No fire and/or brimstone about anything or anyone this time, just some credit where credit is due. (A slightly different version of this entry can also be found on NACAC's website at Admitted Blog)
Coming from the college side of college admission, I didnҀt realize how much counseling was involved in college counseling until I started meeting with students and their parents, their divorced parents, and/or their divorced and remarried parents; with students who refused to meet with their parents in the room, with parents who refused to meet with each other, and with children who refused to speak in their parentsҀ presence. (I wonҀt mention the times I had to ask parents, as politely as possible, to let their children get a word in edgewise or to review their records a bit more objectively as they considered college possibilities.)
I quickly realized I had stepped into a cultural maelstrom, especially at my very highly competitive school. ӀCollegeԀ affected everyone day to day, so knowing the mechanics of the process was only the beginning. Attending to psyches and personalities in the throes of college selection kept me plenty busy.
Now that I work with adults who counsel low-income and first-generation students, IҀm in a whole different arena, but the goals are the same. As a result, I often rely on two organizations that have significantly shaped my college-counseling outlook: the National Runaway Switchboard (NRS) and the American School Counselors Association (ASCA). NRS taught me how to listen actively and enable students to express themselves; ASCA has provided an essential framework for joining counseling and college counseling.
IҀve volunteered at NRS, a teen crisis line, for over ten years. ӀLinersԀ complete an extensive training that teaches them to listen actively, help callers develop options, and, most important, put callers in the ӀdriverҀs seatԀ as they talk through the reasons they ran away or want to. As a result IҀm committed to Ӏguiding without steering.Ԁ (I didnҀt know how much IҀd incorporated this methodology until one of my students who had been through the NRS training came in and asked I thought about his college list. ӀWell,Ԁ I replied, ӀWhat do you think about it?Ԁ He laughed and said, ӀAww, Mr. Dix, you donҀt have to do that NRS stuff with me!Ԁ)
The ASCA addresses primary and secondary school counseling topics. Its Ӏstrengths-basedԀ perspective means being alive to studentsҀ potential and reaching out to students, especially valuable in first-generation contexts. It informs my sessions with counselors and teachers.
Two ASCA publications are important reading: ASCA School Counselor magazine and the Professional School Counseling Journal. The former is for a generalized readership; the latter is ӀresearchԀ oriented (not always rigorous) but full of excellent commentary from practitioners and academics. (Here is one particularly helpful article. For the full publications you need to be an ASCA member.)
The ASCA also has just published two new reports in conjunction with the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and the College Board: "A Closer Look at the Principal-Counselor Relationship" and "Finding a Way: Practical Examples of How an Effective Principal-Counselor Relationship Can Lead to Success for All Students" that are worth taking a look at. They are publicly available for download here.
My college counseling, as well as my professional development opportunities for colleagues, has benefited immensely from these resources. I highly recommend them.
Showing posts with label NACAC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NACAC. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
The Counselor's Dilemma
In early February I spoke to a group of low-income/first-generation college students about how to interpret their admission and financial aid letters. I began by asking if anyone had received an acceptance letter yet (assuming that few had). To my surprise, about a third to a half of the group raised their hands. After congratulating them I asked if anyone had any questions, and that's when the whole thing started.
One student said she'd been given until March 1 to respond and several others said the same thing. I asked if she meant May 1, the universal reply date. She said, no, it was March 1. (Another student said she had to respond by the week after our meeting.) Others nodded emphatically. I asked if they were being asked to make a housing deposit and whether it was refundable (the conditions that allow colleges to ask for money before May 1.) Not everyone was sure, but some were certain they were being asked to make a commitment by March 1. In my mind, even asking a student without a sophisticated knowledge of the college admission world is asking too much, but that's not the end of it.
After the initial flurry of questions, another student raised his hand and said that he'd been offered admission with a full, four-year scholarship but only if he committed to the institution by March 1. I wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't shown me the letter and the dayglo pink sheet full of legalese he was supposed to return by March 1 if he wanted the full scholarship. To put it bluntly, the institution was bribing him to commit to it. I call that unconscionable.
Now here's the dilemma, which would be more of one if I were still counselor at a school, especially one that depends on ingratiating itself with top colleges: Reporting the school to NACAC is crucial, since there is a clear violation of the SPGP, on top of which the institution is browbeating a student the way a used car salesman would ("This deal is only good today!"). While anonymity is promised, that's a risk. If a counselor's name is revealed, he or she can be accused by cowardly administrators of "damaging the relationship" between school and college. Even if the violation is clear, colleges can often get away with outrageous tactics because schools often feel they have to play ball no matter what. No matter how egregious the violation may be, the high school counselor is under a great deal of pressure to let it go in the interests of getting students into college.
I happen to believe that the vast majority of colleges and universities neither flout the rules nor punish schools who report SPGP violations. Often, violations are minor and easily cleared up with a phone call or an email. But not always. Several years ago it was brought to my attention that a certain midwestern school was encouraging students to apply as juniors. I thought this was wrong and tried to discuss it with the school, where I got only vague answers and evasion. I persisted until I evidently annoyed the director of admission enough that she wrote to the school's principal announcing that her school would no longer accept applications from my school's students. And of course I was called on the carpet for having the audacity to challenge what I thought was a clear violation not only of NACAC policy but also good educational practice. The fatwa against my students was lifted, but not before damage had been done to my position, even though I was acting in the overall interests not only of my students but others'.(Although I won't mention the name of the university, if I say "wait list" almost anyone on the high shcool side of the desk will know which one I'm talking about.)
This fight was not even mine, in that I had no students affected; it was brought to my attention by other counselors, for whom I was acting. Perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut. But to do so is to cut the legs out from under the SPGP. If no one reports violations, then what? We have lofty ethics, but is that only while anyone is looking or only as long as colleges agree to abide by them? What to say to the lowly high school counselor who sees something that needs correcting? And what to tell his or her principal, who cares more about the year's scorecard than some wispy ethics? NACAC has no power to protect a counselor at school, so what's he or she to do? These are questions that have yet to be confronted.
One student said she'd been given until March 1 to respond and several others said the same thing. I asked if she meant May 1, the universal reply date. She said, no, it was March 1. (Another student said she had to respond by the week after our meeting.) Others nodded emphatically. I asked if they were being asked to make a housing deposit and whether it was refundable (the conditions that allow colleges to ask for money before May 1.) Not everyone was sure, but some were certain they were being asked to make a commitment by March 1. In my mind, even asking a student without a sophisticated knowledge of the college admission world is asking too much, but that's not the end of it.
After the initial flurry of questions, another student raised his hand and said that he'd been offered admission with a full, four-year scholarship but only if he committed to the institution by March 1. I wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't shown me the letter and the dayglo pink sheet full of legalese he was supposed to return by March 1 if he wanted the full scholarship. To put it bluntly, the institution was bribing him to commit to it. I call that unconscionable.
Now here's the dilemma, which would be more of one if I were still counselor at a school, especially one that depends on ingratiating itself with top colleges: Reporting the school to NACAC is crucial, since there is a clear violation of the SPGP, on top of which the institution is browbeating a student the way a used car salesman would ("This deal is only good today!"). While anonymity is promised, that's a risk. If a counselor's name is revealed, he or she can be accused by cowardly administrators of "damaging the relationship" between school and college. Even if the violation is clear, colleges can often get away with outrageous tactics because schools often feel they have to play ball no matter what. No matter how egregious the violation may be, the high school counselor is under a great deal of pressure to let it go in the interests of getting students into college.
I happen to believe that the vast majority of colleges and universities neither flout the rules nor punish schools who report SPGP violations. Often, violations are minor and easily cleared up with a phone call or an email. But not always. Several years ago it was brought to my attention that a certain midwestern school was encouraging students to apply as juniors. I thought this was wrong and tried to discuss it with the school, where I got only vague answers and evasion. I persisted until I evidently annoyed the director of admission enough that she wrote to the school's principal announcing that her school would no longer accept applications from my school's students. And of course I was called on the carpet for having the audacity to challenge what I thought was a clear violation not only of NACAC policy but also good educational practice. The fatwa against my students was lifted, but not before damage had been done to my position, even though I was acting in the overall interests not only of my students but others'.(Although I won't mention the name of the university, if I say "wait list" almost anyone on the high shcool side of the desk will know which one I'm talking about.)
This fight was not even mine, in that I had no students affected; it was brought to my attention by other counselors, for whom I was acting. Perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut. But to do so is to cut the legs out from under the SPGP. If no one reports violations, then what? We have lofty ethics, but is that only while anyone is looking or only as long as colleges agree to abide by them? What to say to the lowly high school counselor who sees something that needs correcting? And what to tell his or her principal, who cares more about the year's scorecard than some wispy ethics? NACAC has no power to protect a counselor at school, so what's he or she to do? These are questions that have yet to be confronted.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Eternal College Marketing and the Consumer/Student
Last week I attended the IACAC conference in Itasca IL. It was congenial as usual but one of the presentations touched on a topic I've been concerned about and writing about for a while. The session's title says it all: "From Here to Eternity: The Endless Application and Decision Process." But it doesn't really cover the issue to the depth I think it should or could have. The college process has become harmfully extended, and that's the real problem: As colleges and universities strive ever more mightily to keep their beds full, they are damaging the very resource most valuable to them and to society at large: prospective students.
Most people involved in the college process know that it seems to be getting longer and longer, starting earlier, becoming more complex, and inspiring more anxiety. On the other end, after colleges' decisions are made, students and families obsess over which college or university to choose (assuming they have a choice), trying to make a flawless decision the same way a coffee-crazed fashionista might obsess over the construction of a half-caf double shot soy milk latte with non-fat whip. The IACAC session was clear in describing the process but left me stranded when it came to reasons for it, what can be done about it, or even why it's an issue. The session looked at the college/student/high school/counselor relationship in a vacuum, concerend only with the admission and decision-making processes themselves, and didn't offer any possible cures besides adhering to NACAC guidelines and being nice to each other.
In an ever-widening search for more and more applicants, colleges have adopted marketing tools and strategies (often with the help of outside firms, one of which I am ashamed to say I once worked for) from the world of commerce. In small doses, things like glossy viewbooks, posters, helpful or imploring letters to juniors and seniors are harmless and can provide information to students just starting to learn about colleges. But as the session presenters noted, the process has stretched from perhaps a 17-month jog to a 34-month or more sprint through the psyches and aspirations of teens and their families.
In his book "Consumed" Benjamin Barber talks about how companies create "first order wants" that are not necessarily what we should want. They plant in us the feeling that we need to have a certain soda or appliance regardless of whether it harms the environment or if we really need it. ("Second order wants" are those that are really necessary or that serve a social/societal need.) Marketing is designed to rev up our first order wants because we have become a society dependent on consuming, not producing. (If you doubt that, recall that President Bush told everyone to go shopping when he finally addressed the nation after 9/11.) So we learn to "need" goods and services not because we actually need them but because we want them and we are told we want them.
College marketing works along these lines now. Glossy images, lifestyle-oriented photos, cheerful students under trees, and so on, are less about offering an education to the student than presenting a magical realm of happiness and success to the consumer. (I wrote about this a long time ago.) Inculcating that desire earlier and earlier in teens and their families creates the "need" for college as a consumer good ("first order") rather than as an eventual public good ("second order). It gears the consumer of college (I almost said "education" but more in a moment) to think that college = my personal happiness (and ideally for the college, THIS college = my personal happiness). So the relationship comes to be defined as college/consumer not college/student.
One might say that colleges have plenty to say about education in their viewbooks and brochures, and one would be right. However, it takes a great deal of parsing to draw that information out from the cheerful descriptions of comfortable residence halls, helpful professors and the massive extracurricular opportunities available on campus. None of this is in itself problematic, but it overwhelms the process of education central to any college or university like kudzu on a Georgia highway. Sure there are courses at this college, but look at the beautiful campus! The rainbow of students! The "starchitect"-designed gym!
Growing up in a consumer society, teens and their parents can hardly be blamed for looking at a college education as a consumer good like toothpaste or patio furniture. But in the process, education has been ever more surely demoted to being an option on the SUV, the second DVD player in the back seat. As college marketing intensifies to reach teens and their parents earlier and earlier, it actually pushes the work of high school to the background, replacing it with the need to "get on the college track" early in order to get into college.
But this isn't about being more educated; it's about seeming more educated so a student can be a more attractive college prospect. Students and their parents fight for AP classes not for the challenge but for the transcript enhancement. As college heighten the sense of "need" they actually hollow out the educations they claim are the central part of any applicant's record. It's no secret that many who are counseling high school students these days talk about showing students how to "package" themselves for colleges. The marketing of the college to the student/consumer and the marketing of the student/consumer to the college becomes like the snake eating its tail without a clear endpoint or purpose except to get the student/consumer to the advertiser's college and to get the college to choose the "brand" of student that appeals to it.
"Packaging" emphasizes form over substance, appearance over reality. The glorious landscapes of the campus quad or the glittering accomplishments of a 16-year old who plays violin for an old folks home (at the suggestion of her independent counselor) are triumphs of packaging. The result is an expectation of glitz over tougher realities, fun over the harder work of learning. The few colleges that refuse to bow to marketing or the lure of the "zipless" class, like St. John's, where students read the original works of great thinkers and everything is required, can be counted on one hand. The rest hide the realities of real education--it's hard--behind smooth talk about professors willing to give out their home phone numbers and be on hand, it seems, 24/7.
Extended college marketing devalues substantial educational and extracurricular achievement because those things, to be genuine, need to be learned painstakingly and often through trial and error. By creating the "need" for an early start in the college process, this marketing is essentially making hothouse plants of our students, forcing them to bloom before they're ready and as a result making them more like hothouse tomatoes--better able to travel over long distances and last on the shelf, but not something you really want to eat. Marketing in this way forces students to arrive somewhere before they're ready to travel, and in the process teaches them that you only need to look like a student in order to be thought of as one. I have to think that this phenomenon is somehow connected to the complaints professors have about how often their students are unprepared for college.
Most people involved in the college process know that it seems to be getting longer and longer, starting earlier, becoming more complex, and inspiring more anxiety. On the other end, after colleges' decisions are made, students and families obsess over which college or university to choose (assuming they have a choice), trying to make a flawless decision the same way a coffee-crazed fashionista might obsess over the construction of a half-caf double shot soy milk latte with non-fat whip. The IACAC session was clear in describing the process but left me stranded when it came to reasons for it, what can be done about it, or even why it's an issue. The session looked at the college/student/high school/counselor relationship in a vacuum, concerend only with the admission and decision-making processes themselves, and didn't offer any possible cures besides adhering to NACAC guidelines and being nice to each other.
In an ever-widening search for more and more applicants, colleges have adopted marketing tools and strategies (often with the help of outside firms, one of which I am ashamed to say I once worked for) from the world of commerce. In small doses, things like glossy viewbooks, posters, helpful or imploring letters to juniors and seniors are harmless and can provide information to students just starting to learn about colleges. But as the session presenters noted, the process has stretched from perhaps a 17-month jog to a 34-month or more sprint through the psyches and aspirations of teens and their families.
In his book "Consumed" Benjamin Barber talks about how companies create "first order wants" that are not necessarily what we should want. They plant in us the feeling that we need to have a certain soda or appliance regardless of whether it harms the environment or if we really need it. ("Second order wants" are those that are really necessary or that serve a social/societal need.) Marketing is designed to rev up our first order wants because we have become a society dependent on consuming, not producing. (If you doubt that, recall that President Bush told everyone to go shopping when he finally addressed the nation after 9/11.) So we learn to "need" goods and services not because we actually need them but because we want them and we are told we want them.
College marketing works along these lines now. Glossy images, lifestyle-oriented photos, cheerful students under trees, and so on, are less about offering an education to the student than presenting a magical realm of happiness and success to the consumer. (I wrote about this a long time ago.) Inculcating that desire earlier and earlier in teens and their families creates the "need" for college as a consumer good ("first order") rather than as an eventual public good ("second order). It gears the consumer of college (I almost said "education" but more in a moment) to think that college = my personal happiness (and ideally for the college, THIS college = my personal happiness). So the relationship comes to be defined as college/consumer not college/student.
One might say that colleges have plenty to say about education in their viewbooks and brochures, and one would be right. However, it takes a great deal of parsing to draw that information out from the cheerful descriptions of comfortable residence halls, helpful professors and the massive extracurricular opportunities available on campus. None of this is in itself problematic, but it overwhelms the process of education central to any college or university like kudzu on a Georgia highway. Sure there are courses at this college, but look at the beautiful campus! The rainbow of students! The "starchitect"-designed gym!
Growing up in a consumer society, teens and their parents can hardly be blamed for looking at a college education as a consumer good like toothpaste or patio furniture. But in the process, education has been ever more surely demoted to being an option on the SUV, the second DVD player in the back seat. As college marketing intensifies to reach teens and their parents earlier and earlier, it actually pushes the work of high school to the background, replacing it with the need to "get on the college track" early in order to get into college.
But this isn't about being more educated; it's about seeming more educated so a student can be a more attractive college prospect. Students and their parents fight for AP classes not for the challenge but for the transcript enhancement. As college heighten the sense of "need" they actually hollow out the educations they claim are the central part of any applicant's record. It's no secret that many who are counseling high school students these days talk about showing students how to "package" themselves for colleges. The marketing of the college to the student/consumer and the marketing of the student/consumer to the college becomes like the snake eating its tail without a clear endpoint or purpose except to get the student/consumer to the advertiser's college and to get the college to choose the "brand" of student that appeals to it.
"Packaging" emphasizes form over substance, appearance over reality. The glorious landscapes of the campus quad or the glittering accomplishments of a 16-year old who plays violin for an old folks home (at the suggestion of her independent counselor) are triumphs of packaging. The result is an expectation of glitz over tougher realities, fun over the harder work of learning. The few colleges that refuse to bow to marketing or the lure of the "zipless" class, like St. John's, where students read the original works of great thinkers and everything is required, can be counted on one hand. The rest hide the realities of real education--it's hard--behind smooth talk about professors willing to give out their home phone numbers and be on hand, it seems, 24/7.
Extended college marketing devalues substantial educational and extracurricular achievement because those things, to be genuine, need to be learned painstakingly and often through trial and error. By creating the "need" for an early start in the college process, this marketing is essentially making hothouse plants of our students, forcing them to bloom before they're ready and as a result making them more like hothouse tomatoes--better able to travel over long distances and last on the shelf, but not something you really want to eat. Marketing in this way forces students to arrive somewhere before they're ready to travel, and in the process teaches them that you only need to look like a student in order to be thought of as one. I have to think that this phenomenon is somehow connected to the complaints professors have about how often their students are unprepared for college.
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