October 23, 2024
​
Economics of Higher Education
Zach Bleemer
Professor of Economics, Princeton University

Micky Weyeneth, introducer, and Zach Bleemer

​Minutes of the Seventh Meeting of the 83rd Year

George Bustin, Old Guard President, called the meeting to order and presided.  Frances Slade led the invocation.  Madelaine Shellaby read the minutes of the prior October 16 meeting.  The attendance at Springdale Golf Club was 126.  There were five signed-in guests: Henry Farber (guest of Mickey Weyeneth), Jon Hlaftner (guest of Herb Kaufman), Dr. Jay Kuris and Dr. Anders Boss (guests of Ricardo Fernandez) and John Fleming (guest of Joan Fleming). George pointed out to attendees the modified parking rules (Goldman Lane is recommended and only the wider part of Springdale Road). Finally, George reminded attendees about next week’s talk by James Hockenberry.

Mickey Weyeneth introduced the speaker, Professor Zach Bleemer, assistant professor of economics at Princeton University and faculty associate of the Opportunity Insights and the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley. Professor Bleemer is a labor economist studying the allocative efficiency and economic mobility ramifications of educational meritocracy. He is also co-author of the 2023 book Metrics that Matter: Counting What’s Really Important to College Students. This book is intended to arm aspiring college students with more relevant metrics to direct where they should apply to college.

Professor Bleemer began with charts containing average annual expenditure data per student in both the instructional and student services categories, over a thirty-year timeframe (1990 through the present). All charts used in this presentation contained data from his lengthy study of post-secondary institutions in the state of California, where Bleemer had obtained his Ph.D. In the state of California, per the 1960 state Master Plan, based on the “merit” of applying high school students, there is the community college system at the bottom, then the state college system in the middle, followed by the ten-strong University campuses, with UC Berkeley at the top. In addition, these charts also contained data from Ivy-plus institutions, including Princeton University.

There was a wide range of instructional expenditures, with Ivy-plus and top tier California universities spending the most. By contrast, student services spending was fairly flat across the California post-secondary schools, with only the Ivy-plus category showing a very notable difference (multiplier greater than two). From an instructional perspective, the most talented high school students are receiving the most, per the original Master Plan. But in today’s world, one questions whether the application of such meritocracy is unfair to so-called “low-opportunity” students. In addition, such a standard is wasteful, and surely may not identify students who would most benefit from extra educational resources. This has been labelled the Meritocracy Trap. He also referenced several recent books on this topic.

Dr. Bleemer then discussed newer substitutes for meritocracy and related questions. First, access to elite universities can be broadened via two methods: (a) top-tier high school policies and (b) race-based affirmative action. Top-tier policies are used in many states to smooth out economic and geographic disparities in high schools throughout a state.  For example, California and Texas admit the top 4% of graduating seniors to their flagship universities, irrespective of test scores or grades. Affirmative action is well-known, had been practiced for decades, and is now banned in a 2023 Supreme Court decision.

There is another, less known barrier, namely, restrictions on many lucrative college majors (e.g., computer science, engineering, economics, business), based on a student’s GPA after the freshman year. If students do not meet the university criteria, they are re-directed to less-lucrative college majors. Dr. Bleemer included a slide listing 25 top universities with their binding major restrictions.   
​             
Dr. Bleemer presented several charts addressing these “equity” and “efficiency” issues, including post-college wage data. Then, he noted that disadvantaged students benefited from a top-percent policy in both graduation rates and earnings in their twenties. Understandably, affirmative action had provided admission advantages to Black and Hispanic applicants, which disappeared after the policy was banned, causing a decline in their enrollment at elite universities. Finally, Dr. Bleemer’s data analysis showed that lower-GPA students did receive value from studying the more restrictive majors in terms of future wages.

​Thus, the trade-off when applying an equity and efficiency approach to college selection is an improvement in diversity and a notable economic value to the state.

​Respectively submitted,
Julianne Elward-Berry