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It has been almost two years since the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, under pressure by the Department of Justice, removed several admissions standards from its Code of Ethics and Professional Practices (CEPP). What was once a hot topic for higher education administrators, researchers, policy makers and students has fallen by the wayside. While the damage from this episode has not been fully realized, the time to renew the effort to reinstate gutted standards is now.
How Did We Get Here?
The legal challenge started in early 2018, when the DOJ requested that NACAC provide drafts of the new ethics codes. The DOJ focused its investigation on whether these admissions guidelines violated antitrust laws. Specifically, it was concerned with three provisions that limited member institutions from offering incentives to applicants to apply early, encouraging applicants to commit before they had ample time to consider the offer and recruiting transfer students who were already enrolled elsewhere.
NACAC was unable to combat the legal challenge and ultimately folded to the DOJ’s wishes. On Dec. 12, 2019, the DOJ and NACAC both released statements about their agreement. The DOJ “filed a civil lawsuit against the NACAC … and simultaneously filed a proposed consent decree with [them],” and, per their arrangement, NACAC voted 211 to 3 to remove these three provisions from the CEPP.
Why Did the DOJ Care About College Admissions?
According to the DOJ, this antitrust lawsuit was about ensuring a competitive market for students. But what is the underlying logic?
In a perfectly competitive market, firms will lower their selling price to convince consumers to buy their product over a rival’s.
Applying this to high school applicants, removing anticompetitive barriers mentioned by the DOJ would force colleges to provide the best deal to incentivize students to attend their institution. In theory, this means that students would have the most possible choices at the least possible cost that the market could provide.
And who wouldn’t want this for their student, especially in light of the rising costs of college tuition and the increased competition for admissions among elite colleges and universities?
Does ‘Free Market’ Competition Lower Costs?
A major issue with the DOJ’s logic is that public nonprofit institutions are not private firms and, therefore, are constrained in their ability to set individual rates. Tuition rates are often set by a governing board appointed or elected by the governor and/or a legislative body. Institutions use certain mechanisms such as partial or full tuition waivers and merit-based aid to incentivize students to enroll. Still, these funds seem to be ever shrinking in light of declining state appropriations since the Great Recession and austerity measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Given these tuition-setting constraints and financial pressures, it is not feasible to assume that the DOJ’s investigation can possibly move the needle in a significant way when it comes to lowering tuition and costs. Instead, what happens is that public nonprofit institutions must spend more money recruiting and enrolling students.
Prior to 2019, there was already concern about increasing marketing budgets in higher education. For example, one study found that paid advertisements for higher education “reached an all-time high of $1.65 billion in 2016.” Students now expect personalized letters, constant communication, college swag and special visits, all of which cost the institution more.
Instead of driving costs down, removing the CEPP measures forced institutions to focus more on marketing to attract students. Without new or increased revenues, these costs will certainly be passed onto students in the form of increased tuition and fees.
What About Current College Students?
My first experience seeing CEPP changes in action was in April 2018 while working as an admissions officer at the University of Georgia. An intern called me over to her computer, and said, “I just received an email inviting me to transfer to Regional In-state University. The email says, ‘It’s Never Too Late to Transfer.’”
The only problem? She was six weeks from graduating—the first in her family to do so.
This incident was made possible by removing standards that protected undergraduate students from unsolicited recruitment efforts. Had she transferred to Regional In-State University, she would have taken longer to graduate and would have had to retake a certain number of courses to complete the institution’s individual requirements.
This transaction would not have benefited the student, and transferring would have resulted in significant loss of time and money. In fact, the only entity that it did serve was the soliciting university that encouraged the student to make a poor decision.
Instead of increasing student choice and opportunity to currently enrolled students, the DOJ’s actions encouraged public nonprofit institutions to poach already enrolled students.
What About Current High School Students?
When I was in high school, I understood that there were deadlines for applying to college, committing to attend and signing up for orientation. My major concern was sending off applications and then making a decision. On May 1, I knew where I was going—no “kicking the tires.”
Now, students who already experience the highest levels of anxiety of any generation are left pondering their decisions not only through the summer after graduating high school, but also up to the day they graduate college! Jim Jump, a director of college counseling at a high school in Virginia and an Inside Higher Ed contributor, provided an example in his own article about how the CEPP changes are impacted one of his own students’ ability to commit, and stay committed, to attending an institution.
Still, one of the most glaring issues with the CEPP changes is that it benefits those from high-income families at the expense of others. According to a Forbes article, students from wealthier families, who are less price sensitive to tuition, are best situated to reap the benefits of early action incentives.
A Perfect Storm Is Brewing
Changes to the CEPP are problematic, and their consequences do not exist in a vacuum.
There seems to be no end to the rising cost of attendance. This has real impacts on the growing wealth gap between students from high- and low-income families in higher education. Not to mention that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that low-income and at-risk students are less likely to attend college now due to financial concerns and costs. This alone will likely create ripples in the financial health of colleges across the nation.
Fundamentally, colleges depend on students to enroll and pay tuition. Dating back to the late ’90s, too many colleges took for granted that each year the number of high school seniors would be greater than the year before. I caution everyone to consider that this trend is over. According to WICHE’s “Knocking at the College Door” report, “the number of high school graduates is expected to peak in the mid-2020s before entering a period of modest decline through the end of the projections in 2037.” This means that institutions will have to compete even more for a reduced pool of applicants.
When you take all this together, colleges are facing rising costs and a declining pool of prospective applicants. Most institutions cannot afford to miss filling every seat in their class and now must compete to recruit and retain students in ways that they have not before. We are likely at the precipice of a new era of inflated marketing and recruiting costs at colleges that, through the need to survive, will fill their seats by any means necessary. And it is highly unlikely that those without means will be the beneficiaries of new early-action admissions incentives or transfer offers. On the contrary, they will be burdened with the transferred costs associated with increased competition.
It is not too late to take up the cause of reinstating the gutted CEPP provisions. The now-deleted CEPP provisions served a clear purpose that provided some protection to public nonprofit institutions from wasteful spending on recruitment. They also protected students from predatory admissions practices. Perhaps, most importantly, they provided an outward acknowledgment to everyone that college admission is not simply a marketing gimmick whose goal is to cater to those who can afford to pay.
