In her recent article "How I Would Cover the College-Admissions Scandal as a Foreign Correspondent”, Masha Gessen states:
"Yes, in most of the world, young people go to university in the city where they grew up, but in the United States, I would explain, most young people aspire to “go away” to college, and that means that even a pre-application tour is a costly and time-consuming proposition.”
I would like to point out that this is most likely incorrect. According to a report by the National Center for Educational Statistics (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp), undergraduate enrollment at public universities in 2016 was 13.7 million students, while undergraduate enrollment at private universities was 2.7 million students. Public university students outnumber private ones by factor of 5. As a faculty member at a large public university, I can tell you that the majority of the undergraduate body is local. That is, they did not go away to university (or go away very far). So, in fact, most students in the US do indeed go to the university in the state where they grew up. Though a percentage of these students may have strived to attend private universities, most have believed public institutions to be a good deal in financial terms (they cost 1/3 the amount of private universities) and sufficiently good academically. It is the large public universities which teach most students in the US. It is also, incidentally, the large public universities that do much of the federally funded research in the US.
The recent scandal regarding college admissions touches upon our hope in meritocratic institutions in the US. It leads us to important conversations. Yet, this criticism is itself elitist. It reflects the idea that the only educational systems worth discussing are those which are private and whether intentioned or not, it excludes at least 80% of the students attending universities and colleges in the US.
