ADL Study Shows Numerous Colleges Have Restrictive Admissions Policies

America’s state universities will become enclaves of “provincialism” if an increasing trend to curtail out-of-state enrollment continues, according to a study by Benjamin R. Epstein, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. The study, originally undertaken to determine the extent to which state universities limit admission of non-residents and the effect of such limitation on opportunities for Jewish youth, revealed percentage restrictions against all out-of-state students ranging from 5 percent to 40 percent and “devices” which fix no quotas but nevertheless have a restrictive effect. The League survey, conducted by Harold Braverman, director of the agency’s discriminations department, found that 73–more than half the survey group–restrict admission of non-residents, thereby, according to the League, “arresting a diffusion of students, increasing insularism and damaging educational goals.”

“The findings,” Mr. Epstein declared, “go beyond Jewish concern to concern for the general student population and the universities themselves.” The study disclosed that of the 136 state universities, 48 have percentage restrictions against out-of-state students ranging from 5 percent for the University of Massachusetts to 40 percent for the University of Vermont. Thirty state schools–in Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin–have imposed their percentage restrictions during the past four years. One, Purdue University in Indiana assigns a special quota to students from New York and New Jersey. A total of 27 of the 31 state universities that have traditionally attracted meaningful numbers of Jewish students restrict or will soon restrict.” Analyzing the implications for Jewish students, the study notes that while the intent of restrictions may not be to cut down Jewish enrollment, “the effect can be exactly that.”