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    School Choice

    School ChoiceSnapshot:  This case explores the dilemma many well-resourced parents face in choosing a school for their child. Should they opt for their local public school, investing their economic, cultural, and...

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    Seeing Green

    Seeing Green Case GraphicSnapshot: This case explores the challenges of teaching about climate change in a community where a large portion of the residents work in the petroleum industry. Should science teachers...

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    Australian Participant General Information for Educational Ethics During a Pandemic

    Multi-site Lead Investigator:  Professor Meira Levinson, EJ Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard Graduate School meira_levinson@gse.harvard.edu

    Co-Investigators:

    Dr Jacob Fay, PostDoctoral Fellow at the EJ Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

    Tatiana Geron, Doctoral Fellow at the EJ Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

    ... Read more about Australian Participant General Information for Educational Ethics During a Pandemic

    Entering High School

    While many hold the widely accepted view that the only legitimate basis for college and university admissions decisions is individual merit, a closer examination suggests that merit itself may well rest on facts about a student that have more to do with their background than on talent or work ethic. Wealthier students are able to hire tutors to help them in classes they struggle with and coaches to sharpen their skills on the...

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    Making the College List

    For many students, 11th grade marks the year they begin seriously researching the colleges they will apply to. Many of these students, and their parents too, feel an urgency to get into an elite university because they believe this will determine their future career and beyond. For students from less privileged backgrounds, in particular, an elite college or university offers the promise of financial stability for themselves and...

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    Preparing the Application

    At this point, family expenditures on students often become more specific to the college admissions process. For instance, families may hire SAT tutors, or they may find a college counselor to help their child with their application essays and interview preparation. Students from lower-income backgrounds are less likely to access these resources, creating yet another disparity.

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    A Note on Donations

    Some particularly wealthy families are able to donate large sums of money to universities, donations that can be hard for admissions committees to ignore when making their decisions. Although legal, these donations raise significant ethical questions about the fairness of the college admissions process. For some, there’s little difference between donations like these and briberies.

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    Inside the Admissions Committee

    Family expenditures throughout high school can affect a student’s college acceptance prospects.However, once the application is sitting before admissions officers, colleges and universities have the opportunity to address some of the disparities in the resources and environments that have shaped each applicant through affirmative action programs and other similar initiatives that take into account more than just test scores, grades...

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    Closing the Gap

    A number of scholars have proposed comprehensive strategies for reforming the college admissions process, ranging from the bold to the truly radical. The following articles explore some of these ideas.

    Fishkin, Joseph. Bottlenecks. Oxford University Press, 2014. 

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    Student Commentaries

    While normative case studies are valuable discussion resources, they can also be equally useful as writing prompts. Writing case commentaries allows students to dive deeper into the ethical issues raised by the cases, learning how to engage in careful ethical reflection...

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