If you follow admissions, you’ve heard by now about the Tulane University decision to “put a reluctant pause” on Early Decision admission offers to students from schools where some students had violated the terms of ED in the past. The article identifies only one, Colorado Academy, but suggests there are at least a few more.

If you don’t follow admissions, ED is an application option that allows students to apply early, effectively indicating that the college they’re applying to is the top choice; and that if admitted early, they will attend. The student, the parents, and the high school counselor all sign an agreement acknowledging this. In exchange for this early commitment, the college is willing to admit some students it might not in the later admission round.

ED is good for the colleges who are obsessed with the prestige of low admission rates: Leaning heavily on ED to fill a class means you have to offer fewer spots to students who won’t enroll. It’s also good for students from privileged backgrounds, who don’t have to worry about using financial aid to pay for college. ED is a luxury item, notwithstanding the fact that many colleges with ED pledge to meet full need for lower-income students (which is a hollow promise based on flimsy definitions of “need” we still continue to cling to despite everyone’s experience to the contrary.)

ED agreements carry no legal weight, for a couple of reasons: First, the student can claim that after learning about financial aid, they can’t afford it, and the college will release them from the obligation. (This is of course simply a spill over of our totally screwed up way of choosing a college, where you don’t know the price until the penultimate step in the process.) But second, even if a student can afford it, there is no way a college can force someone to enroll.

Enter the media in the first quarter of the 21st century, who get outraged when some students at one private prep school might be kept out of one round of admissions decisions at one college in New Orleans for–for what?–one year? We know why, of course. The outrage of the privileged is news, simply because the privileged are outraged. Go on Truth Social if you want to see this writ large daily. People who have never encountered an obstacle that money can’t overcome still feel like the world is against them.

Meanwhile, think about the other stuff going on in higher ed: The loss of research funding, the loss of autonomy, the forced and coerced capitulation to policies and even curricular contents designed to whitewash America’s more suspect behaviors of centuries past, reminiscent of 1984 (the book, not the year). On the one hand, the increase in educational attainment in the US that coincided with the greatest economic expansion in history is under threat. Some suggest it’s done on purpose, as there are clear voting pattens based on a county’s percentage of adults with bachelor’s degrees.

On the other, it’s possible (but not certain) that a student from a private prep school might not get admitted to one of the hot 100 colleges in America.

Which should we care about more? And should we care about the other at all?

I don’t.