that direct admission
programs, and especially reverse admission platforms
like Concourse, are not a panacea and do have drawbacks.
These new admission systems haven't replaced the
traditional process, so if a student also wants to apply to colleges
that don't use direct admission, that's more work, not
less. The same holds true for counselors and college advisers,
who must learn to navigate Concourse and the other private
systems that have entered the burgeoning market. Although
Concourse is constantly streamlining its system to require
less and less time and effort from applicants, the emergence
of competitors means that this problem won't be going away
anytime soon.
Beyond that, Odle raised questions about which colleges
are participating in programs like Concourse. Among
other things, he wonders: Do they offer robust financial aid?
Do they have strong graduation rates? Do they serve lowincome,
first-generation, and students of color well? Do they
offer programs that are closely aligned with the local labor
market? " Connecting students to any college is generally a
positive outcome if that student's alternative was no college, "
Odle said. " But connecting students to colleges that
may not be prepared to serve them well or provide them
with upward economic mobility could be a worse-off outcome
for students. "
At least some of Greenlight Match's partner colleges do
a creditable job of serving low-income students. The graduation
rate for Pell Grant recipients at Knox College, where
Lydia enrolled in 2022, is 73 percent-just one percentage
point below the school's overall graduation rate of 74 percent,
and well above the national median of 58 percent, according
to the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard.
Median earnings for Knox graduates are an annual
$51,471, slightly above the national figure of $50,391.
Finally, on reverse admission platforms like Concourse,
what populates a student's profile-and what assumptions
will colleges make about what they see? Information that
may look like an objective measure of a student's abilities,
like standardized test scores (optional on Concourse) and
GPA (not optional), doesn't include the context of a student's
background, and thus may end up reinforcing existing
inequalities. " If the portfolios that colleges use to admit students
mainly feature GPA and standardized test scores, we
already know these pieces of information fall sharply along
racial and socioeconomic lines and have led to much of the
inequality we see today, " Odle said. So do extracurriculars;
after all, only a certain kind of family can afford lessons in
sailing or polo.
Despite those potential snags, the school that accepted
Olivia Galloway considers the experiment a success. Daemen
University's senior vice president for strategic initiatives,
Greg Nayor, told me Daemen adopted direct admission
in hopes of finding " high-achieving, underrepresented
students. " The 2022-23 school year was Daemen's first time
using Greenlight Match, so it started off slow, only admitting
and enrolling a handful of students through the program.
But Nayor said Daemen officials were convinced that
getting access to those students, who might not otherwise
hear of the school, is well worth what they pay to participate
in the program. After this test run, the university has entered
a long-term partnership with Concourse. " We feel the
investment in increasing college access for underrepresented
students is worthwhile and part of our mission, " Nayor
told me. " We are pleased with our return on our investment
for this first trial year and think we will be even more pleased
in years to come. "
Meanwhile, at Olivia's high school, many other students
have rave reviews for the program, as does LaQuanna
Sparkman, the counselor who introduced Olivia to Greenlight
Match. Sparkman told me that when her students got
an offer overnight, often they would stake out a spot outside
her office the next morning, eager to share the good news.
" It has been a joyous experience, " she said.
Jamaal Abdul-Alim serves as education editor at The Conversation.
His articles have appeared in the Washington Monthly, The Atlantic,
The Wall Street Journal, and Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, where
he worked as a senior staff writer covering federal education policy.
Washington Monthly 45
Washington Monthly - September/October 2023

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