Giving Compass' Take:

• Richard Whitmire argues that elite colleges should admit more first-generation students, who will benefit the most from the experience. 

• How can funders help first-generation students make it into and through college? How can college better recruit these students? 

• Learn about the benefits of getting first-generation students acquainted to college early on. 

The universities involved in the astonishing admissions scandal may escape legal culpability — but they will risk moral culpability if they don’t use the scandal as a reason to change their admissions policies.

For the universities, the easy part will be stopping flagrant fraud such as sports coaches accepting bribes. Admissions preferences for a sailing team? Really?

A harder part will be cutting back on two legal but dubious admissions practices: “merit” scholarships designed to lure talented students whose parents can pay nearly full cost, and “legacy” admissions offered to children of alumni.

Now comes the toughest challenge: acknowledging that for years, universities have been rewarding too many students who don’t need them and ignoring students who really need what they offer.

As higher-education analyst Kevin Carey points out, research shows that, for the most part, tuition dollars invested in sending talented, well-off students to elite universities are wasted. With a few exceptions (lawyers aspiring to the Supreme Court who need to tap connections into all-important clerkships), these students will succeed in life regardless of where they attend college.

Those who really benefit, in a life-changing way, are first-generation students — low-income minority students who often don’t fare well in college unless they get into a top university. After-graduation income is usually cited as proof, but in reality, the biggest advantage is more simple: the likelihood of earning a degree.

As documented in my new book, The B.A. Breakthrough: How Ending Diploma Disparities Can Change the Face of America, the advantage for these students starts with the probability of completing college. At Ivy League universities and the most elite colleges, the odds that these students will emerge with a bachelor’s degree hovers in the 90 percent range. At flagship state universities, the odds of graduating are in the 80 percent range.

That stands in sharp contrast to what happens to most first-generation students, who end up in community colleges or commuter universities near home. Overall, about 13 percent of community college graduates go on to earn a bachelor’s. But at many of these schools, that rate for low-income minority students is actually in the single digits. At commuter universities, the likelihood that these students will earn a bachelor’s within six years is somewhere in the 30 percent range.

Read the full article about the argument for elite colleges to admit more first-generation students by Richard Whitmire at The 74.