Automatic Enrollment in College Helps Fight Inequality

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- To reduce inequality and racial injustice, a lot of people are interested in making college available to all. The most ambitious proposals would cost a great deal of money — and taxpayers would have to foot the bill.

Last week, the city of West Sacramento, California, did something fresh and creative — and cheap. It automatically admitted every one of its graduating high school seniors to a local two-year college, Sacramento City College.

Here are the first words of the letter received by each graduate: “Congratulations on your graduation and your acceptance to Sacramento City College!”

As Mayor Christopher Cabaldon put it, “Imagine no one in your family has ever gone to college, and you open up an envelope with a letter of admission.” He added that the new effort “will make it just as simple to go from high school to college as it is to go from kindergarten to first grade.”

By itself, automatic admission costs almost nothing. It’s just a letter. But there’s every reason to think it will have a real impact. For many students, it will make all the difference, just because of its automatic quality.

Mayor Cabaldon’s initiative builds on one of the most important findings in behavioral science: If you ask people whether they want to opt into something, you will get much lower participation rates than if you enroll them automatically, and ask them whether they want to opt out.

That’s true for retirement programs. Automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans dramatically increases participation rates. It’s true for green energy. Automatic enrollment in options for the delivery of electricity that rely on solar or wind substantially decreases use of fossil fuels — even if consumers are free to switch to fossil fuels if that’s what they want.

It’s true for programs designed to give free school meals to children. The best way to increase participation rates is simply to admit eligible kids, without asking them to apply at all. It’s even true for paper use. Automatic double-sided printing saves a lot of paper, and it works much better than moral appeals.

Automatic enrollment is effective partly because of the power of inertia. Even if it’s easy to opt in, many people will not bother to take the trouble. They might be busy. They might procrastinate.

Automatic enrollment also sends an important signal. If your employer enrolls you in a savings plan, you might well be convinced that enrollment is a good idea. And if you’re automatically enrolled in green energy, you might think that if you shift to coal, you’re a bit irresponsible.

These points help explain why automatic admission is likely to boost college attendance. Because of inertia and procrastination, some people never get around to filling out applications. And for many, a letter of admission will come as a strong signal: You’re welcome here.

It follows that all over the U.S., mayors should be doing exactly what Mayor Cabaldon did. Indeed, many colleges and universities should be considering offering such acceptances on their own.

Indeed, a number  of them already do something like that, not through automatic-admissions letters, but through a public guarantee that if students meet certain criteria, they will be admitted. Some distinguished universities, including Tulane University, the University of Kansas and the University of Texas at Austin, have made such guarantees. Others should join them. But we should not underestimate the power of a personal letter, confirming admission.

It’s reasonable to ask: What about the cost?

Sacramento City College, for example, charges in-state students an enrollment fee of $1,288, according to its cost of attendance page. The good news for the West Sacramento students who graduated from a high school within the last six months is that they won’t have to pay fees for up to two years, part of a program called Home Run that includes other economic help to make college more affordable.

Sure, that’s not always an option, and there’s much more to be done, in West Sacramento and elsewhere, to give students meaningful access to college. And no one is saying that everyone who receives such a letter should go to college.

But whenever public officials face a large problem, they should keep in mind this slogan: Better is good. Offering automatic admission is a lot better than not offering it.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Cass R. Sunstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the author of “The Cost-Benefit Revolution” and a co-author of “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness.”

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