Some things never change, and elite universities are no different. College admissions is rife with a bias for the status quo. We exhibit an implicit preference for a system whose alternatives are impossible to imagine, also known as system justification.

Politicians will not reform a system that benefits their offspring and helps fill their staff. Parents with multiple children start to suspect something is off once their youngest finishes applying. By then, they’ve moved on to other concerns, such as badgering professors to give their child the A they perceive their expensive tuition entitles. Politicians and society’s elite are not incentivized to reform a system where the rules are stacked in favor of their offspring and family friends. If anything, elites push back against efforts to enroll more diverse classes and lobby to maintain practices such as legacy admissions, large donations, and spaces for recruited athletes playing obscure sports, which I highlight in other content.

Universities likewise implement changes at a glacial pace because they fail to coordinate. One positive step was discontinuing the deeply flawed ACT/SAT “writing section” experiment introduced in the mid-2000s, which eventually took over a decade for universities to terminate. There was an interim period in the early 2010s where some universities phased out the writing section whereas others declared that valid exams must have the writing; this inconsistent messaging produced untold confusion and unnecessary exam sittings for unaware students. Applicants today wonder whether they need the additional (and more expensive) writing section alongside juggling which universities do and don’t Superscore (taking the highest sections from different dates), a practice that incentivizes sitting for many exams.

Administrators understand students will apply in record numbers regardless of how arduous the requirements. Why bother with transparency when public relations consultants suggest that they can simply make a button on their website, like Kentucky does, that assures you it’s easy? Unless there is a substantial decrease in demand for elite university degrees, which I don’t forecast happening, then the runaway admissions train will continue barreling along its tracks. Reforms arise only after widespread public outcry, as in the Varsity Blues scandal, or when a critical mass of their peer institutions moves first. Universities are unlikely to move first, like by discontinuing Early Decision practices, for fear that they may be left behind in the student recruitment arms race.