I have been a pain this spring (my colleagues would probably say “more of a pain” is the more accurate description, and might specify a part of the anatomy as well). I would like to think that I am generally easy to get along with, but I recognize that I also have an annoying streak of righteous indignation.
My cause this spring has been shutting down the tradition of publishing a list of the colleges being attended by each of our seniors. I know that other schools settled this a long time ago and will consider me a troglodyte for only litigating it now, but publishing the college list has long been an accepted cultural norm at my school, including a Commencement program insert and publication in the school magazine during the summer. At a school that venerates tradition and traditions, change is never uncomplicated.
If students or parents have been bothered by publishing the college, I am not aware of it. That has made my questioning of the appropriateness of publishing a list seem like tilting at windmills, solving a problem that no one else thinks even exists.
Of course, “accepted,” or even “acceptable,” is not the same thing as “right.” That distinction spotlights one of the foremost challenges in trying to live ethically on a daily basis, deciding which battles to fight and when. It is easy to take a stand when public opinion is with you and little moral courage is required, and much harder when a consensus isn’t present that a problem even exists. There can be a fine line between “moral crusader” and “nut.” Into which category I fall depends on your perspective.
The last few weeks of any school year bring a variety of requests from across campus wanting information on where members of the senior class are going to college. The student newspaper wants to publish the college list in its last issue. Members of the Alumni Board want to write personal letters to the graduates welcoming them into the alumni body, and having the student’s college selection will make the letter even more personal. Lower school teachers are curious about how the little boys they taught years ago turned out..
I think the interest among various constituencies in the college list is for the most part legitimate. A school like the one where I work is a family, and there is genuine interest, care, and concern for the other members of the extended family. Preparing our students for college, both for admission and even more for success once in college, is a key part of our mission, and knowing that we have succeeded with a senior class is a point of pride for the entire school community.
The issue for me is not whether it is legitimate for members of the school community to ask for the information, but whether it is appropriate for the college counseling office to provide information about where individual students are going to college. The college search process is intensely personal, and news about the outcome of that process should be the student’s to share, not my office’s.
Like many other ethical principles, that’s easier said than done. In Homage to Clio the poet W.H. Auden pointed out that it is much easier to promise “I will love you forever” than it is to promise “I will love you next Tuesday.” Similarly, it is one thing to make a moral pronouncement that the College Counseling Office will not release information about the college choices of individual seniors and another thing to refuse to tell a colleague where one of their students is going to college. I’m not as pure nor as principled as I might claim or wish to be.
It was easy to wean the student newspaper away from dependence annually on a list provided by my office, pointing out that student journalists should practice the craft of reporting by gathering the information about college choices from the seniors themselves. (I did agree to serve as Deep Throat for my student Woodwards and Bernsteins, confirming or denying the information they had gathered.) I told the Alumni Office that I had no objection to them having the information, but suggested that they should contact each soon-to-be alum to request his information. I am more accommodating with individual colleagues who are asking about the college plans of a particular student.
No Commencement insert with each boy’s college choices was published, and the school publications will include only an aggregate list with only the colleges attended and the number of students attending each.
But is that any better? A recent article by New York Times “Your Money” columnist Ron Lieber cautions against putting too much stock in published college lists of any kind. Lieber describes such lists as being “as closely watched as the homecoming score and the police blotter,” and says that, “With each passing year, these lists become ever more misleading.”
Why misleading? Because highly-selective (or to use the more avant garde term, “highly-rejective”) colleges use the admissions process not to reward deserving students, but rather to craft a class that helps meet institutional priorities. In the rarified air where 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 superbly-qualified applicants are admitted, an individual applicant gets an acceptance letter because they are “hooked” (recruited athlete, connected family, underrepresented diversity) or are just plain lucky. Where they attend high school is no longer a hook if it ever was.
So is it wrong for schools to publish a list of where graduates are attending college? Like so many other questions related to college admission (and ethics, for that matter), the answer is “It depends.”
At a basic level the list of colleges being attended by graduates is a report of factual information. Of course it is rarely that alone, because it usually serves a marketing or advertising function as well. My school generally runs a full-page ad in the local newspaper each spring around graduation, a practice in response to a similar ad produced by our sister school. Are we celebrating our seniors, marketing the school, or both?
Whatever the intent, that practice can backfire and send unintended messages. Several years ago our admissions and marketing offices, which oversee production of the ad, produced an ad featuring college pennants. The pennants did not represent a cross-section of senior choices, but rather the “name” colleges being attended by some of our graduates. That can lead people to believe that only name colleges are important and valued. Two hours after the ad appeared I had an email from a senior parent wanting to know why his son’s choice was on the list. I told him that the ad did not come from the College Counseling Office and that we value and celebrate every student’s college choice.
The publishing of some kind of college list is probably not going away, because the public wants that information. Some years ago when a colleague of mine had a son applying to kindergarten, he attended the admissions open house. During the presentation he observed prospective parents casually leafing through the packet of information—until they came to the college list.
I think our job as educators is telling parents not just what they want to know, but what they need to know. Any published college list should prominently feature the disclaimer, “Your results may vary.”
More importantly, schools should emphasize not college placement but college counseling. The real secret sauce of any good school is not its college results but its ability to help students and parents navigate a process that is confusing at best and irrational at worst. Good college counseling is worth its weight in gold—or at least more than any of us are being paid.