Is Smartness Overrated in College and in Admission?

I guess I’m not. Smart enough, that is. At the very least, I don’t get it. I can’t understand how a man with so many years in education thinks that colleges that try to enroll smart students are doing a disservice to the country. To me it’s a no brainer, which may be my problem, but I can’t get my head around the thesis of Alexander Astin's new book, Are You Smart Enough? How Colleges’ Obsession With Smartness Shortchanges Students.

If I read this title on The Onion’s website I would smile. But here’s the thing-- Astin believes that colleges are making a mistake by enrolling smart students. Did I miss something? But let me try to outline what I find problematic with his thesis and with the way he attempts to prove his case.  Then others who are smarter than I am can guide me so that I can demonstrate that even if I am not smart at least I can learn-- something that Astin says smart people do not often do in college.

Although Astin has been on major university campuses for many years, I am not sure if he is aware of the changes that have taken place with respect to who makes policy decisions. He seems convinced that the faculty controls  universities. Perhaps this might have been largely so a generation or two ago, but it is certainly not true now.

Many pundits and faculty bemoan the massive growth of administrative positions over the last decade. Astin rarely mentions the administration and almost never mentions the boards that oversee universities. He does not seem to be aware how much boards have become proactive in running both the long term and short-term strategic plans.

To put it simply, I think Austin is out of touch with the way universities work these days. Throughout the book, Astin makes assertions that are factually incorrect. It is unfortunate that he not only gives incorrect and misleading information, but he also  repeats these mistakes again and again throughout the book.  For example, Astin claims to know the way selective universities carry out the task of selecting a small percentage of the students who apply as undergraduates:

Faculty decide what kinds of students should be admitted, what to teach them, how they will be taught, and how they will be tested and graded.

It has been many years since faculty were the ones reading applications and admitting students. Today decisions are made, in the vast majority of cases, by admission officers. They are administrators and not faculty. Very few in admission have teaching experience at the college level.  Faculty still do select graduate students in most programs, but Astin focuses almost exclusively on undergraduates in his book. In addition, the administration and the board also have final oversight of the classes and majors that will be offered.

Further, if colleges were to broaden their assessments to focus more attention on some of the important qualities not currently reflected in standardized tests and course grades— talents such as creativity, leadership, citizenship, and teamwork skills— the capacity of our colleges to enrich the educated workforce could be substantially strengthened.

Once again, Astin is simply wrong about how admission decisions are made. Anyone who has worked in selective admission knows that much attention is given to the talents he sites. There are many students who are offered admission at the most selective schools whose SATs are not as high as those turned down. The same holds true for grades too. Some schools turn down well over half of the valedictorians that apply; those who are offered admission, in most cases, are not the top ranking student. It is true, of course, that to get into highly selective schools students must present strong academic credentials. Astin does not agree that students who apply to highly selective schools should be evaluated by “smartness’ which he says is defined by schools as high testing:

Why do the faculty at elite colleges and universities choose to rely so much more on test scores than on secondary school grades as the prime indicator of the student’s smartness?

Here again, Astin is flat out wrong. The academic program and the grades a student earns are far more important in admission and in predicting academic success than standardized testing. Admission officers are aware that grades fluctuate between different schools, but this does not mean they cannot evaluate the students within the frame of the school a student applies from. The SAT or ACT are not the preferred measure of smartness.  Every study demonstrates that grades and program are far better predictors of success than testing. Testing does add predictive value, however, especially those whose scores are at the far ends of the two spectrums. Those with very high testing tend to do well, those with low testing do not. This last sentence may seem obvious, but there are many in education who believe testing does not help predict how a student will do in college. For many in the middle of the bell curve this is true, but not for those who have scores in the top or bottom of the pool:

In effect, what we have today is a situation where our most elite colleges and universities essentially limit their choices of which applicants to admit to America’s smartest high school students with the principal yardstick of “smartness” being the standardized test (SAT or ACT). Smartness— having very high test scores— may not be a sufficient condition for gaining admission. It can also help if you are a member of an underrepresented group, the child of an alumnus, or a good athlete, or possess some other special talent— but being very smart is for most other applicants certainly a necessary condition to be considered for admission. Keep in mind that it is not the admission directors or their staffs who decide that smartness is to be defined in terms of SAT or ACT scores. This is a faculty decision; the administrators are merely carrying out the will of the faculty. (Emphasis mine)

Each of these passages contains incorrect information. It is a bit of mystery to me how he can assert what he does given that the information about admission offices, testing, and holistic admission are a part of every description a university releases about its selection methodology.  Does he think the schools are lying about the way they make decisions? I don’t think so, based upon this book, as he never comes close to asserting this. Instead, it appears that he is misinformed and has not done his research about who makes decisions and how they are made. I think he is correct in saying that elite colleges wish to enroll smart students, but he is wrong to say it is based on test scores above all. It also seems inexplicable to me that he thinks elite schools should not try to enroll smart students.

One of the most noticeable things about the work as a whole is how often Astin repeats himself. It is as though if he says something often enough it will become true. But no matter how many times he asserts that the faculty are in change and how only scores matter to determine “smartness”, he is still incorrect. One of the most often repeated phrases  in the book asserts that the faculty have a “preoccupation with identifying and acquiring smart students rather than educating them well.” Astin believes faculty at elite schools do not care about teaching or about instilling knowledge in their students. He says, many times, that faculty are focused on research, that they do not attempt to instill knowledge. This charge is the thesis of the book:

However, what may not be so obvious— the problem that motivates me to write this book— is that too many of the 1.5 million faculty members who staff our 4,000-plus institutions of higher learning have come to value merely being smart more than developing smartness! Developing students’ talents is, after all, the principal mission of any educational institution— to help students learn, grow, and develop into competent and responsible citizens, parents, employees, and professionals. (Emphasis mine.)

According to Astin, the majority of faculty to do not care much about the principle educational mission—developing students' talents. This charge gets repeated in every chapter of the book, but there is very little data that he provides to support his damning charges. He claims to know how over a million people think and act.  For Astin, training students to become educated citizens is an afterthought at best:

Given that belief in the importance of smartness has become such a fundamental yet hidden part of the culture of the university, it is reasonable to ask whether there is any realistic hope that college professors could ever bring themselves to consider the possibility that developing students’ talents is more important than merely identifying and acquiring talented students. (Emphasis mine.)

What Astin asserts is that faculty are interested in selecting smart students through admission by test scores but they are not interested in teaching them and do not care about what their students learn. The tone he uses is  elitist, an irony that he seems to miss. He then goes on to contend that grades do not demonstrate learning –they serve to separate students from each other but do not demonstrate they have developed talents. Astin, in his blanket statements, essentially has little good to say about faculty at all, or at least those who teach at elite schools. I am not sure if he actually knows faculty who teach at elite schools;  the ones I know are dedicated to their students. Many of them change the lives of students. I have seen this happen hundreds of times.

If facts do not matter as much as they should to Astin, one thing does—smartness. On almost every page the word smartness appears. For some this word has positive connotations. For Astin, it is a dangerous word that hurts most students and most schools.  Astin never actually talks in specific terms about different kinds of students and the different kinds of faculty who teach at colleges. To him, he often treats both the faculty and students as undifferentiated lumps that can be easily but broadly categorized. Smart students do not learn much in college and the faculty act in lockstep to focus on smart people. But he is again incorrect about developing talents. For students interested in the sciences, for example, they often learn to do high level research as undergraduates. They work with equipment and with mentors who teach them about the field. Some of these students end up publishing papers. Many majors offer the opportunity to write a thesis or carry out research. These options do not pit one student against another. The same can be said about tutorials and independent study projects. These budding scientists often go on to graduate work. Astin never mentions any of the options which turn learning into something more than just taking classes and tests. Astin mentions that faculty like students who are like them, but he does not give any credit for developing these students’ talents. Astin seems to think all faculty in all disciplines do not care about students and their learning. Unfortunately, he rarely ever gives any detail and rarely provides data to support his critiques. He depends instead on  ad hominem attacks on the faculty.

The ad hominum attacks represent just one of the many logical lapses that occur throughout the book. He provides, unwittingly, a textbook definition of what rhetoricians call the straw man argument:

American higher education can no longer simply assume that its students are developing their talents to their fullest potential.

I have yet to meet any educator who believes that all students are reaching their full potential. The vast majority in education today say, in no certain terms, that more needs to be done to help students reach their potential. Using misleading rhetoric undermines the reliability of any author. If this were the extent of Astin’s problems it would be enough to cast suspicion on many of his claims. But he has some more assertions that I find unsupported by data.

Given that Astin believes faculty at elite schools do not care about teaching and learning, it comes as no surprise that he believes that the faculty are misguided: And if applicants are not particularly well prepared for college, they will have to contend with faculty members who would rather be teaching better-prepared students. Astin implies that a faculty member who would want to teach well-prepared students rather than students who are not well-prepared is at fault. I do not follow his train of thought. If someone is trying to teach higher level sciences or engineering, for example, then it would seem useful to have students who could actually follow the material. Astin seems to forget that higher level classes often require a degree of mastery in order to succeed. In other words, students have to learn a lot before they can take a large number of courses. It isn’t as though the students he describes as smart simply take classes for four years and never have to demonstrate learning in order to fulfill a major. But he does not seem not want to admit that students learn things in college that are valuable and useful:

In fact, most colleges don’t even bother to retest their students after they’ve completed their coursework to determine how much, or even whether, they’ve improved their performance during college. Colleges do, of course, award grades, but grades don’t necessarily say much of anything about how much students have actually learned or improved in their performance. Instead, they merely rank students from best to worst. Such relativistic information might be useful to those employers or graduate schools who want to recruit the “best” or the “smartest” students, but they tell the institution little about how much learning has occurred during college or how effective its pedagogical practices actually are.

Grades are, according to Astin not useful in high school or in college. This does, at the very least, seem strange to me. For example, a student who takes a foreign language at a college can be tested in numerous ways to demonstrate what the student has learned on campus. A student who starts a new language can be measured as well. There is certainly grade inflation and there is research that indicates that more than a third of students who graduate from college have not increased their critical thinking or writing skills. The book Academically Adrift has great data on this. But as Jeffrey Selingo points out in his book There Is Life After College,  the same authors of Academically Adrift  also have research that demonstrates that those who attend selective schools tend to learn more and do well after college:

In the 2014 book Aspiring Adults Adrift, the authors followed 1,600 students who made the transition from college to the workforce or graduate school. They found students who went to selective colleges made larger gains on a national test of general collegiate skills between their freshman and senior years of college. After they graduated, students with high scores had low levels of unemployment and underemployment.

The research shows that the students who attend selective schools are the ones who make larger gains during their college years. Astin believes that smart students do not learn much at college and does not think their learning is currently measured. He is wrong on both counts. Astin condemns faculty who want to teach students who are well prepared instead of students who are not.  To me this is problematic, but it does reveal what he thinks should happen in college education:

Let me begin by making what some readers may view as outrageous assertions:

 The education of the underprepared student is the most important issue in American higher education.

Providing more effective education for such students would not only further the cause of educational equity but also help alleviate some of our most serious social and economic problems.

It’s difficult to find any other issue or problem in higher education that comes close to this one.

These assertions make clear the ideological perspective that Astin brings to the issue of schools wishing to educate smart students. He is on the side of educational equity and wishes to see an inversion of support for students who go to college. Astin makes his point by using an analogy of sickness and hospitals to stand in for educational preparedness and colleges:

Now imagine what would happen if hospitals were to operate like colleges or universities. The top hospitals with the best equipment and facilities, the best-trained and most capable staffs, and the most up-to-date forms of treatment would admit only those patients who were in the best health, denying admission to the sickest people! The sickest people would thus be forced to seek treatment in the poorest hospitals or possibly be denied access to any hospital. In short, if hospitals were to operate like colleges and universities, the best ones would refuse to admit the sickest patients, limiting their admissions to those people who were least in need of treatment! When asked to defend such practices, the top-ranked hospitals would argue that such a policy of selective admissions is the surest way to make sure that their graduates were of the highest quality (i.e., in the best health).

There are so many problems with this analogy it is hard to think where to begin. For someone who puts himself in the role as the person who cares most about underprepared students it seems odd that he would compare them to sick patients. It certainly isn’t true that students who are not academically prepared are sick or in need of intensive treatment. What they need is a mix of behavior modification—learning the importance of learning is critical and so is learning the basics before moving on to higher-level coursework. It is not that highly selective schools are turning down people who are metaphorically sick. They are turning down students who are underprepared, not because they do not want to help them, but because they want them to succeed. Enrolling students in a highly selective school who are far behind the vast majority of other students is setting the low performing students up for failure. And this is not just true for highly selective schools. There are many schools that enroll athletes who are far behind their classmates in terms of preparation. The schools provide athletes with tutors and in some cases easy classes and yet the graduation rates for these students is far below that of other students. They are not, in some cases, prepared to do the work at even less than selective schools.

Perhaps the most problematic thing about Astin’s assertions and analogies has to do with what would be the outcome if those in education agreed with him. What then should happen in education? Astin gives no specific remedies to the problems he sees. Instead, his decries the role of smartness again and again. As there are no specific solutions offered,  let me put forward what I think the result would be if schools followed his Prescription to bring health to education.

Since he believes that the most resources should be spent on the least prepared students, this means that the elite schools should either redistribute their resources or change their mission to enroll the “sickest” students. Instead of enrolling students who are smart they should enroll the ones who most need help. This would of course make many of the facilities at places like MIT and Cal Tech and the Ivies superfluous as almost none of the undergraduates would get to the level of being to do high level research at, for example, the digital media lab. Instead, faculty would be measured by how much students learned who are the most at risk. Astin would need to create tests that would measure this but they would not be used to measure students against one another; instead, they would measure what each individual student has learned. Professors would, I assume, be granted tenure on their ability to bring the most students up from being unprepared for regular coursework to earning a degree. I assume that most honors programs and distinguished majors would also be discontinued. Groups like Phi Beta Kappa would be banned as would designations like graduating with honors or summa cum laude. All forms of honors pit students agains one another and do not support equity in education.

On top of changing the faculty roles in ways that would require a paradigm shift, the kinds of students who would enter the schools that are currently elite would change utterly. The weakest students should be selected since the Ivies can bring the  most resources to make sure they learn. Since smart students do not really learn much anyway, (according to Astin),  they can go to schools with much more limited resources.

As I said at the beginning of this review, maybe I am just not smart enough to follow the subtleties of Astin’s approach. But I do not find any subtlety in this book. He uses words as blunt weapons. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say he is intentionally following the methods of Big Brother in 1984:  smart is bad, being selective is wrong, and giving resources to the students who will become the scientists, engineers, doctors of the future etc. is not a priority. Or does he believe that teachers can, if given enough support, transform a student who is underprepared for college work, into a world class scientist? I am sure this happens now and again, but there really are differences in intelligence and motivation. Most scientists now think that heritable intelligence accounts for about half of what we do as far as having the ability to learn things well.

But Astin believes that the sick need to be healed: Whereas most hospitals are designed and equipped to treat seriously ill patients, most colleges and universities are not well designed to educate the less-well-prepared student.

As long as Asti believes under-prepared students are analogous to seriously ill patients, then he does not understand what education means. He is right-- highly selective schools are not dedicated to helping weak students, although there are thousands of other schools that do. He does not seem to value community colleges or the many less selective schools that depend on enrolling less than well prepared students. He must think these schools do not do a good job. I think many educators would disagree.

But rather than focus on the way these schools that cater to less-well prepared students could do a better job, he writes a book that excoriates smartness, in faculty and students. The book is a jeremiad—angry and judgmental. He sees faculty as morally lacking and smart students as undeserving of resources.

His visionary assertions are not going to happen and surely he knows this. Harvard is not going to turn its billions over to faculty, since they are in charge, according to Astin, to have them help underprepared students. To believe that underprepared students should be offered admission to the most selective schools in the country defeats my ability to consider this a “smart” move, but this is what he seems to believe.

I will let Astin have the final word:

If I were to select just one area where American higher education is in a position to initiate positive social change immediately, it would be in how it deals with its average and underprepared students. Currently those students are underserved in a variety of ways. To start, most are denied admission to the institutions with the most resources.