News and Updates

My posts this fall have all been pretty weighty (not to mention very preachy), and given that I’m drowning in a pile of college recommendations due November 1, this post will be a change of pace, providing news and updates on four issues I’ve addressed previously.

1)      In Indianapolis, the NACAC Assembly approved a number of changes to the Statement of Principles of Good Practice (SPGP), adding language having to do with the use of international agents, the fact that a high-school transcript should include all courses attempted (rather than being edited when a student retakes a course and earns a higher grade—a possible future topic for this blog), and how the May 1 Candidates’ Reply Date applies to institutionally-affiliated financial aid and scholarships.  I applaud the NACAC Admissions Practices committee under the leadership of Todd Rinehart for their work in updating the document.

 

One of the issues related to the May 1 deadline involves housing (for those of you who have memorized the SPGP chapter and verse, it can be found in section II.B.5.a).  Last spring I wrote about the practice of institutions requiring a housing deposit and making it non-refundable, and I have reason to believe that post may have helped move action on that issue.   

 

2)      Duke has become the first Common Application member to add a question on its application about sexual orientation/gender identity since the Common app’s 2011 decision not to include that topic among the questions asked as part of the application.  Duke’s question differs from other colleges such as Elmhurst College in Illinois and the University of Iowa that have previously asked similar application questions in that it invites students to write a short, optional essay rather than check a box.

 

I wrote about this issue back in December, 2012 after the University of Iowa announced that it was adding a question about sexual orientation/identity to its application.  At the time I applauded Iowa for being inclusive and welcoming to the LBGT community, but thought there were better ways to communicate that stance than through the application.  I continue to believe that the application should be used only to gather information that is relevant to making an admissions decision (which did not seem to be the case at Iowa), but by asking through an optional essay rather than an optional checkbox, Duke is giving students an opportunity to communicate something that is central to who they are and how they view the world, and that would seem relevant for admissions purposes.

 

The problem is that the prompt is vague enough that Duke is few students will know what the essay is designed to elicit.  Here is the prompt:  “Duke University seeks a talented, engaged student body that embodies the wide range of human experience; we believe that the diversity of our students makes our community stronger.  If you’d like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you’ve had to help us understand you better—perhaps related to a community you belong to, your sexual orientation or gender identity, or your family or cultural background—we encourage you to do so.  Real people are reading your application, and we want to do our best to understand and appreciate the real people applying to Duke.”

 

The essay prompt is deliberately vague and open-ended, and my wonder-about is how many essays Duke will get from students other than the target group.  Just this morning, one of my students who is applying Early Decision to Duke was talking about possible answers to that question, none of which are what the question is designed to elicit.  How many Duke applicants will write about their upper class cultural background, or their suburban New Jersey community?  Will Duke welcome an essay from a straight male who writes about his gender identity or sexual orientation?

 

3)      Bennington College has joined Goucher in making a high school transcript optional for applicants.  Bennington has introduced the “Dimensional Application” (the term has its origins in a quote about Bennington students by poet e.e. cummings) that gives Bennington applicants the opportunity to “curate” their applications by deciding what relevant information to include—portfolios, research or experiments designed and conducted by the student, writing (reflective and/or analytical), letters of recommendation, and even transcripts.  As I wrote about several weeks ago, I’m not sold on the idea that a transcript should be optional in evaluating a student’s readiness for college, but I like the concept that a student should have some control over what their “self-portrait” looks like and what media best communicates their essence.

 

4)      U.S. News has announced that two colleges have submitted incorrect data for the 2015 rankings.  What is different from previous cases is that there is no intent to manipulate data for the institution’s benefit.  Rollins College underreported the number of acceptances by 550 students, changing its acceptance rate from 47.2% to 58.8%.  That change did not impact Rollins ranking.  Lindenwood College in Missouri has been moved to the “Unranked” category because it reported 12,411 alumni donors when the actual figure was 2411.  Because alumni giving rate counts 5% of the ranking, that clerical error inflated Lindenwood’s ranking.  U.S. News rankings guru Bob Morse reported both cases in his Morse Code blog, but in Lindenwood’s case doesn’t provide any insight into how much the error would have impacted its ranking (I’m sure the formula is considered proprietary or top secret, but it would be fascinating to see how a mistake like in one category changes the overall ranking—on second thought, U.S. News probably doesn’t want anyone to realize how fluid the rankings are).  I have previous posted suggesting that U.S. News would best serve the public by putting all colleges in the “Unranked” category. Two other questions, one pragmatic and one philosophical:  Didn’t U.S. News find it odd that the number of alumni donors was off by 10000, and does that suggest that there is very little analysis of the data it receives?  And who thinks that alumni giving rate shows alumni loyalty and satisfaction rather than a successful annual giving operation?

 

That’s all for this edition.  I’ll be back after November 1.

Admissions Gluttony

In my last post I commented on Eric Hoover’s Chronicle of Higher Education article about the pressures faced by enrollment professionals and the attrition within the profession resulting from those pressures.

That article contained several examples of respected admissions deans who have left their jobs and institutions after the arrival of a new president.  One of those was Terry Cowdrey, who left her position as Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Colby College in Maine back in July.  (I have met Terry and respect her, but don’t know her well enough to describe her as a friend.)  Terry told the Chronicle that she left voluntarily, declining further comment, but others told Eric that she and Colby’s new president had different views about the college’s admissions strategy.

The article provides a glimpse into that strategy.  The new president, most recently executive vice president at the University of Chicago, said before arriving in Maine that he wanted to double the number of applications Colby receives each year.  Colby currently receives just over 5000 applications, so doubling that would be 10,000, or 1000 more applications than any other liberal arts college in the country currently receives.

Is that realistic?  A former Colby admissions officer quoted in the article answers no, but I would argue that’s actually not the right question.  Is doubling applications for a place like Colby desirable?  Would 10000 applications make Colby a better place?  What assumptions underlie such a strategy, and what hidden messages does it send?  Is more better (apparently not the same thing as mo’better)?

The conventional wisdom within higher education (and within the pages of U.S. News) is that more must be better, that increased popularity must mean increased quality.  But where’s the evidence for that assumption?  Did the University of Chicago, Colby President David Greene’s former employer, become a better place because it tripled application numbers by using the Common Application rather than its own application with the quirky essay questions?  Its “brand” may be more recognizable (although one of my students who visited last week found its reputation as “The Place Where Fun Goes to Die” still apt), and it may have more appeal for students who are prestige conscious, but has the increased popularity made it a better academic institution?  I am not arguing that it hasn’t, only that increased application numbers are not evidence of increased quality.

Does Colby need more applications?  Only if it, like my children, defines “need” as a synonym for “want.”  Colby already receives more than ten applications for every spot in the freshman class, and has an admission rate of 28%, both metrics that many very good colleges would give anything (hopefully not including their soul) to have.  There are several words that describe the condition where you have more than enough but aren’t satisfied.  When the entity in question is money, the operative word is greed.  When it’s food, the word is gluttony.  And when the motivation is keeping up with your neighbors in the NESCAC and Ivies, the description is envy.  That’s three of the Seven Deadly Sins right there.

I also wonder if there might be unanticipated consequences from setting a goal to double applications.  Increasing applications probably means also decreasing yield, because those extra applications would come mostly from students who would be adding Colby to a list including more selective/prestigious schools that they would likely choose first.  What messages does that goal send to the campus community?  In addition to implying to the admissions staff that they’ve failed by only generating ten applications for every spot in the class, it might also send a message to the current student body that the administration is embarrassed to have to admit students like them.

There are some broader issues here that apply not just to Colby, but to all highly selective institutions.  If one accepts the adage that one’s strengths can also be weaknesses, then just as being highly selective has advantages, it also has limitations.

One of those limitations is a distorted view of reality, the same distortion that political leaders who don’t ever have to buy bread or milk and see only places that have been carefully prepared to look their best.  Back in the 1980’s President Ronald Reagan visited my wife’s employer, Reynolds Metals.  Not only did the state and city create a massive traffic jam by closing major arteries so that the Presidential motorcade had smooth sailing from the airport into Richmond, but Reynolds did five years worth of painting and planned maintenance in the month leading up to Reagan’s visit.  Best of all, there was a plan to paint the grass green for the President.  It revealed a lot about how Presidents lose touch with the common man.

Something similar happens to colleges and universities with far more applicants than spots in the freshman class.  Recently I attended a breakfast meeting with representatives from five highly-selective institutions, all of which have admit rates below 20%.  They agreed that probably 90% of applicants are qualified, but that very few are “interesting.”  I understand where they’re coming from, and quite frankly would probably use the same kind of language if I were in their shoes, but I also think that the “interesting” test is regrettable.  Isn’t that what a college education should do, help make a young person “interesting” in a way they may not be in high school due to maturity or background? Shouldn’t the college experience be transformative for a young person?

Seeking to double applications is clearly aspirational, and perhaps setting goals that are seemingly unachievable is necessary for an institution to improve, but I’d like to see colleges be less driven by metrics and more driven by mission.

War of Attrition

This past summer I had the opportunity to spend five weeks in Europe.  My wife and I rented an apartment in the small Italian city of Lucca for a month, followed by a week of travel to Paris and London.  It was an amazing experience (here’s a link to the blog I wrote during the trip), but once I returned home all it took to suck out all the inner peace and good will I brought back from Italy was one two-hour meeting at school.

I thought about that last Monday upon returning to the office after being in Indianapolis at NACAC.  I knew I would pay for being away, but didn’t anticipate how fast the pile of “stuff” (a more polite vocabulary word than I started to use) awaiting me would make NACAC seem like a distant memory.

I view the NACAC Conference as the end of “preseason” each fall.  September is about getting back into the rhythm of the school year, and as soon as I return home I know that I will be consumed by deadlines and rec letters to be written, so NACAC is a chance to renew friendships, commiserate, and recharge.  The best part about NACAC this year was the number of people who stopped me to say that they read and even enjoy this blog. Thanks—your words mean more than you can know.

The hot topic during informal conversations at NACAC was Eric Hoover’s Chronicle of Higher Education article on the admissions dean’s chair as “the hottest seat on campus.”  The article highlights the pressures faced by those professionals responsible for enrollment on the college side and a level of turnover among Deans of Admission and VPs of Enrollment that is alarming.  It didn’t take long in any conversation to hear about another senior member of our profession who is retiring, in a new job, or simply out of work.  Lest anyone think that the grass is greener on the secondary side of the desk, at NACAC I talked with a close friend, someone I consider an icon of the college counseling profession, who is likely to leave his school at the end of the year because of Board and administrative pressure to increase the number of Ivy acceptances at the expense of fit.

It is human nature to add 2+2 and get 5, to interpret a few examples as evidence of a larger trend, but I sense of level of attrition within our profession that would constitute a crisis if it occurred in a student body. If I was the melodramatic type and wanted to draw a tenuous connection to world events, I might even suggest that we are locked in an undeclared war for the soul of college admissions, a conflict of cultures between those of us who believe that admissions is about a student’s journey of self-discovery and those who believe that higher education is first and foremost a business. 

If we’re in a war, it’s a war of attrition. Our adversaries have already seized “higher” ground (Boardrooms, Presidents’ offices), and we will have lost the war when there are no longer enough of us left. Reading Eric’s article brought to mind the Jimmy Buffett song, “A Pirate Looks at 40,” which includes the line “My occupational hazard is my occupation’s just not around.”  Our occupation isn’t endangered, but our profession might be.

So what can we do about it? We need to increase our efforts on two different fronts.  The first is giving more attention to attracting good people to the profession.  The recent NACAC survey report on “Career Paths for Young Professionals” suggested that many of us stumble into this profession, and that may no longer be good enough. The future of the profession is dependent on attracting young people who understand that helping young people make decisions about their future is a noble calling, who share a vision of admissions as more than filling the class and improving the profile, and who also happen to be just as committed/neurotic as most of us are.  Once in the field, we need to keep them. The enrollment management truism that it’s easier to retain an already enrolled student than recruit and enroll a new student holds true for us as well.

The second front is even more important but also more difficult.  We need to find ways to reach out and engage in dialogue with our bosses, the new generation of college presidents and provosts (and school heads) who don’t understand (and may not care about) the values that guide the college admissions profession.  If we don’t tell our story, who will?

Some of that burden is on each of us, but there’s also a role for organizations like NACAC and the College Board to play.  When I served as President of NACAC I got irritated by those who expected NACAC to legislate every aspect of college admissions, so I fully expect that my good friends Jeff Fuller and Joyce Smith will cringe if and when they read this, but one of NACAC’s roles is representing and defending the profession, and the profession (and professionals) are under attack in ways we haven’t seen before.  Presidents and Boards have not historically been defined as stakeholders by NACAC, but they are powerful influences on our ability to do our jobs and serve students.  I would like to see NACAC think about ways to offer professional development programming about admissions and enrollment management issues for Boards and Presidents.  The College Board certainly has both the influence and the resources to aid in that effort.

Is it an uphill battle?  No question. 

Will it work? Maybe.

Can we afford not to stand up for what we believe? No.

 

There is one other item from Eric Hoover’s article that I want to address, but I’ll do it in my next (hopefully shorter) post.    

Transcript-Optional Admission

I remember the phone call as if it were yesterday, because it was one of the few times in my life that I have been rendered speechless. 

It was the end of a long school day, and on the other end of the line was an exasperated mother.  Her son had been wait-listed at his first choice school, not unexpectedly, and she was calling either for reassurance and advice on strategy or just to vent. In any case, the call was fine until she asked a question for which I had no answer.  “Why do they have to look at his grades?”

Why indeed?  It is probably inaccurate to say that I was speechless, because it was all I could do to refrain from giving her a smart-ass answer that she clearly wouldn’t have appreciated.  Now, however, I think back to her question and realize that her son was born 25 years too soon. Today students who would prefer that colleges not look at their grades can apply to Goucher College.

Several weeks ago Goucher, a liberal-arts college located just outside Baltimore, announced a new application option whereby students can choose to submit a two-minute video instead of a transcript.  Applicants who submit a video in lieu of a transcript will also be expected to submit two pieces of high school work, but the video will be the primary factor influencing Goucher’s admissions decision.

I’ve always liked Goucher (probably mostly because years ago during my admissions days I had a crush on a female admissions staff member there), but my first response when I read the reports about the new option in the Chronicle of Higher Education and InsideHigherEd was to check my calendar to see if I had somehow turned into Rip Van Winkle and slept through seven months of the school year, such that it was already April Fools’ Day (in which case I would have been even farther behind in my rec writing). 

My reaction was not out of the mainstream.  When I told mentioned the Goucher announcement to my seniors and parents while talking about the trends in the admissions world, it was the biggest laugh line of the night.  Several colleagues have interpreted the move as a sign of desperation, and Macalester College President Brian Rosenberg broke the unwritten rule against criticizing other colleges when he wrote an opinion piece for the Chronicle awarding Goucher the prize for dumbest higher-education move.

Plenty of colleges have made submitting standardized test scores optional, but Goucher is the first selective school I’m aware of to make a transcript optional.  I’m sorry, but I don’t see transcript-optional admissions as an idea whose time has come.

That’s not to say that it may not be founded on good assumptions.  An admissions counselor at Goucher was quoted in the Chronicle as saying “Students are more than just numbers,” and I agree whole-heartedly.  I have asked the question, “Are we measuring the right things?” several times in this blog, reflecting that there are non-cognitive, non-academic predictors of success both in college and in life.  But recognizing that grades and scores may provide an incomplete picture of an individual does not mean that eliminating them gives a better picture.

Students are more than just numbers, but so are transcripts.  A transcript tells a student’s story for a discerning reader, from level of rigor to relative strengths and weaknesses (struggles in math, great history student) to upward trend both year-to-year and semester-to-semester.  Reading a transcript requires context, hopefully provided by a school profile and by the information in a letter of recommendation. 

It is one thing to recognize that students are works-in-progress and therefore give less weight to high school grades, and another thing altogether to not ask for a transcript.  There is a difference between making test scores optional and a transcript optional.  Test scores may either confirm or call into question a student’s high school performance, but test scores are supplemental information.  A transcript is essential information for a college.  How much they choose to weigh it is up to them, but there is no excuse for not requiring a transcript.  The one possible exception would be for a college that is itself abolishing grades for its students.  As President Rosenberg from Macalester asks, is Goucher prepared to have its graduates put together a video for employers and graduate schools that summarizes the value of their Goucher education in lieu of grades and transcripts?

Goucher President Jose Antonio Bowen is quoted as hoping that this innovation will increase yield, bringing in more students with “affinity” for Goucher rather than students applying to Goucher as one of many in a shotgun application approach.  He also says that the college application model is broken and maybe even “insane.” 

I think he’s right about that.  The quest for selectivity and prestige has led colleges to attempt to generate more applications, or, more accurately, more rejections.  That has resulted in a vicious circle that doesn’t serve anyone well.  Students panic when they perceive college admission getting harder and respond by applying to more schools.  That makes it harder for colleges to determine when an application is serious, leading to an increased focus on demonstrated interest and more students being placed on Wait Lists, which starts the cycle all over again.  There is an important but difficult conversation to be had about whether the college admissions process works well for students and for colleges and whether it is time for a radical revamping.

If college admissions is broken, making a high school transcript optional is in no way a fix.  Goucher’s new program has generated plenty of attention, and I hope it doesn’t backfire for them, but I don’t see transcript-optional admission as either interesting or positive.

 

P.S.  My last post on conflict of interest generated several thoughtful comments and questions from readers with other examples of possible of conflict of interest.  As always, I appreciate the feedback, and will do another post reflecting some of those comments.

Two milestones:  Ethical College Admissions will celebrate its second anniversary later this week, while I am in Indianapolis attending NACAC.  It’s been a rewarding journey, maybe the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done professionally.  In addition, the blog just had its 15,000^th hit, far beyond my expectations and dreams two years ago.  Thanks for your support—it means a lot.

 

Conflict of Interest

One of the consequences of working in college admissions or college counseling is the tendency to view the world primarily through that lens.  It has been more than thirty years since my admissions days, and yet I still find myself giving directions using high schools as landmarks.

So several weeks ago when the national media reported on the ninth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, I thought back to a very small part of that story.  In the days following Katrina, the admissions office at Tulane University relocated to my home town, Richmond, Virginia, operating out of the offices of enrollment marketing firm Royall and Company.  Tulane’s Dean of Admission and Vice President of Enrollment Management at the time, Dick Whiteside, now works for Royall.

Royall and Company received a mention in the Flagler College investigative report that was the topic of the last ECA post.  Royall had no connection to the data fraud perpetrated by Flagler’s former VP for Enrollment Management, but a second, collateral ethical issue identified in the report involves the former VP’s relationship with Royall.  In November, 2011 he doubled Flagler’s involvement with Royall without getting the required approval from either higher administrators or the Board.  What makes that problematic from an ethical perspective was that he did so at the same time he was being compensated by Royall as a consultant.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I know both Bill Royall and John Nester, the current President of Royall and Company, and consider both friends.  Bill helped establish a mentoring program for young professionals in Potomac and Chesapeake ACAC in memory of his cousin and my close friend Ann Powell, who died of cancer before being able to serve her term as PCACAC President, and her final request of me was that I oversee the development of that program.  John’s son was one of my advisees.  I know and share many of the concerns about the role played by vendors such as Royall and Company in college admissions.)

Is it ever acceptable for an admissions professional to receive compensation from a vendor with whom his or her office is doing business?  I think the answer is a clear “No.”  Even if the admissions person is providing legitimate consulting services, the potential for abuse, or even the perception of conflict of interest, is present and dangerous.

Conflict of interest is most clear and most unsavory when there is a financial arrangement involved.  One of the most troubling facets of the international agent landscape is how many agents represent multiple institutions, and even receive payment both from students and institutions.  How does a student or college employing the agent know that the agent is representing their interests, not giving advice and counsel based on what produces the most economic advantage for the agent?

The potential for conflict of interest is greatest when money is changing hands, but the reality is that all of us should be concerned about conflict of interest most of the time.  The philosopher W.D. Ross said that ethical duties arise out of relationships, and in most situations we are in multiple relationships with multiple roles and potentially multiple interests at stake.

 

As a college counselor, I serve my students, I serve their parents, I serve my school, and I also serve my own values as a professional and as an ethical individual.  Thankfully I am rarely placed in situations where there is a conflict in what those roles require.  When I am helping a student decide between institutions I need to be careful that I am hearing the student’s voice and not advising him based on what is best for my school’s college list.  When a parent asks me to advise the student to go to a less expensive public option, I have to navigate challenging territory.  My job is not to make the decision, but to advise and help the family come to consensus.  Serving the student’s interests and serving the parent’s interests can lead to conflict of interest when those interests don’t coincide.  It is worth stepping back in the midst of difficult situations to ask whose interests we are serving with a particular course of action.

Conflict of interest is especially dangerous because we have the amazing ability to rationalize our actions and behavior.  That became clear here in Virginia during the recent trial leading to the conviction of former Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife on federal corruption charges for accepting several hundred thousand dollars in gifts and loans from a businessman looking for their help and support with a dietary supplement his company was launching.  The trial can best be described as a soap opera, an embarrassment to the state that included a defense strategy that the couple could not be found guilty of conspiracy due to the fact that they didn’t talk to each other enough to conspire.

There is much about the case that is sad and bizarre and tragic.  I wasn’t a Bob McDonnell fan, but I don’t believe he is corrupt even if it is clear that he was guilty of the charges.  At some level he lost his conflict-of-interest compass, allowing his political ambitions (he was widely talked about as a possible running mate for Mitt Romney in 2012), his dysfunctional marriage (a huge problem for a politician who had run as a family values champion), and his personal financial woes to cloud his judgment and convince himself that he was serving the interest of his constituents by serving the interests of businessman Jonny Williams.

It is at times like these that I most appreciate the vow of poverty I unwittingly took years ago in choosing a non-profit career.  I don’t have to worry about people trying to buy me with golf outings and shopping trips, or paying me as a “consultant,” but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to conflict of interest.  It may be a footnote to the McDonnell and Flagler tragedies, but it’s an ethical issue all of us face.      

Inside Higher Ed Mentions ECA

Last week's post about Flagler College's investigative report into data fraud was mentioned and linked to by the website Inside Higher Ed on Tuesday in it "Around the Web" section.

Inquest

Back in February I wrote a post after Flagler College in Florida became the most recent college admitting that admissions statistics have been misreported.  Several weeks ago Flagler released an outside investigative report commissioned by its Board of Trustees that answers in ugly detail the question raised every time there is a new report of a college misreporting admissions data.  “How could this happen?”

The answer at Flagler is “intentional data fraud and misreporting” at the hands of a single individual, former Vice President for Enrollment Management Marc Williar.  Williar, an admissions staff member for 25 years and the VP since 2009, resigned back in February, taking full responsibility for the data fraud. According to the report, forensic accounting analysis indicates that the fraud goes back at least to 2005, much earlier than acknowledged by Williar.

What is different about the Flagler case is that the data fraud involves manipulation of individual student records, not just the freshman class profile.  The report accuses Williar of accessing the electronic database maintained by Flagler for student records to inflate and even fabricate test scores for individual students.  How widespread was the fraud?  Williar is accused of inflating test scores for 2542 students in 2012 and 2013 alone and fabricating 195 others.  The reports states that 99% of the scores entered into the database by Williar over that two-year period were inaccurate.  Apparently no one else on the Flagler campus was involved or even aware of the data manipulation.

The forensic accounting analysis during the investigation didn’t find any “formula” by which scores were manipulated, but it appears that Williar started by determining the class mean he wanted to achieve, then added 50 or 100 points to SAT subscores for individual students.  He inflated class rank statistics by omitting low class ranks.  The inflation in the SAT profile on the 1600 scale for entering Flagler classes was approximately 25 points from 2004-2007, 50 points from 2008-2010, and 85 points over the past three years.

Some takeaways, both questions and conclusions:

1)      I applaud Flagler for publicly releasing the report.  The transparency serves Flagler, the admissions profession, and the public.

 

2)      It is tempting to think of admissions data manipulation as a victimless crime, hurting only the credibility of U.S. News’s college rankings, but at Flagler the data fraud hurt individual students.  At least several hundred students were misplaced in courses because of the changed individual SAT scores, and in fact that was what led to discovery of the fraud, as a faculty member found discrepancies between student performance in freshman English composition classes and the SAT scores that led to their placement in those courses.

 

       3)  Is it appropriate to use SAT scores for placement purposes?  I suspect that practice is 
            not uncommon, and during my freshman year in college I was placed in an honors
            freshman English section made up of the students with the highest SAT verbal scores,
            but is the SAT designed to be used to place students in college courses?  I defer to those
            with more expertise in psychometrics than I have, but I wonder if that is a misuse of the
            SAT.

 

4)      We know from the report how the data fraud occurred, but less about why.  Williar told the investigators that he was trying to “help” the college, but the report concludes that he committed the fraud out of self-interest, as a way to increase both his compensation and his status at the college.  As in previous cases of data misrepresentation, once you start inflating data, additional misrepresentation is required to sustain the deception.

 

The report found no evidence that Williar’s actions were influenced by pressure or expectations from the Flagler administration or Board.  I don’t know Marc Williar, and his actions are indefensible, but the narrative of the rogue admissions officer doesn’t ring true.  I absolutely believe that no one in a position of authority told him to change student records or manipulate profile data, but I also suspect that his ethical lapses were encouraged by the pressures, subtle or explicit, placed on admissions offices to achieve multiple and challenging metric benchmarks.  It is no longer a successful year to bring in a full freshman class.  You must also be more selective, raise SAT scores, increase diversity, and lower the discount rate.  Those are all worthwhile goals, but an institutional climate that focuses first and foremost on those metrics is unhealthy and partly to blame when data fraud occurs.

 

5)      As I reported back in February, there have long been signs that Flagler was engaged in creative accounting, not with regard to test scores, but with regard to admit rate.  Back in the early 1990s Flagler was reporting to U.S. News an acceptance rate lower than that for MIT, Duke, and Penn.  I’m willing to entertain the notion that it might have actually been more selective than those places, but the cynic in me says that it was playing games in how it counted applications.  If that’s the case, the conditions that led to the manipulation of data have been present for a long time.

 

6)      There is one other ethical issue mentioned in the investigative report that doesn’t seem related to the data fraud, and I will discuss it in my next post.

 

How many isolated cases constitute evidence of an epidemic, and how do we determine whether a disease is contagious?  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization have had to deal with those questions this year with regard to Ebola. It may be time for the college admissions profession to address those questions with regard to data fraud and misrepresentation.  Hopefully the Flagler investigation will help prevent the next outbreak.

   

Is "Sales" a Dirty Word?

Is it time for college admissions to acknowledge and embrace its role as higher education’s sales division? Or is “sales” a dirty word that threatens the ethical standards that make college admissions a profession? Two posts in Eric Hoover’s Head Count blog for The Chronicle of Higher Education during the same week at the end of July highlighted the two horns of that dilemma.

The first reported on a presentation at the ACT Enrollment Planners Conference by Brian William Niles, founder of Target X, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) company for higher education.  His presentation was titled, “Five Dirty Words You Need to Start Using (in Admissions),” with the five words being “customer,” “sales,” “competition,” “experience,” and “accountability.”  At least some in his audience found those words as offensive and obscene as network censors once found George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.

That post was followed several days later by a post about the release of a NACAC report, “Career Paths for Admission Officers: A Survey Report.”  That report, an interesting look at the challenges faced by our profession in attracting, training, and retaining good people, revealed that the culture of sales, with increasing pressure to generate revenue and potential collateral damage to ethical standards, is among the greatest concerns for members of our profession.

The tension within college admissions between sales and counseling is not new.  It was present when I entered the profession nearly forty years ago, never dreaming I would stay for longer than a couple of years  (a common story, according to the NACAC survey).  Even then there were admissions counselors using admissions as a stepping stone for a career in sales and others with a counseling orientation.    

Niles’ ACT presentation argued that admissions offices should embrace their sales missions, that thinking of admissions staff as sales force will lead to better training as well as better understanding of the needs and wants of prospective students.  He also argued that admissions officers should master the “elevator pitch,” able to explain their institution in 30 seconds.

I agree that it’s foolish to pretend that college admissions isn’t partly about sales, especially at institutions that are tuition-driven. But I don’t see evidence that admissions offices are giving short shrift to the sales dimension. I see far more young admissions roadrunners today arrive for school visits well prepared to do their sales presentation, but unable to converse with either students or counselors about anything other than talking points. 

The dinosaur in me wishes that there was less sales and more counseling in college admissions.  Admissions reps, especially those who are young, have credibility and influence with high school students, and I wish they would use that power to educate students about the admissions process and about the college experience.

Are the admissions-as-sales and admissions-as-counseling world views irreconcilable, an Armageddon where one side must win and the other lose?  Or is there a balance to be struck between the two?

There is nothing inherently wrong with admitting that higher education is a business or that there is a sales component to college admissions.  But are they more than that? 

Colleges and universities need revenue to stay in existence, but a college education is an experience, not a product, and the mission of any college or university is broader and more important than generating revenue or profit.  Economic considerations are instrumental to other ends, not the ends themselves.

College admissions has considered itself a profession dating back to NACAC’s founding more than 75 years ago.  Professionalism implies dedication to a set of values that extend beyond institutional interest, values that are the underpinning of the NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice.  As a profession, we recognize that we serve the public interest and not just our own interest.  Enrollment and revenue are important for our employers and for our institution’s health, but we have a more important charge to help young people make important, life-changing decisions about their futures.

From an ethical perspective, the issue is not whether an admissions office is engaged in sales but what that entails.  Are the admissions staffers engaging in ethical sales practices, trying to meet the student’s/customer’s needs, or are they trying to close a sale/build enrollment at any cost?

The difference lies in whose interests the admissions officer acts.  Clearly there is a responsibility to the institution, but that is not the only ethical responsibility present.  There is also a responsibility to the student’s best interests, and there is a responsibility to the profession as well. 

Many years ago I was hired as the Director of Admissions for an independent school that was in the midst of declining enrollment.  On my first day I met with a young man who was interested in transferring from another private school for his senior year.  He was a full pay, and he could have helped our football team, but his transcript told me he would struggle to pass math and graduate, so I advised him to remain at his current school.  Later that day my secretary pulled me aside and told me that the school had never before discouraged a student from enrolling. 

Allowing that student to come and fail could have damaged both him and the school.  Given the declining enrollment it would have been easy but short-sighted to admit him. The way to build enrollment in the long run was to build trust in the school program, including the admissions process.

The “sales culture” identified in the NACAC report isn’t about sales.  It’s a different gift from the business world, the pursuit of short-term goals in a way that’s short-sighted and self-serving.  College admissions is founded on public trust, and that trust is put in jeopardy whenever we act out of our interests rather than the public interest.  The dirty word is not sales, but rather self-interest.

So how do we defend our profession from an invasive species like the sales culture?  One of the answers is contained in the NACAC report.  The future of our profession lies in our ability to attract, train, and retain the next generation of leaders, counselors and admissions professionals who see our work as a noble calling and who are committed first and foremost to serving students.

The other solution is finding a way to reach out to our supervisors, the new generation of college presidents and provosts, and educate them about the values of the college admissions profession.  I suggested several years ago that NACAC develop programming for that constituency, and I continue to think that’s a good idea.  

 

ECA on Holiday

Ethical College Admissions (the blog, not the concept) is going on summer break, to return in August.  It’s been a good year, with no shortage of ethical issues to tackle and recognition for the blog in places like the Washington Post, InsideHigherEd.com, and Reuters.com. I am grateful to all those who read the blog, with special appreciation to those who comment either privately or publicly.  Your interest and support means a lot.

Part of the reason for shutting down now is that I have an opportunity this summer to do something I have never been able to do.  Beginning tomorrow my wife and I will be going “on holiday” in Europe for five weeks.  We will be spending four weeks in the Tuscan city of Lucca, combining a writing vacation for me (unless I find the Italian lifestyle and ambiance so appealing that I give up on that plan) and some day trips.  We’ll follow that with a week of travel through the Swiss Alps by train and on to Paris and London.

My plan (subject to change) is to blog about the trip.  If you have interest in following our adventures, you can access the blog at www.JumpinLucca.blogspot.com. Ciao!

Skepticism and Impressionism

Back in graduate school I took a class in philosophical skepticism.  It met on Wednesday afternoons in a windowless room in the basement of the business building, and every week we would spend three hours discussing topics like “How do I know that the chair I’m sitting in exists?” (Does It really matter as long as I can sit in it?) This was long before Donald Rumsfeld talked about “known knowns,” “known unknowns,” and “unknown unknowns,” but the class would have been right up his alley.  I lived in perpetual fear that someone would walk into the class by accident, hear our discussion, and then padlock us in.

Early in my college-counseling career I was introduced to a college counselor whom I found both impressive and intimidating at the same time.  He had an encyclopedic knowledge of colleges that I couldn’t hope to match.  Name any college or university, and he could provide multiple factoids about its programs and campus culture.  He could wax eloquently about the differences between the education programs at Murray State and Morehead State despite the fact that he had never lived or worked in or anywhere close to Kentucky. I couldn’t decide if he was full of (rhymes with) it or simply a bigger admissions geek than I was (and am).   

Over the past couple of weeks both of those came to mind as two events made me think about the distinction between what we know and what we think we know.  One was an interesting discussion thread on the NACAC Exchange, and the other was the process of finishing up lists of college suggestions for my juniors.

A counselor posted on the Exchange asking for suggestions of colleges that will be accepting and have support for a transgender student.  The ability to get help generating a list of options for a student with special needs or circumstances has always been one of the best features of the Exchange and its ancestor, the E-list, and this particular question seemed much more appropriate than those who ask for northeastern colleges with an English major.   

The conversation that ensued was vibrant and worthwhile.  Several people suggested liberal-arts colleges with culturally liberal reputations, and one regular poster recommended that the student look at “activist” schools.  Those generated responses asking why one would assume that a transgender student is either liberal or activist, or would gravitate to those kinds of places.

The more interesting part of the discussions came after another counselor posted that he was “nervous” about throwing names around and “branding” institutions, especially when the recommendations as good fits for the student weren’t coming from representatives of the institutions themselves. Some of the nervousness clearly was related to the fact that the query had to do with a transgender student, but some also related to how easily the common wisdom becomes stereotype.  A number of years ago I met Ted Fiske, editor of the Fiske Guide to Colleges.  “How do you find the time to visit all these colleges?” he was asked.  “I never visit colleges,” he responded.  “I send out questionnaires, and if I get two back, I can tell you exactly what a place is like.”  At some level he’s probably right, but that answer bothers me nonetheless, and it reveals the limitations of guidebooks and other mass-market sources of information.  They are based on a limited spectrum of opinions, and you are unlikely to find a take on any college that’s contrary to what the public already believes.

It turned out that several of those recommending colleges had previously worked at those places.  Another counselor observed that she would be skeptical of suggestions posted on College Confidential, but trusted the professional expertise and judgment of the Exchange.  And voices such as Jon Boeckenstedt, Jon Reider, and Scott White (at least several of whom are regular readers of this blog) weighed in with thoughtful comments about the dangers of treating any information, even that from knowledgeable colleagues, as gospel truth.

I found the discussion poignant with because I was working on college lists.  It is easy for many families to see “The List” as a report card on their child (and perhaps on their parenting) and to take umbrage at the inclusion or exclusion of some name among the recommended colleges. I have always seen a college list as suggestions designed to expand horizons rather than a definitive judgment of where I think a student can or should go to college.  Putting together a college list is more art than science, and impressionist art at that.  After many years and many campus visits, I “know” a lot of colleges, but so much of that knowledge is based on impressions.  I don’t have the expertise to know with certainty that one institution is better for a student than another, and if one of the tenets of “fit” is that college selection is personal, then what I think is best may not be what the student thinks is best.

That raises a broader question (regular readers of this blog know that we always love the broader question).  What is the essence of good college counseling? Is it about being an expert, a provider of answers, or about being a trail guide and coach, an asker of questions and provider of context and background?  Is the currency of college counseling knowledge or wisdom? 

To some degree that debate mirrors the debate taking place in education about whether good teaching is about being a sage or a coach.  But it is especially timely for those of us in the college counseling trenches.  There is a perfect storm on the horizon.  At the same time that colleges are coming up with a myriad of application options and deadlines—Early Decision, Early Action, Priority Deadlines, Snap Apps—we have a generational change in both students and parents, and it puts new demands on college counseling professionals.  We may increasingly be asked to be managers and strategists rather than counselors, and that will carry it with expectations that, like the colleague who intimidated me with his command of college minutiae, we have specialized knowledge about programs, scholarships, and the games that admissions offices are playing to maximize revenue and selectivity/prestige.

I hope that day won’t arrive soon (or at least after I’ve retired).  But it’s a call for our profession to think about what we know and what we can’t know and be clear about the difference with students and parents. 

We need to follow our own advice.  Just as we would advise a student not to trust the opinion about a college from a classmate with different tastes, we should treat any source of information as one source and not definitive, and we should always understand the difference between what we know and what we assume.

 

Poaching

One of the things I used to like about the college admissions process was that there is a rhythm to it, a beginning and an end.  I say “used to like” because that long ago ceased to be the case.  I feel sorry for those who make the mistake of asking me around this time of year if this is my down time, but not as sorry as they probably feel for themselves once they have to listen to me explain that my job isn’t finished once the seniors are put to bed,  that the spring is even busier trying to get juniors starting the search process.

Recently a close friend, now a venerable admissions dean, reminisced about when we worked together as young admissions officers back in the late 1970s. During the summer there were interviews to conduct and fall visits to schedule, but our days were so laid back that we spent hours with the Assistant Dean of Students on what was billed as the world’s largest crossword puzzle.  Those days disappeared long ago on the college side, and today I am shocked when I hear about a school college counselor who doesn’t work during the summer.   

It is tempting and comforting to think of May 1 as the “end” of the admissions cycle each year, but the past couple of weeks have brought several reminders of how misguided that belief is.

The first reminder was receiving several e-mails from colleges still looking to fill their freshman class now that May 1 was past.  There is an art form to such communications.  You want to look welcoming without seeming desperate.

The most creative this spring came from a friend who is a rising star in the profession and Dean at one of the good liberal-arts colleges located in the Midwest.  He used the “X is the new Y” metaphor--“Orange is the new Black,” “60 is the new 40,” “Ted Cruz is the new Barack Obama” (that will offend everyone on both ends of the political spectrum)—to suggest that “June 1 is the new May 1.”  He didn’t elaborate on that assertion, but the rest of the e-mail made the point that his institution still had room for a handful of qualified applicants who hadn’t yet made decisions.

The “June 1 is the new May 1” claim was obviously designed to get my attention, and it worked.  Is that true, or becoming true?

I hope not, if the statement is insinuating that May 1 is no longer relevant. I believe that the May 1 Candidates’ Reply Date is the most important convention maintaining sanity and order and ethics in the college admissions process, and any attempt to subvert it would be a tragic mistake, leading us down a path to unprofessionalism and chaos.

The statement “June 1 is the new May 1” does recognize that the coming of May 1 does not end the admissions process for many institutions and many students.

I have previously written about how Wait Lists have become a regular part of the admissions process, with up to 20% of my seniors ending up at their final destination after getting off a Wait List, and shortly after May 1 the dominoes started falling.  Some of that is by design, as colleges use Wait Lists as “ED-3” to sculpt the class and reward demonstrated interest. Some of it is related to the fact that predicting yield is an exercise in inductive reasoning, with future projections based on past experience.  I recently had a conversation with the Dean of Admissions at a leading national university who observed that models for acceptance and yield are no longer reliable, that every year is a new experience.

There are clearly institutions where the admissions process routinely continues after May 1.  There are also certainly students out there who aren’t aware of the significance of May 1 and operate on their own time frame.  During that same summer when I spent my afternoons working on the crossword puzzle, I took a phone call one morning from a girl who had just graduated from high school. She hadn’t bothered to apply to college and was inquiring about the following year. I quickly determined that she was a good applicant, someone we would have admitted in the top half of our class, and despite the fact that we had a record freshman class, we were in a position to admit one more.  She ended up coming and becoming one of my wife’s closest friends.

So what are the rules of engagement for institutions that find themselves past May 1 and significantly short of their enrollment goal?  That question was raised in an article last week in InsideHigherEd.com.  That article raised concerns that some colleges may attempt to “poach” (in the hunting sense, not the cooking sense) students who have already deposited elsewhere by offering them more financial aid dollars.  Similar concerns were raised last summer when several institutions experienced major enrollment shortfalls.

I am not someone who sees most ethical issues as black and white, but this one seems clear.  It is certainly permissible for an institution short on enrollment to contact students who have not responded to an offer of admission, as we know that many students do not inform colleges that they will not be coming, but it is unethical to contact a student who has already made a commitment to another institution or declined your offer of admission.  What is questionable is sweetening a financial aid offer to a student who has not explicitly told you that finances are preventing him or her from coming.  That suggests that you believe that college selection is only about price and not about value.  We are naïve if we think economic considerations are not substantial parts of the college decision, but do we want students choosing for economic reasons alone?

The other troubling piece from last week’s article was a quote from a Dean of Admissions whom I know and have written about.  The quote stated that you can be “more straightforward in doing the right thing” when you’re in a strong enrollment position.  I hope the Dean was misquoted.  The article provided two examples—the college not matching an aid offer from another college and advising a student to enroll elsewhere rather than assume significant debt—and I agree that both are not the wrong thing to do, but the suggestion that doing the right thing is dependent on the strength of the college’s enrollment position is not in my opinion what our profession should stand for.   

DIFPED

An interesting recent discussion on the eList for ACCIS (Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools) had to do with Board reports, a topic that those of us in independent schools have to think about at this time of year while juggling everything else.  How much information, at what depth of detail, should we share with our Boards about the college admissions year, and how do we educate them about the larger trends and challenges facing our students—and us?

A close friend claims to be a convert to “Zen” presentations, with pictures taking the place of words and minimal text (something you’re unlikely ever to see in this blog).  A year ago his Board report was organized around three sets of iuitials—ED (Early Decision), DI (Demonstrated Interest), and FP (Full Pay).  His argument was that those three concepts explained most of the things taking place in the college admissions world affecting his students.  If he had only been a little less Zen and a little more attuned to acronyms, he could have reorganized into the memorable DI/FP/ED, or “difped.”

The consensus among ACCIS members who replied was that Demonstrated Interest has been a bigger issue this year.  That has been true in cases where highly-qualified applicants end up Wait Listed at selective institutions, and also in some cases where students on the bubble were admitted due to the interest they had shown.  Several counselors reported that colleges seem to be paying closer attention to the “Why here?” essay as a sign that a student has done research and has depth of interest, and that forging a relationship with an admissions officer might pay off with an offer of admission, where failure to connect could result in being Wait Listed even when superbly qualified.

I have come to believe that all those issues (Early Decision, Demonstrated Interest, and the use of Wait Lists) are related.  I also think Demonstrated Interest is no longer the right term.  What we refer to as Demonstrated Interest has become Likelihood to Enroll.  Colleges and universities, especially selective private institutions, are so concerned with admit rate and yield that they are taking likelihood to enroll into consideration in making admissions decisions.

That explains the popularity of Early Decision, where there is in theory a 100% likelihood to enroll, and it also explains why many institutions are using Wait Lists as a kind of “Early Decision 3,” filling a certain percentage of the class (up to 10-15%) off the Wait List where interest becomes a much more important factor than in the regular process.

The change I’ve sensed this year is that the process of demonstrating interest is becoming more complex.  Whereas demonstrating interest used to be something a student only had to do once, whether by visiting the campus or by meeting with a college rep at school, now demonstrating interest is an on-going process.  As colleges attempt to predict who is likely to enroll rather than who is interested, many are looking for multiple contacts, tracking hits on the website or student portal.  I think that interest is an appropriate factor to consider in the admissions process; I just wish that colleges would be transparent to students about what counts as interest and how they measure it.

 

The changing landscape for Demonstrated Interest produces new headaches for counselors trying to advise students interested in coming off a Wait List.  I recently heard about a school where the counseling staff is divided over the issue of whether a student should promise a college she will enroll if admitted off the Wait List.  The student in question is genuinely interested in the college where she is Wait Listed, but is unsure now that May 1 has passed whether she would withdraw from the first college if offered off the Wait List by the second.

One staff member sees the student as breaking a promise if she doesn’t accept the Wait List, while the other argues that the vagaries of the Wait List, especially in a time when colleges are trying to calculate likelihood to enroll, make the student’s ethical obligations far from clear.

I am sympathetic to both positions.  The German philosopher Immanuel Kant describes keeping a promise as the paradigmatic ethical act, in that having made a promise imposes ethical obligations on an individual even if outweighed by competing ethical principles, and I have always advised students that commitments and promises are not to be taken lightly.  At the same time, I don’t see the Wait List case as comparable to reneging on an Early Decision commitment.

The NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice (Section 2.B.6) states that colleges are not allowed to ask Wait List students for a commitment to enroll prior to a written offer of admission.  I haven’t seen colleges ask directly, but have an increasing sense that they would like to have a pretty good idea that a student will accept before making the Wait List offer.  Colleges use Wait Lists to manage enrollment with precision, and they don’t want to make 30 offers to fill 10 spots if they can fill them with only 10 offers.

The other side of the issue is that savvy students, or those with savvy counselors, understand that interest/likelihood to enroll are key parts of the Wait List game, and may commit either implicitly or explicitly to enroll if admitted off the Wait List.  Is it wrong for them to do so if they’re not sure?  Should a counselor encourage or discourage them?

I have always taken the position that honesty and commitment are values to be taken seriously.  If a student tells a college they will enroll if admitted off the Wait List when they have no intention, when they are merely collecting an acceptance, that is wrong.  If, however, a student honestly believes they would likely enroll, communicates that they will come, then chooses to remain at the institution where they have already deposited, I see that as different, as not dishonest.  The college has no right to ask for that commitment, and by not admitting the student originally, in effect telling the student that the college doesn’t really want to admit her (that may be a harsh interpretation of what Wait List signifies), the college has given away its moral bargaining position.  When likelihood to enroll is part of the college’s equation, such that a student communicating that they are interested but not certain of enrolling may preclude an offer being made, any commitment must be considered conditional.

The poet W.H. Auden said that it is easy to promise that you will love someone forever and much harder to promise that you will love them next Tuesday. I tell students that making final decisions is hard because you are no longer talking about possibilities but making choices with real consequences. By choosing one you close the door on others.  A student who promises to enroll prior to being admitted off a Wait List is promising love forever. They can’t be expected to promise they will still feel the love next Tuesday when getting off the Wait List is a reality rather than a possibility.

AP or Not AP--Another Perspective

Shortly after my post last week about whether students taking AP courses should be required to take AP exams, I received a thoughtful e-mail response (much more thoughtful than my post, in fact) from Susan Tree at Westtown School outside Philadelphia.  Susan is someone whose opinion I respect greatly, and I asked her if she would allow me to publish her response.  It is below, followed by a couple of closing thoughts.

 

Hi Jim,

 

I enjoy reading your blogs! Usually, I agree with your insights and feel your pain, but I have to express a contrary opinion on this one! I acknowledge up front that the value of AP courses and exams vary regionally.... in the greater Philadelphia area, the majority of independent schools have dropped the AP designation because it became clear that the value in the college admission process was negligible and it wasn't allowing our curriculum to evolve in this "new" century. And it certainly wasn't helping our high end students differentiate themselves in the applicant pools of selective colleges! Our faculty (after a lot of research including dialoging with professors of first year courses at colleges, from the Ivies to research universities to small liberal arts colleges) knew they could design courses that were more advanced, more 21st Century, and simply better than the AP curriculum.

Our college list is as strong as ever (actually stronger, from my perspective) as a result and we have been able to introduce some exciting, rigorous, advanced course work that takes our students to a higher level of college preparation. Colleges love it. Our kids stand out more in their applicant pools.

 

When we still had the AP designation on courses, we never required students to sit for the exam, believing that the value of taking a rigorous course is in taking the course, not taking the test. We didn't have trouble with kids slacking since these courses were well taught and kids were in it for the learning experience. Things haven't changed.

 

So I appreciate your perspective but it's simply not our experience that AP has gained in value in the college admissions process except at "the nation's weak and failing schools" (to quote George Bush and Gaston Caperton when the audit debuted) which truthfully, are the target audience for the whole AP program. Maybe AP is the gold standard... especially for schools that are under-resourced and whose teachers need a curriculum. I guess there are "platinum" standards too, especially for independent schools charging big bucks. We know that people in greater Philadelphia can go to good public schools and take all the AP courses they want - and many of those kids don't get in to the colleges our students get in to. Parents pay for the "value added", which is what we work hard to articulate, market, and deliver. Lots of student research, collaborative work, action based learning, interdisciplinary work, deep dives...

I think that colleges take each school at face value - and look for whatever it is that they value in an applicant (and what their professors want in their classrooms!). You and I know that applicants are judged in their own unique context. As the 21st Century continues to unfold, I think that AP will move out of well-resourced schools into schools that need to rachet up their teaching and curriculum. Expensive schools like ours will likely be looking at international curricula (and not just IB), research skill development, and interdisciplinary models... and other skills all the 21st Century research points to as critical for this generation. It's exciting.

 

This is ironic giving that I am proctoring the AP Comp Sci exam this morning! As long as we enroll international students, we will be giving AP exams... A few years ago at NACAC (ten, maybe!) I was on a panel called, "To AP or Not AP, That is the Question". Small world!

 

Best to you.

 

-Susan

 

Susan K. Tree

Westtown School, PA

 

And a couple of thoughts:

 

1)       I appreciate Susan’s perspective and her willingness to share it.  My goal in blogging is to stimulate discussion about the ethical issues related to college admission, and I will be the first to admit that I am much better at asking questions than I am at providing answers (my philosophical background at work).

2)      As I was writing the post I had the uneasy sense that I was defending the College Board far more than I planned when I started writing, but while writing the post I somehow convinced myself that when you call a course an AP course, your default position should be that students will take the exam unless there are compelling reasons not to.  I am less certain about that than I once was, and Susan’s reflection on Westtown’s experience makes me even less so, but that’s still my default position.

3)      I hope I didn’t come across as arguing that the AP program is the “gold standard” when it comes to curriculum.  What I was trying to suggest is that the justification for the AP program has changed from college credit to curriculum rigor, and I expect that to increase under David Coleman as the College Board moves to position itself as the leader in assessing the Common Core.  I work in a traditional independent school where the faculty generally likes both AP courses and AP exams, and yet my own sympathies lie with those schools that have moved away from the AP brand in order to design courses that engage students and require them to think deeply.  I suspect Susan is right  that a number of good, wealthy school will become “post-AP” in their curricula to better provide the skills our graduates will need in the 21^st century world.

4)      Susan may be right that the appeal of AP varies depending on geography.  Unlike Philadelphia, the independent schools in Richmond continue to be committed to AP, and yet I have joked with colleagues from other schools that the commitment is for marketing rather than philosophical or educational reasons.  Each school is hesitant to drop AP because of perceived marketing disadvantages, and it would probably require the independent school equivalent of the Camp David Accords to achieve AP disarmament.

5)      I apologize for inadvertently borrowing a title from an old NACAC conference session.  It proves once again that I am neither as clever nor as original as I would like to think.

 

 

I am doing a presentation this weekend on “Surviving the College Admissions Process—and Enjoying It” at the Community Conversation on Teen Stress: Fostering Wellness and Resiliency sponsored by the Superintendent of Schools in Fairfax County, Virginia.  If any of you have thoughts on that topics, feel free to share.

 

On a lighter note, ECA hit two milestones last week.  The blog received its 12000^th view, something I would never have dreamed of when I started writing, and more significantly, received its first view from the last state we were missing, North Dakota.  According to ClustrMaps, we’ve had readers from 63 other countries, but I’m skeptical about how many of them were actually interested in the ethics of college admissions.  Thanks to everyone who reads and comments either publicly or privately on the blog.   

 

AP or Not AP? That is the Question

As we celebrate the annual College Board Festival of Advanced Placement Exams, let us pause for a minute to consider the question, Should students who take AP courses be required to take AP exams? That has never been a simple question, and it is even less so today.

For much of my career my answer would have been a clear “yes,” and in fact my school continues to expect students who take AP courses to take the AP exam (we will not get into the semantics of “expect” vs. “require”).  The classical definition of an AP course is that it is a course designed to prepare a student for the AP exam, which then provides the potential for earning college credit.

But is that definition of an AP course still valid?  Today AP courses have more value for admission to college than for college credit or placement.  AP has become the nation’s top curriculum brand, making the AP syllabus (or at least the AP designation on a transcript) more important than the AP exam.  With AP exams now costing $89 and less likelihood of receiving college credit than used to be the case, is it fair to require students in an AP class to take the exam?

That begs the question, “Fair to whom?”  It may not be fair to the student with financial hardship and little chance of earning credit, but it may be fair to teachers who need every carrot and every stick at their disposal to stave off senior slump at this time of year.  Exams of any type promote accountability, and there is an educational argument to be made that taking an exam has educational value in itself, helping a student to pull together information and make connections between ideas.  Most of my colleagues who teach AP courses are impressed with the quality of the exam, especially now that exams like Biology have moved away from regurgitation of information and toward critical thinking and problem-solving.  Several years ago a Chemistry teacher argued that the AP exam didn’t measure the right things.  I pointed out that you can make that argument when your scores are good, whereas it looks self-serving when your scores are modest.

The question, then, is how essential a component of the AP experience is the exam itself?  Is taking an AP course but not taking the exam the same experience as taking an AP course to prepare for the exam?  My gut tells me it’s not, but that’s not necessarily a reason to require a student to sit for the AP exam.

But what about a student who shows AP courses on his or her transcript but no evidence of having taken an exam? Does that concern or worry colleges?  It is less of an issue today when schools have to get approval to label courses as AP, but without the exam component what’s the difference between a course taught using the AP syllabus and an Honors course? 

Having an AP exam score provides information both about the student and potentially about the course as well.  There is a big difference between having an A in an AP course with a score of 5 on the exam and an A with a 2 on the exam.  Most of us would guess those aren’t equal courses. There are certainly students who don’t test well, but when an entire class scores poorly on the AP exam it may say something about the quality of the class.  When a student’s transcript show AP courses with no evidence of having taken the exam, do colleges assume that the exam wasn’t taken or that the scores weren’t very good?

I have never been described as an apologist for the College Board, which I have labeled “America’s Most Profitable Non-Profit Organization.”  I think the AP curriculum provides rigor and quality, although I also think it may restrict good teachers from delving into topics that are not on the exam.  I also have reservations about the “AP for average students” movement.  That having been said, I think that most students who take AP courses should also take the AP exam, with exceptions made for those for whom the cost of the exam causes financial hardship.

 

ECA Gets a Shoutout

The front page of today’s InsideHigherEd.com features a reference and link to yesterday’s post.  The mention is in the Around the Web section at the bottom of the page.

The Ethical College Admissions blog was previously mentioned by the Washington Post website and by Reuters.com.  In addition, Peter Gow last year listed the blog as among the influential independent school blogs in his blog on Education Week.com.

We are grateful for the coverage and for all those who read the blog.

May Day! May Day!

I just returned from attending the Potomac and Chesapeake ACAC conference.  I did two presentations, and preparing for them has consumed most of my free time over the past several weeks.  That has diverted attention from the blog.  Several years ago Jeannine Lalonde at the University of Virginia, better known as “Dean J” thanks to her Notes From Peabody blog, told me that blogging is addictive, and I have found that to be the case.  After about two weeks without a post I start to panic that: a) I haven’t written anything recently; and b) I have nothing worth saying.  I’m going to try to address the first concern with several shorter posts over the next couple of weeks.  It remains to be seen whether that will prove the second concern right or wrong.

Today is May 1, better known as May Day.  What images May Day conjures up depends on your background.  It may mean dancing around the May Pole, Cold War-era Soviet bloc parades of military might, or the international distress call.  For all of us in the college admissions/college counseling profession May Day means only one thing, the Day of Reckoning that is the National Candidates Reply Date.  By the end of the day today high school seniors should have one and only one deposit in at a college, and college admissions offices should have a good idea about what their class looks like.  May 1 is not final, because there will still be movement on and off Wait Lists, but today marks a ceremonial and realistic conclusion to the admissions year.

May 1 assumes even greater importance for those of us concerned about the ethics of college admissions.  I would argue that May 1 is the most important convention that prevents admissions from degenerating into the Wild West, a landscape without law or order.  Having May 1 as a common date protects both students and institutions and keeps us from deteriorating into blatant self-interest at the expense of the common good and a sense of professionalism.

At PCACAC I attended a session titled, “Is It Ethical?” dealing with both the NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice and some case studies that illustrate gray areas and the fact that no document is capable of covering every scenario. During the session, Lou Hirsh, retired Director of Admissions at the University of Delaware as well as Chair of the AP committee for PCACAC and a member of the National AP committee (also a friend and devoted reader of this blog), observed that the majority of admissions practices inquiries received at both the regional and national levels are prompted by colleges that ask for deposits (enrollment, scholarship, housing) prior to May 1.  Many (most?)  are not malicious in intent but motivated by self-interest, but asking for a deposit before May 1, even when refundable, has the potential to be coercive, to manipulate a student to make a commitment before they know all their options or are ready to choose among those options.

During the session two interesting things came up.  One was a discussion about whether assigning housing on a first-come, first-served basis is ethical.  The consensus in the room was that it is not, that it disadvantages students who are already economically disadvantaged, those who require financial aid and may have to scramble to come up with an enrollment or housing deposit.  I see both sides of that issue.  On one hand, all things being equal, first-come, first-served is defensible as a “neutral” way to assign housing or other benefits.  Then again, all things aren’t equal. A first-come, first-served process gives further advantage to students who are already advantaged, and first-come, first-served has the potential to manipulate student behavior, even unintentionally. Other means of assigning housing, such as a lottery, are fairer to all students.

The second was a comment from a Director of Admissions.  The essence was that we shouldn’t be surprised if erosion of the May 1 deadline doesn’t eventually lead to an increase in double deposits and an erosion of the idea that there is something inherently wrong with depositing at more than one college.

His comment touched a nerve.  I believe in the sanctity of May 1 and tell my students and parents that double-depositing is unethical, but I also see hypocrisy in college folks who see double depositing as a treasonable offense when so many colleges are violating the spirit of May 1.  When students and parents are led to believe that they will lose opportunities for housing and scholarships if they don’t commit prior to May 1, we can’t be incensed when they hedge their bets with multiple deposits.  The May 1 convention, like so much about college admissions, is an honor system, relying on all of us giving up what’s good for us for the greater good.  That greater good is public trust and confidence in the admissions process and calendar.

On this May 1 I hope we will look at the big picture and pledge ourselves to admissions practices that build trust and confidence.  We must remember and heed the words of Benjamin Franklin, who told the signers of the Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately.”

Happy May 1.  May this day bring us happy students and full freshman classes, and may the phrase “May Day” signify the coming of spring and not an emergency call for help.   

The Price is Right

I am not good at, nor do I care for, haggling over price.  That may be why I look forward to buying a car the way I look forward to going to the dentist.  I know that I will leave the dealership with a new vehicle but also a clear suspicion that I have been taken advantage of.

There is only one time when I bought a new car that I knew I had gotten a good deal.  It was the end of the month, and the salesman needed to sell a car more than I needed to buy one.  I wasn’t trading in my car, I was focused on the bottom line rather than the monthly payment, and I negotiated to the point where my wife, who is far more a bargain hunter than am I, was kicking me under the table.  Our “final” offers were within $125, at which point I suggested we split the difference, and we made the deal, after which the salesman told me they were ready to let me walk.  What convinced me that I had done a good job, though, was that my sister and her husband had bought the exact same model from the same dealer several months before and paid $1000 more, and I had gotten air conditioning included.

Recently the mother of a senior called to ask whether we had sent transcripts to two colleges.  The answer was no, because we weren’t aware he was applying to those schools.  That in itself wasn’t surprising. Strother Martin’s quote from the movie Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate” certainly applies to many families, and anyone who thinks gender differences aren’t real need only to observe mothers and sons going through the college process together—and separately.  There is a Ph.D dissertation waiting to be written on that subject.

What was surprising was that the son had already told us that he had been accepted and deposited at his first-choice school.  In following up we learned that the parents wanted him to apply to the other schools as a negotiating strategy so they might get more financial aid from the first-choice.  We suspected the strategy was futile, given that the other two institutions were similar in cost and student profile.

I have always discouraged parents from asking for additional financial aid unless there is a compelling change in circumstances. A recent New York Times article, though, suggested that many private colleges give additional aid to more than half the families who appeal their financial aid package.   So is my advice outdated, and what are the ethics and etiquette of appealing financial aid awards in 2014?

The answer, I suspect, is that the landscape is changing similar to other changes in the way college admissions and counseling are conducted.  That’s true for all parties.  I have seen finances be a bigger factor in the final college choices made by my students and their families in the past two years than ever before, and if it’s happening in my population it reflects a much larger trend. 

I saw a statistic several years ago that suggested that college tuitions have risen faster over the past quarter century than health care costs.  Ever since the beginning of my career, 35 years ago, there have been predictions that there is a limit to how high college tuitions can go before the public balks, and it hasn’t happened yet.  But is the template of raising tuition and providing more tuition discounts sustainable? With families taking on more student loan debt, without the guarantee that the investment in higher education will pay off with the kind of jobs that have traditionally been available to graduates, have we reached the threshold where the cost of higher education has exceeded the perceived value of higher education?

A related issue is the psychological impact of the increase in the use of “merit” aid.  Several years ago, one of my students attended an accepted student program at a university he was very interested in attending.  During an information session, he and his parents learned that 90% of the students admitted to the university received merit aid.  Unfortunately he was one of the 10% who didn’t.  His parents returned upset because my office hadn’t secured a merit scholarship for him, something he and they had never identified as important in his search process.  It had become important not because he needed the money, but because he wanted to feel wanted.  How meaningful is “merit” when everyone has it, and at what point do merit scholarships become entitlement scholarships?

My advice against trying to negotiate financial aid offers is predicated on the assumption that the financial aid analysis process is rational and fair, but that train may have left the station long ago.  It is true that any need analysis methodology rewards certain things and penalizes others, but financial aid has become less about need or ability to pay and more about willingness to pay.  Today colleges and universities hire consultants who employ a sophisticated calculus to determine what combination of price points will fill the class and maximize revenue.  In such a business environment is there anything wrong with advising consumers to haggle over price?

I don’t want my students and their families to think that appealing aid offers should be common practice, but there are three circumstances where I think it’s a mistake not to appeal.  A family should appeal if there has been a major change in their financial circumstances since they applied for aid, they are justified in appealing if they have an offer from another institution with a more generous interpretation of their financial need, and if finances are an impediment in a student’s attending his or her first-choice college, I would want the college to know that, understanding that the college may be unable or unwilling to sweeten the aid offer.

I hope that choosing a college never resembles buying a car.  But given the cost of a college education and the fact that student loan debt may impact an individual’s ability to make other important life choices ranging from choosing a career to getting married to buying a house,  price is likely to become a greater consideration.  Bob Barker would be proud.

New and Improved

Each semester I spend a day in my Public Speaking class talking about critical thinking through the lens of advertising claims.  I point out that it is against the law for advertisers to lie, but that they are allowed to make claims that lead us to make incorrect assumptions. 

What advertisers don’t say may be far more meaningful and significant than what they do say.  Back in the 1970s the now-defunct National Airlines was a leading carrier to Florida, and ran ads touting the fact that no other airline flew to Miami/Fort Lauderdale for less than National.  What they didn’t say was that all fares were the same, because the Federal government regulated airline fares. When Folgers coffee claims that it’s “mountain grown,” what isn’t said is that all coffee is in some sense mountain grown (Arabica beans are grown at higher elevations than Robusta beans).  When products like shampoo and toothpaste highlight some special ingredient, what they fail to mention is that their competitors have the same ingredient.

Evaluating advertising claims requires knowing the right question to ask.  When Trident chewing gum reports that 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum (for their patients who chew gum), the logical question is “What would I expect the results to be?”  I would expect 100% of dentists to prefer sugarless, making the statistic not that impressive.  When an actor washing his hair with ten times as much shampoo as needed claims to know that Denorex is working because it tingles, the relevant question is “Do you need your shampoo to tingle?”  When products are “new and improved,” the question becomes, "Is that really an acknowledgement that the old product was flawed?"

I thought about that upon learning a couple of weeks ago that there will be a “new and improved” SAT beginning in 2016.  Within minutes of the announcement, I was being asked what I thought by parents and colleagues, and my answer is that I’m not sure.  I like a lot of what I’ve heard.  I like the idea that the test might be more closely aligned with what students study in high school.  I like abandoning the 2400 scale, because it is still odd every time I hear someone talk about having gotten a 1950 on the test. I like the fact that the SAT will become less a test of stamina now that the Writing section will be optional, and being able to guess your way to success without penalty seems to reflect some back corner of the American Dream.  But I am also by nature a skeptic, especially when it comes to the College Board, and there are still a number of questions to be answered.

Foremost among those questions is whether the changes are motivated by philosophy or economics.  I would like to believe that the changes were in response to the thoughtful work done by the NACAC Commission on Testing, but that seems unlikely given how quickly the College Board was to dismiss and ignore the Commission report.

There is an ongoing internal battle for the soul of the College Board—membership organization or corporate entity, .org or .com?  In recent years the corporate forces seem to be winning the war. 

College Board meetings too often feel like infomercials for College Board products, and when I attended the business meeting at a National Forum several years ago, the treasurer reported a “non-profit” of $95 million, a figure that many businesses would envy.  That wealth, much of it generated by SAT fees, allows the College Board to do a lot of good, but it also leads to suspicion that most College Board decisions are based on how they impact the bottom line.   Is the new test an attempt to better measure the skills and knowledge students need in the 21^st century, a reaction to the fact that the SAT has lost market share to the ACT, or a strategic first step to position the College Board to become the primary provider of assessments of the new Common Core standards (partly written and developed by new College Board President David Coleman)?

Those questions are particularly relevant given the fact that the “new and improved” SAT reverses the miracle ingredient from the last iteration of the SAT, the Writing section.  At the time, the addition of the Writing section seemed designed to keep the University of California system as clients, and almost immediately critics such as MIT’s Les Perelman argued that the 25-minute essay and prompts were lousy measures of a student’s ability to write, especially when the scoring rubric did not penalize a student for writing that the War of 1812 started in 1944.

The other significant piece to the recent announcement is the College Board’s collaboration with Khan Academy to produce free test prep materials.  That seems like a good attempt to reestablish the SAT as a tool for college access rather than a test that measures and rewards privilege.  I have always been a skeptic when it comes to the test-prep industry, believing that it is one of the marketing success stories of our time and that the benefits of test prep are far more modest than generally assumed (but that may be the naïve dinosaur within me speaking), and it bothered me that several media reports about the new SAT took for granted that scoring well on the SAT is purely a function of test prep rather than economic advantage.  Whatever the reality, it hurts the credibility of the College Board and the college admissions profession if it is possible, or perceived to be possible, to game the test and the admissions process.

That leads to the final question.  What does the SAT measure, and is it measuring the right things?  It was originally designed to predict freshman year performance in conjunction with high school grades.  Grade inflation makes such a tool necessary, but studies such as that recently done by former Bates Dean of Admission Bill Hiss on the long-term impact of test optional policies raise questions about how much added predictive value SAT scores provide.   More importantly, neither the SAT, ACT, or any other test adequately measure personal qualities such as motivation, work ethic, and “grit” that may be the best predictors of success.  A test that could measure those would truly qualify as “new and improved.”

May 1 and Housing

A post on the NACAC Exchange a week or so ago caught my eye (of course, they all do).  An independent counselor asked a question about the housing application fees required by many large universities (in this case the University of Florida). 

Two of her clients have just been accepted to Florida.  Immediately after applying they were contacted by the university and urged to submit a non-refundable $25 housing deposit in order to reserve the possibility of on-campus housing, with their place in the housing selection queue determined by the date the deposit was paid. They did so, and are now being asked to pay a non-refundable $175 “Advance Rent Payment” by March 11 to complete the housing contract. Failure to submit by the deadline could result in the students losing their place on the room selection list, and late payment will put them at the bottom of the list.  The families want to wait for their other admissions decisions before deciding whether to enroll in Florida and are wondering how the University can ask for a housing deposit so far in advance of the May 1 reply date. 

The query only received a couple of responses, but they captured both ends of the spectrum of opinion on this issue.  A friend of mine suggested that the university be reported to the regional Admission Practices Committee for possible violation of the NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice (SPGP), while another friend responded that this is standard operating procedure at large universities and that they have a legitimate need to manage the complex process of assigning housing.

It can certainly be argued that this is neither an ethical issue nor an issue related to college admissions, but readers of this blog know that has never stopped us from weighing in, so let’s try to sort through the issues.

Does the SPGP apply to housing deposits?  I certainly remember the issue coming up during my time as a NACAC Assembly Delegate.  The May 1 Candidates’ Reply Date is one of the ethical foundations of our profession, a convention designed to protect the ethical principle that students should be able to make a college choice freely and without coercion, knowing all of their options.  But do colleges have a need and a right to ask for commitments and deposits prior to May 1 for things like scholarships and housing?  On one hand, membership in NACAC is institutional, such that a college or university, not just the admissions office, agrees to abide by the SPGP.  On the other, the reality is that in large institutions, things like housing fall outside the purview of the admissions office, and the housing process is sufficiently complex that it may not match up with the admissions calendar.

ACUHO (Association of College and University Housing Officers) does not address deadlines and fees in its code of ethics, other than stating that housing fees should not be used as a revenue stream for parts of the university unrelated to housing (it is presumably okay for a university housing office to use fees to help balance its own budget).  The two documents have a markedly different tone, with the ACUHO document broad and general and the SPGP specific and prescriptive.  The difference is predicated on the fact that NACAC is one of only a few professional associations that attempt to enforce ethical standards.  As a result the SPGP tends to be amended in response to specific practices that push the boundaries of accepted ethical professional practice.  

There are two references to housing in the SPGP, both Mandatory Practices.  Section II. A. 1 mentions housing in conjunction with a requirement for transparency in requirements, deadlines, and refund procedures.  I think the University of Florida is clearly in compliance on this point.

The other mention is in Section II. B. 5, which requires post-secondary members to “work with their institutions’ senior administrative offices to ensure that financial aid and housing options are not used to manipulate commitments prior to May 1.”  That speaks to the heart of the concerns raised by the independent counselor and her clients.  Are the housing deposits coercive, either directly or indirectly?

The $25 fee seems perfectly reasonable, both in timing and amount.  It is akin to the admissions application fee and serves dual purposes, covering the cost of processing the application for housing and also establishing an order for housing selection.

The $175 “Advance Rent Payment” is more problematic, on several fronts.  Both the more substantial financial commitment and the early (pre-May 1) deadline could (emphasis on could) be interpreted as an attempt to manipulate an enrollment commitment, as does the threat to lose one’s place in the housing queue if the payment is late.  Let me be clear that I am not accusing the university of doing anything deliberately manipulative.  For all I know there may be good reasons why the housing office needs to know who actually plans to enroll in university housing prior to May 1.  I also know that it is not unheard of for bureaucrats to establish deadlines and procedures that meet their needs without being aware of how they inconvenience others.  I’m sure there are housing administrators with no clue that a student might apply to more than one college. 

What is most questionable ethically is the non-refundable nature of the deposit.  That is not equally true for all segments of the applicant pool.  If Florida is my first choice and there’s no question that I will enroll (which may be true for a large number of applicants at any flagship university), neither the deadline nor the fee is unreasonable.  If I voluntarily make an enrollment deposit to an institution in February or March, I don’t have a right to expect a refund if I change my mind before May 1 (if I make early deposit because I have been led to believe that will give me a better housing option, that’s different).

For other segments the deadline and non-refundable nature of the fee are indefensible.  The fee is to complete the housing contract, and the use of the word “contract” implies that the student will receive housing.  If I pay the fee and then decide not to attend Florida, I should receive a refund because I am not receiving the benefit.  The same is true if the university is unable to offer me housing.  If I decide to attend Florida and pay the fee but later decide I want to live off-campus, it’s not as clear that the university has any obligation.

The University of Florida housing office does have an appeal process in place for students who want to be released from the housing contract they have signed.  In the case of those who have been asked to pay the $175 fee prior to May 1 to complete the housing contract, they shouldn’t have to ask.  If the earlier deadline is necessary, then the fee should be refunded to any student who doesn’t end up attending the university.       

Deja Vu All Over Again

“It’s like déjà vu all over again.”  That is not only my favorite quote from the renowned American philosopher Yogi Berra (followed closely by “You can observe a lot just by watching” and “If you come to a fork in the road, take it”), but also my reaction when I learned that a senior admissions officer at Flagler College has stepped down after admitting to manipulating admissions data between 2010 and 2013.

Yes, once again we have a college or university admitting that its admissions statistics are inflated.  The list of miscreants—Claremont McKenna, Emory, GW, Bucknell, Mary Hardin-Baylor—reads like a list of battles from the Civil or Revolutionary Wars, and in fact it is difficult to know whether they are isolated incidents (well, not that isolated) or battles in a war for the soul of college admissions—business vs. profession, education vs. marketing/branding, good vs. evil (that might be overly dramatic).

I have posted on this topic several times before, and worry even more than usual that I will repeat myself, but the news connects to several issues I’ve been thinking about lately.

First of all, I’m sad to see another senior member of our profession forced to step down in disgrace, even as I recognize that misconduct by any of us reflects badly on all of us and damages the trust and credibility that is at the heart of our ability to serve the public good effectively.  I don’t know Marc Williar, the Flagler VP who stepped down, but after more than twenty years of service to Flagler and our profession, I hate to see his service end suddenly and ignominiously.

It makes me worry about the future of our profession.  After my last post, remembering the late Fred Hargadon, a regular correspondent wrote that admission deans like Fred Hargadon and Charlie Deacon at Georgetown (mercifully still with us) are an endangered species, that the generation of admissions officers to follow will not have the admissions-as- counseling mindset or the institutional support to practice student-centered college admissions that many of us entered the profession believing in. 

Several years ago I was contacted by a search consultant looking to fill the Admissions Dean position at a college I know well.  I happened to recommend the person who ultimately got the job, but in the course of the conversation the consultant asked if I knew of younger admissions professionals ready to step up to being a Dean or VP.  I responded that I knew a number of young professionals who were very good Assistant Deans, but I wasn’t sure they would make great Deans.  Among my friends who are independent school counselors, I have often wondered if the next generation will be as committed/neurotic about the job as our schools have counted on us being.

Of course, that may be a concern that every generation has about succeeding generations (and therefore further confirmation that I have become old and crotchety).  I’m guessing that plenty of folks had their doubts about me (and may still). And while I worry about the ethical common ground within our profession suffering from erosion in future generations, the reality is that those who have been guilty of falsifying data have been experienced professionals who are my peers.

That raises the question, How and why does this occur?  The easy answer is to place blame on the rogue admissions officer who manipulates data to make his institution and himself look better, and Mark Williar at Flagler accepted full responsibility in an interview with the St. Augustine Record.  I suspect the truth is more nuanced.

In the Flagler case, as in most of the other cases, the manipulation occurred in response to a one-year drop in profile numbers, specifically SAT scores, in the midst of long-term improvement.  We know there is intense pressure on admissions offices to increase applications, raise SAT scores, increase diversity, and lower the discount rate, all at the same time. Being successful just raises expectations.  Is it any wonder that an individual would buckle under the pressure and fudge the numbers in response?  The most insidious part of the “business-fication” college admissions is the assumption that if you’re not improving, you’re falling behind. Does a ten-point decrease in average SAT score really mean that an institution is markedly different? At what point is a drop in numbers truly meaningful?  Metrics are supposed to help measure progress in achieving goals, not become the goals.

I don’t know Flagler well (but am aware that the founder had connections to Richmond), but for many years it has been one of a handful of colleges and universities that claimed to have an acceptance rate much lower than I would have expected.  In 1992 Flagler reported to U.S. News an acceptance rate of 31%, lower that year than MIT, Duke, and Penn, among others. What raised eyebrows was that its average SAT scores were 300-400 points lower than other institutions with similarly low acceptance rates. That didn’t add up.  Either Flagler was an incredibly unique institution or it was playing games to keep the acceptance rate low.  I have had other counselors describe some of those games, but I won’t comment given that I have no personal knowledge. 

If I, a casual reader of the U.S. News rankings, noticed that disconnect, it makes me wonder why the folks at U.S. News didn’t pick up on it.  That leads to my final point.  The federal government is currently trying to develop a rankings-like system to evaluate colleges and universities in areas such as access, affordability, and outcomes.  I will devote a subsequent post to PIRS (Postsecondary Institution Ratings System), but two weeks ago the U.S. Department of Education hosted a technical symposium inviting experts to weigh in on what metrics the new “rankings” should include.  One of those experts was Bob Morse of U.S. News, described in a Washington Post article as the “guru of college rankings.”  Morse urged the government to ensure that colleges do not misreport data.  Perhaps U.S. News will share its verification system, given that it always responds to revelations of data misrepresentation expressing confidence that the misrepresentation is isolated and not common practice.  That confidence is at odds with a survey of admissions directors conducted by Inside Higher Ed.  That survey indicated that 90% believe that other institutions misrepresent data, and only 7% believe that those who rank have reliable systems in place to prevent falsifying data.

On this issue, I’ve had enough “déjà vu all over again.”