(from Inside Higher Ed) Many leading public universities pay disproportionately more recruiting visits to out-of-state high schools in relatively affluent, predominantly white communities, further perpetuating perceptions that the college admission process favors wealthier students. While the media spotlight has focused on illegal activities involving bribery and fraud, the new findings acknowledge that "access inequality" may reflect real fiscal challenges at state schools, which can bring in higher tuition fees from out-of-state students. The report, funded by the Joyce Foundation, is largely based on an analysis of a list of high schools where 15 public universities recruit.
An example is the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. In the 2002-2003 academic year, the school had 626 out-of-state freshmen and $105 million in net tuition revenue. In the 2017-2018 year, there were 5,001 out-of-state freshmen and $493 million in net tuition revenue. In 2017, the university's admissions representatives made 4,347 off-campus recruiting visits. Only 390 of the visits were in Alabama, and even these largely avoided schools in the state's "Black Belt," which enroll the largest concentration of African-American students, the report found.
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