In an op-ed featured in Inside Higher Ed, Professor Julie J. Park examines the College Board’s decision to discontinue Landscape, a race-neutral tool that allowed admissions offices to better understand a student’s context for opportunity, especially those from low-income families. Park argues that ending Landscape undermines efforts to expand economic diversity and sends a troubling signal about higher education’s commitment to access and equity.
While not every admissions office used it, Landscape was fairly popular within pockets of the admissions community, as it provided a more standardized, consistent way for admissions readers to understand an applicant’s environment.
If College Board was worried that somehow people were using the tool as a proxy for race (and they weren’t), well, it wasn’t a very good one. In the most comprehensive study of Landscape being used on the ground, researchers found that it didn’t do anything to increase racial/ethnic diversity in admissions. Things are different when it comes to economic diversity. Use of Landscape is linked with a boost in the likelihood of admission for low-income students. As such, it was a helpful tool given the continued underrepresentation of low-income students at selective institutions.
Read the rest in Inside Higher Ed.
