Should colleges ask about criminal and disciplinary records?

Every year more than 850,000 students apply to college through The Common Application. The electronic questionnaire is used by more than 600 colleges and universities. It includes these two questions:

 

“Have you ever been found responsible for a disciplinary violation at any educational institution you have attended from the 9th grade (or the international equivalent) forward, whether related to academic misconduct or behavioral misconduct, that resulted in a disciplinary action? These actions could include, but are not limited to: probation, suspension, removal, dismissal, or expulsion from the institution.

 

“Have you ever been adjudicated guilty or convicted of a misdemeanor, felony, or other crime? Note that you are not required to answer ‘yes’ to this question, or provide an explanation, if the criminal adjudication or conviction has been expunged, sealed, annulled, pardoned, destroyed, erased, impounded, or otherwise required by law or ordered by a court to be kept confidential.”

 

A senior official who oversees admissions at New York University here offers a viewpoint on these questions.

 

NYU uses the Common App, like hundreds of other colleges and universities. It’s been an important tool for achieving one of the key goals for higher education: access. The Common App makes it easier for students to apply to college.

 

But against the backdrop of the pointed national discourse on the disparate impacts of the criminal justice system and

 

the high school disciplinary system, and in no small measure in response to the concerns of a dedicated group of students, NYU — the university at which I work — is raising a pressing issue: the presence of the “checkboxes” that ask applicants on the Common App if they have ever been convicted of a crime or found responsible for a school disciplinary violation.

 

When the Common App was asked to add these questions by member institutions nearly a decade ago, it reflected a national debate about crime on campus and colleges taking appropriate responsibility to protect students — sometimes from other students.

 

But since that time, the purpose, benefit and impact of these queries have come into question, and there has been a lack of rigorous, objective research on their effect and value.

 

With this in mind, NYU has recently urged that the Common App organization promptly undertake or commission a study to review the value of the continued presence of the checkboxes on the Common App. We believe such a review and evaluation will have important implications for the entire higher-education system.

 

Ensuring the safety of the campus community and the personal integrity of students are important goals for universities. On its face, the rationale for the presence of the questions seems obvious: to enable a university to make an admissions decision that takes account of all relevant information concerning an applicant’s history.

 

However, especially in the context of high rates of school discipline and incarceration among people of color, it seems vital to pose two questions about the checkboxes: do they, in fact, have any predictive value, and does their presence work against universities’ mission as engines of social mobility and diversity either by discouraging applicants or by resulting in unjustified denials of admission on the grounds of safety or integrity? The Center for Community Alternatives has produced a series of reports raising just those questions.

 

At NYU, checking the box has never been an automatic bar to admissions; every entering class contains students who have criminal convictions as well as school disciplinary infractions. And, in response to demands by an NYU student advocacy group — the Incarceration to Education Coalition (IEC) — to “drop the box” altogether, this year we took the step of revising our practices so that our initial reading of admissions files is done without awareness of whether the criminal conviction box has been checked. A team that has been specially trained to reduce unconscious bias then takes account of that information only after an initial decision has been made.

 

Nevertheless, this change in our admissions practices does not get to the heart of the issue, and the topic is much bigger than NYU alone. But universities confront a challenge: a lack of clear, objective evidence.

 

The time seems right — indeed, past — for thorough review. There is a reason for urgency. Each year the matter remains unresolved could mean we are disadvantaging students who might otherwise go on to earn a degree — the acquisition of which is associated with low recidivism.

 

Aware of the Common App’s historic purpose to broaden access, we believe it is a fitting moment for the Common App organization to take the lead in rapidly organizing a well-designed, objective study involving several universities on the impact of the checkboxes: whether they discourage applicants, whether they provide schools with information of predictive value in keeping their campuses safe and whether their effects align with member schools’ principles and admissions objectives.

 

Our expectation is that the study’s findings will ultimately provide the basis for a thoughtful review by the Common App’s board of directors and by the colleges that are part of the consortium. NYU has indicated that we would be happy to participate, to share our data, to work with the Common App to persuade other institutions to be part of the study and to push this research effort forward so that we might promptly address issues of access and fairness.

 

Research universities believe in evidence-based decision-making. From NYU’s standpoint, this matter certainly merits study and is entirely in line with our nature as institutions of higher inquiry.

 

It’s an important conversation to have, and important to see where the evidence takes us.