Overthrowing College Admission Craziness

UPDATE:
HARVARD ENDS EARLY ADMISSION although I note it was a mere handful of years ago that Ivy Educrats claimed to have rejected early admission in favor of "early decision" (or the other way around?) and so what? This new claim to care about kids and parents isn't much less convoluted. . . to me, the only real news may be that Harvard and her ivy-covered sisters come across as skittish and hard-glittery, apparently feeling the pressure to seem to be doing SOMETHING -- even if in the end, the trumpeted splendor of their insular "new" attitude amounts to little more than deigning to serve the clamoring rabble of parents and kids one afternoon of cake.

Here's the published recipe for what they've cooked up:

Harvard’s decision — to be announced today — is likely to put pressure on other colleges, which acknowledge the same concerns but have been reluctant to take any step that could put them at a disadvantage in the heated competition for the top students.

“We think this will produce a fairer process, because the existing process has been shown to advantage those who are already advantaged,’’ Derek Bok, the interim president of Harvard, said yesterday in an interview.

Mr. Bok said students who were more affluent and sophisticated were the ones most likely to apply for early admission. . .
Many admissions deans and high school guidance counselors greeted Harvard’s decision — which is to go into effect for applicants in the fall of 2007 — with astonishment and delight.

“Wow, it’s incredible,’’ said Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has a nonbinding early admissions program.

Ms. Jones has spoken widely about reducing the pressure and stress of admissions. “It has the capacity to change a lot of things in this business,’’ she said. “It’s bold enough for other schools to really reconsider what they’re doing. I wish them so much luck in this.’’

Lloyd Thacker, the executive director of the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit group created to lobby for an overhaul in admissions procedures, said his eyes had teared up when he heard the news.
“I’m so glad,” Mr.Thacker said. “I can’t believe it.’’

“The most powerful institution in the country is saying, singularly, yes, something is wrong with this and we’re going to try to act in the public interest,’’ he added.

But here's the blue-book exam question for our class today: If America gives a private party -- or an obscenely overpriced, elite, self-congratulatory and rarified college education -- and nobody comes to eat the cake, will it make a sound as it falls over of its own impressive age and weight? Or just knock over the nearest trees in that tightly clustered homogenous copse they fancy is the whole forest, trees that only seem to tower when you're one small student under them and lost in the darkness they create by blotting out the sunlight?

And no matter how much noise the ivy-covered trees do make as they topple, who among us industrious townfolk will even notice the tremble except anyone who happens to be picking 'shrooms in the woods as the mighty fall?

(Yuck, mushroom cake? I need a better-integrated metaphor or at least a plausible rationale for admitting ideas to this blog! Let's see, Glenn Beck shares a manly meatloaf cake with mashed potato icing and ketchup decoration on his homepage, with photos and recipe I can't link right now while the website search function is down, sorry - but mushrooms? Nah, the public will never go for it . . .maybe I can blog higher education as wild mushroom picking with one's own handwoven basket versus tasteless factory farm mushrooms shrink-wrapped and shipped by government subsidized conglomerates, hmmm . . .)
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ORIGINAL BLOG from June 2006 -
Even before Lloyd Thacker quit his job as a counselor in 2004, he had become something of a legend in the world of college admissions. . .for his assaults on standardized testing, admissions consultants for students, enrollment consultants for colleges, early decision hysteria and just about every other trend in college admissions.

Admissions officers bought his book, cheered Thacker on, and donated to his new nonprofit group, but they quietly doubted he’d have much impact. He’ll run out of money, they predicted. He’ll never get any presidents to back him. He’s absolutely right about the issues, but the odds are stacked against him.

All of the sudden, however, there are signs that Thacker’s quest to reform college admissions just might have legs. Increasingly, he’s appearing not just before admissions officials, but presidents.

And a number of them — along with foundation officials — are gathering in New York City tomorrow to talk about how the admissions process, particularly at competitive private colleges, might be changed.

Among those scheduled to participate are the presidents of Amherst, Barnard, Bates, Earlham, Grinnell, Pitzer, Reed, Swarthmore and Williams Colleges and Drew University. Officials from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Christian A. Johnson Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation are also involved in the effort.

The discussions will be private and no manifesto is expected to emerge. But participants say that they anticipate discussion about such topics as moving away from standardized testing, resistance to the rankings of colleges, and the creation of a code of ethics that might discourage such popular tactics as “leveraging” financial aid. . .

Michael McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation and former president of Macalester College. . .thinks that Thacker has traction in part because the problems have become so bad.

“There really is a kind of pathological situation, with students from good suburban high schools and prep schools and the admissions operations at top academic institutions where they are combining to make each other crazy,” he says. Even if the worst problem in admissions is “the failure of so many poor kids to go to college at all,” there is a sense that the hysteria at the top end is bad and diverting attention and needs to change. . . .

Laura Skandera Trombley, president of Pitzer, says that moving away from the SAT reflects much more than just questioning the value of the test. (Pitzer is among the competitive liberal arts colleges that no longer requires it.)

“We have felt for some years that this was becoming far too numbers oriented, in terms not just of the emphasis on the SAT, but the ways in which colleges are interpreting and reporting back data to succeed with the various rankings,” she says. Moving away from the SAT is moving away from focusing on numbers, not students, she says.

The numbers also make college admission seem like “a survival contest,” she says, rather than an educational process.

. . . One reason for her reaction, she says, is that her public speeches have shown her that parents are deeply frustrated by the system — and she wants to change it. The reaction from parents also resonates with her because she feels it as a parent herself, and sees parents as allies. Her 10-year-old son told her that some of his friends are receiving PSAT books and training sessions to work on this summer, Trombley says, with more than a little outrage — not at the parents, but the entire system.

“Whenever I give a talk on this, I hear from parents. They have this enormous worry. We try to be the best parents we can be, and yet there is an emptiness about this process. We buy the SAT kits. We send the kids to SAT camp. We hire essay tutors. We want our kids to get in. But where is the meaning in all of this?” she asks.

Parents should start lobbying colleges to abandon the SAT, so that students can stop worrying about the SAT and focus on really learning in high school and also experiencing being young people, she says.

“Think how much money we all spend on tutoring services — what if we spent it on educational experiences?” she says.

In such a world, she says, 10-year-olds like her son would not be hearing from their friends about prepping for the PSAT. What’s he doing this summer? Among other activities, Trombley says, “he’s going fishing.”

-- excerpted from Scott Jaschik's June 14 "Admissions Revolution" for InsideHigherEd.com

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