Book Review: Creating a Class
Mitchell L. Stevens. Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. 320 pp. Paperback: $22.50. ISBN: 978-0-67-403494-5
From the introduction to the very last page of Creating a Class, Mitchell L. Stevens recognizes a socioeconomic divide in access and admission to prestigious, private, higher education institutions. Moreover, Stevens argues these conditions are socially reproduced leading to the creation and recreation of a class largely made up of educated elites. Addressing these realities among others, and acknowledging the admissions obstacles for both students and institutions, Stevens’s Creating a Class is an essential read for those interested in the modern college admissions system. High school guidance counselors and college admissions officers alike might find Stevens’s work most illuminating and worthwhile, due to its overwhelming emphasis on their field. However, faculty, students, and parents might also find Stevens’s experiences quite enlightening regarding their personal investments in higher education.
Stevens’s primary objective in his eighteen-month study at a picturesque, private, liberal arts institution in the region of New England—known simply as “the College”—was to discover how admissions officers at private, liberal arts colleges make admissions decisions. Moreover, and more specifically, Stevens found himself in search of “how organizations make fine distinctions between people who are on paper quite comparable” (3). Surprised by his work, Stevens found an even more intricately woven tapestry of social reproduction at play within the culture of the American family at large. Early in his book Stevens acknowledges the exceedingly narrow and limiting nature of his study. As an associate professor of higher education at an elite research institution, Stevens’s interest is genuine and most earnest. Stevens utilized an ethnographic approach as a participant observer, working within the College’s admissions department on projects and tasks related to recruitment. His firsthand encounters guide readers through a simplified admissions process, from applicant perception to student yield, balancing the shifts of power along the way. However, the simplistic nature of his book’s format might be deceiving, for the complexity of college admissions work is far from straightforward.
Stevens’s introduction and first chapter offer engaging, conversational primers on Marx’s reproduction thesis and Weber’s transformation thesis. Stevens provides a definition of social reproduction that touches all aspects of life, from formalized schooling to life at home: “the transfer of knowledge, cultural perspective, and social position from one generation to the next” (2). This definition serves as a framework for the remainder of the book. Stevens acknowledges an underlying rationale for obtaining a college degree as a prerequisite for financial stability and, arguably, success. Stevens’s discussion on the paradox of American culture and higher education was particularly enlightening. Americans’ longing for competitive personalization in almost every area of life is contrasted by their insatiable thirst for standardization and fairness in education. It is true, American educative culture does promote equity and meritocracy, yet, as Stevens later supports, that is not how the American higher education system operates in vita reali.
Stevens takes a deeper look at the applicant perception of higher education. Admissions work is largely marked by a status war between peer institutions. Each institution must best represent their data in order to attract not only a great number of students (to ultimately reject, because rejections reflect selectiveness), but the right students. Institutions striving to boost their status among their peers must search for ways to recruit certain classes of students. Admissions offices venture into the gray area of data reporting concerning accurate and faithful numbers that represent their institution, often rounding their statistics in favorable directions. These numbers and statistics line the pages of promotional materials the College uses to better recruit quality applicants. Not only do websites, viewbooks, and other materials speak volumes to students interested in attending college, but admissions officers who travel to students’ high schools and hometowns gain significant ground in entering students’ realm of college possibilities. In fact, as Stevens goes on to say, “student recruitment is inseparable from the maintenance of interpersonal relationships” (55). The relationships extend beyond individual students to the high school guidance counselors. Unfortunately, as Stevens highlights, there is a real discrepancy regarding access to quality guidance counseling between affluent and less advantaged high schools. In modern admissions counseling, selective institutions find travel crucial for assembling quality recruiting pools. Traveling abroad opens opportunities for more and more qualified students to study far from home.
Stevens underscores the deep significance both college athletics and racial diversity have on college admissions practices. Although admissions offices and athletic coaches largely have the same macro-objective—attracting students to the university—there is some disagreement on the most important qualities student athletes must possess. It would certainly be interesting to see Stevens cite more research on the negative correlation between excellent athletic programs and academic achievement, especially at more selective private institutions. There is clearly a battle taking place to attain top status as an athletically dominant university, yet, also a risk of tainting the institution’s academic reputation. Stevens does well to emphasize and shed light on those coach–admissions relationships at the College; relationships often strained but mutually beneficial.
Racial diversity on college campuses has changed most dramatically throughout the history of higher education. There is no segment of admissions work that illuminates the socioeconomic and cultural divide quite like race. Stevens rightly recognizes the homogeneity many private institutions have exhibited for much of their history and their sudden turn toward diversity initiatives. Stevens describes this behavior, saying, “a racially varied student body is now an important index of institutional quality among colleges and universities in America” (143). As a marker of institutional quality, many institutions imitate peer institutions in promoting racial diversity on campus by seeking to better recruit from minority populations, reflective of DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) work on isomorphism in higher education organization literature. Stevens makes an important point in relation to race and college admissions: affluent white students disproportionately have more help and access regarding college admission than their minority or lower socioeconomic status student peers. There are fewer minority students at the same academic level as their more affluent peers. The paradox? Colleges battle it out to get the best academic and least advantaged students to commit to their institutions as a symbol of prestige. Although Stevens does an excellent job at discovering these inequalities, there is little in the way of suggestions for change or progress.
In his concluding chapters, Stevens illustrates a power shift between colleges and the applicants they choose to admit. That shift? Decisions and yield. Highly selective institutions that painstakingly comb through applicant files and cull together a new class suddenly must hand the power back to those same students in hopes they will actually enroll. Stevens speaks toward what might now be understood as a holistic reviewing practice—seeking to gain a better overall picture of what the applicant brings to the College aside from academics alone. This includes storytelling as a component of the student file. However, an initiative seeking to level the playing field has inversely advantaged more affluent students with impressive stories. As a result of the emphasis on storytelling, even institutions are changing the ways they speak to prospective students, focusing more on the story of student paths and less on distant facts. Stevens acknowledges finance as a significant factor in college choice, but not the only factor. In fact, Stevens suggests that choosing a college is a highly emotional undertaking, and claiming students choose a college based upon prestige alone would be a foolish assumption.
Stevens’s research approach was thoroughly considered and well-designed, albeit limited. By working within a private, liberal arts institution’s admissions office over a fairly lengthy amount of time, he gained unprecedented access into the heart of college admissions. Divided into manageable chunks, Creating a Class acts almost as an inside look and review of different segments of the admissions process in private, liberal arts colleges. The real weakness of Stevens’s work seems to be in transferring it to other institutions. By focusing on a singular private, liberal arts institution his work is very limited in what it provides to the broader system of higher education. Although many admissions practices are admittedly similar at like institutions, the ways these institutions contrast one another are certainly of further interest.
A helpful tool for seasoned admissions professionals and novice counselors alike, Creating a Class draws on what private, liberal arts colleges’ admissions offices do in order to recruit and yield desired applicant pools. Stevens’s book is absolutely worthwhile and recommended for all who find interest and have a stake in higher education admissions work. Stevens offers a tongue-in-cheek observation of American higher education: “Americans’ faith in the ability of higher education to certify youthful accomplishment is enduring and nearly universal” (250). People find higher education as a means to the good life—as a way upward; a ladder of escape from low socioeconomic status. The divides are great in higher education. Selective institutions have a great power and responsibility to bring deference and dignity to the classes of students they admit into their storied institutions.