Last week Duke University’s student newspaper, The Chronicle, reported that Duke just admitted 50 students off its waitlist. The move comes two months after Duke declared the waitlist closed back in June and less than two weeks before the August 16 move-in date for freshmen.
Duke’s interim dean of undergraduate admissions told The Chronicle that the decision to reopen the waitlist was made to grow the size of the freshman class from 1720 to 1750. She also indicated that the move was not based on worry about a decline in international student enrollment.
Duke is apparently not alone in turning its waitlist into a latelist. In a recent post on LinkedIn, author Jeff Selingo named Harvard, Stanford, and Rice as other elite universities which have recently admitted students off waitlists.
Duke’s move, while apparently unprecedented, is not all that surprising. There has been speculation dating back to the spring that there would be far more waitlist activity this admission cycle. These are fraught and unsettling times for higher education, with government attacks on research funding for universities and the number of international students on college campuses. In normal times places like the Ivies and Duke are relatively immune from the challenges faced by most institutions in most years. These, of course, are not normal times. Yesterday the Chronicle of Higher Education questioned whether two of the historical strengths of the Ivy-plus research universities, access to federal research funding and uber-selective admission, are now weaknesses.
Duke’s action raises some interesting questions. Is it ok to take students off a waitlist this late in the admission cycle? Is Duke engaging in a form of poaching, recruiting students already committed to or enrolled at another institution? Duke certainly has the right to reopen the waitlist, but does that make it the right thing to do?
First of all, Duke has not broken any rules, because there are none. The National Association for College Admission Counseling’s ethical standards are now best practices rather than required for NACAC members. That change came about after NACAC entered into a consent decree with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. One of the provisions in the since-renamed Code of Ethics and Professional Practices that aroused scrutiny from the DOJ prohibited poaching students after May 1.
I have often used a quote generally attributed to Immanuel Kant as a definition of ethics, “Ethics begins where self-interest ends.” (I say “generally” attributed to Kant because I have googled the quote before and found it attributed to me.) Ignoring the origins of the quote, I think it’s a useful definition and true to Kant.
It seems clear that Duke’s decision to reopen the waitlist this late in the summer is motivated by financial self-interest. Earlier this year, it instituted a hiring freeze, and this summer nearly 600 staff members have taken voluntary buyouts to help lower expenses. Involuntary reductions may be soon to follow. Given Duke’s sticker price of just over $92,000, adding 50 students brings in $4-5 million in last minute revenue.
Just because Duke is acting out of self-interest doesn’t necessarily mean it is acting unethically. The revenue serves an ethical purpose if it benefits students or saves jobs. If ethics begins where self-interest ends, then it can be argued that at least some decisions based on self-interest exist outside the realm of ethics. There also happens to be an ethical theory, ethical egoism, that argues that what is ethical is what produces the most good for you. That sounds a lot like a justification for self-interest.
There are at least several parts of this story with ethical ramifications. One is admitting students off the waitlist after previously announcing that there would be no more waitlist action. That change of heart/change of policy could be construed as reneging on a promise, although whether closing the waitlist constitutes a promise is debatable.
For Kant keeping a promise is a paradigmatic act, ethically important even when inconvenient or not in one’s self-interest. Keeping promises is essential to establishing truthfulness and trustworthiness, two values that seem old-fashioned if not extinct in today’s political climate.
Duke’s late waitlist reversal runs the risk of appearing desperate. Many years ago I had just been hired as Director of Admission at a small independent school. Two weeks before the start of school, enrollment had not hit even the minimal budget predictions, and some board members wanted me to begin cold-calling prospective families. I refused, stating that once word got out that we were desperate we would never recover. I somehow kept my new job. The reality is that Duke’s brand won’t be damaged by admitting 50 students off the waitlist two weeks before move-in day. Only a losing basketball team could do that.
What about the timing of Duke’s decision? Students were contacted on July 29 and given 24 hours to reply that they wished to be considered, and those admitted were given until August 4 to deposit. Students “dying for Duke” were probably not bothered by the quick turnaround time, but is that timetable reasonable? Ethics is about ideals, about how we should act. Admitting students off the waitlist at the last minute and giving them almost no time to decide in no way represents how college admission should work. Even for those students overjoyed to get the admission offer, the onboarding process for Duke is compressed, with housing options and course registration limited.
Do colleges have ethical responsibilities not only to students but also to other institutions? Like it or not, there is a pecking order in higher education, and the decisions made by elite institutions have ramifications that are both wide and deep. It has been said that when Harvard itches, everyone scratches.
When an institution like Duke goes to its waitlist, it starts a chain reaction affecting other colleges and universities. I remember the Dean of Admission at a public Ivy, upon hearing rumors that a peer institution might be going to its waitlist, state that she needed to go to the waitlist earlier, anticipating summer melt. June summer melt is bad enough, but August summer melt leaves damage that is too late to mitigate.
Does Duke’s use of the waitlist constitute poaching? Admitting students off a waitlist was always a recognized exception to the prohibition on poaching students after May 1. But it is one thing to be offered a spot off a waitlist in May or June, and another in July/August. Poaching is usually associated with offering “merit” scholarships or other inducements. Is Duke introducing a new kind of poaching, offering as bait prestige rather than money? Is one any better than the other?
It can certainly be argued that Duke’s action is not the new normal but an anomaly, a response to exigent circumstances and dark threats to higher education and American society. I hope that’s the case. Our response to unlawful and unethical policies shouldn’t be as distasteful as the policies themselves.