Re: Getting on the treadmill early

Noel wrote:

Oh, dear.... I set out to save the article so that I could edit it later, but I clicked on the wrong button. That'll teach me to do this sort of thing after midnight....


I found this article to be sad. These kids are gathering "lines" for
their college applications, but how many of them really learn anything?
This parallels what goes on in much of corporate life, the valuing of
titles/labels/"documented accomplishment" over real substance. I was
heartened by the crowd of Asian kids described at the end, who got into
college the old-fashioned way, by just working hard (what a concept).

<snip>

What this means is that these babies will have an unlucky X factor at
work -- the sheer size of their numbers. Even fewer spots are available
at the nation's 100-plus most selective colleges at a time when they're
turning away applicants in record numbers. And the admissions process
itself -- make that contest -- has devolved into a frenzied craze where
success is defined as getting into the Ivy Leagues, failure is a grade
point under 4.0, and less-than-near-perfect test scores shouldn't be
discussed in polite company.

I once had a student who complained to his father that he was failing my course. His father called my boss about it and I was hauled into the latter's office. When I was told about the kid's concern, I was astounded. He was one of my better students but for him, it seemed, 85% was a failure.


Over the past two decades, the college-admissions process has undergone
a dramatic transformation. It's now a multibillion-dollar industry.
Anxious families with enough disposable income hire SWAT teams of test
prep experts, "summer experience" advisors and even "stagers," private
counselors who help spruce up a student's image. They're pursuing a
prestigious degree they believe will unlock the door to the good life
for the Baby Boomets. Even though the average acceptance rate at
colleges and universities nationwide is 70 percent, studies show that
one in 10 freshmen are attending schools that were their third choice
or lower. So, it's no surprise that applying to eight to 12 colleges is
common. Everyone involved -- high school counselors, university
presidents, parents, students and their paid consultants -- seem to
agree that the college admissions process is broken, but no one is sure
how to fix it, who's to blame and what the long-term ramifications will
be.

It isn't just the admission process that's broken. The whole system has been malfunctioning for at least a generation and has become worse in the last fifteen years.

Unfortunately, there are too many parties that have a vested interest in maintaining the education system in a permanent state of disrepair. If things worked properly, a lot of "consultants" would actually have to work for a living and educational institutions would actually have to teach rather than finding ways of performing cashectomies on students.


"The extreme version is that we end up with a population that knows how
to play games and market themselves, with or without substance behind
it, rather than approaching thoughtfully an educational experience,"
observes Bruce Poch, dean of admissions at elite Pomona College, near
Los Angeles. "We've already had our Enrons and Tycos. As a country, we
should be worried about the link to the next generation of leadership
that we're generating."

Unfortunately, that gamesmanship is also present in educational institutions.

During my Ph. D. residency, I was a TA. In one course, I had a student who didn't like the grade I gave her on her lab report. I gave her 70%, and was being generous by doing so because her submission really wasn't suitable, but she expected at least 90%.

I was prepared to go through it with her, explaining what I was looking for but also prepared to hear her side and would have been willing to re-evaluate the grade based on what she said. I was open to the possibility that I didn't understand something, but she also had to be prepared to hear what I had to say. I was an experienced professional engineer and, so, could give her some advice which would be useful later on when she was working for a company.

Rather than engage in a reasoned discussion, she quickly started throwing a tantrum, behaving in a manner unbecoming someone who aspired to be a member of a profession. Eventually, I'd had enough of her mischief, gave her the mark she wanted, and she left quite satisfied.

I reported the incident to the prof but he did nothing.


Those are not comforting words for those of us beginning the college
admissions journey. In a few days, our 16-year-old daughters and sons
will march into what some educators call "the academic crucible" -- the
junior year of high school when Advanced Placement classes are packed,
SAT prep courses are in full swing and an increasing number of parents
ratchet up the marketing machinery to boost the odds to get their kids
into prestigious colleges. Is it our fault? Are we forcing our kids to
mirror our own perfection-driven lives at a time when it's harder than
ever to achieve?

Unfortunately, there are parents like that. As well, there are those who are using their kids to achieve what they could never do when they were younger.

Or is it selective colleges and universities that
market themselves with Madison Avenue savvy only to reject the majority
of kids they've encouraged to apply?

Yes. They have an image to maintain.

Or, is it the annual $726 million
undergraduate test-prep industry that has commercialized the
college-admissions process, turning what used to be a pursuit of
academic excellence into a marketing exercise?

Yes. Education is now a business and must be marketed as such. Universities are advertising themselves in a way not unlike that used to sell, say, laundry detergent.

<snip>

"Education is being sold as a product, and kids are being sold to as
consumers," warns Lloyd Thacker, founder and executive director of the
Education Conservancy.

That's been the case for at least the last fifteen years. At the place where I used to teach, we were told one day that, from then on, students would be "customers" and teaching would be "learning delivery".

"Parents are looking at kids as trophy kids,
validating their parenthood." Thacker, a former college admissions
officer and high school college counselor, calls this Bumper Sticker
Prestige. He's one of the loudest voices calling for reform. In
mid-June, he accomplished what seemed impossible two years ago when
Thacker launched the Conservancy, a nonprofit committed to reforming
the college admissions process. At a recent meeting in New York, he
assembled 22 educators, including several presidents of exclusive
private liberal arts colleges, for a groundbreaking discussion about
how they could exert their leadership to reclaim the process. Will they
be able to push back against the commercialism they helped unleash?

That's unlikely as there are too many people who profit from the status quo.

<snip>

Such a driven high school lifestyle might sound surreal -- even absurd
-- unless you've recently navigated a kid through the college prep
maze. Here's a primer on what's happened since you last stepped foot on
a college campus. Back in the 1980s, when enrollment dipped and federal
funding was cut, selective colleges resorted to commercial marketing
practices to attract and retain students. The marketing worked so well
that the number of applicants swelled, triggering competition that's
intensified with each new -- and larger -- class of Baby Boom Echoers.
The marketing hype begat the rankings hype: the higher the ranking in
US News &World Report's Best College issue, the more kids applied, and
the more kids were rejected.

We've got something similar here in Canada. This year, a number of universities declined to participate.

Enter the testing and consulting folks who
promised to improve a student's odds by boosting their standardized
test scores and polishing the college application. Fearful Baby Boom
parents who'd read the dismal admissions numbers were -- and still are
-- easy prey. Stressed teenagers scramble to achieve what too often is
virtually impossible. Education becomes an incidental byproduct of a
teenager's high school years.

And if they do get accepted, how many of them will have an attitude of entitlement?


What will it take to unhook this runaway train of rankings,
commercialization and fear? "First, you must get lots of colleges and
universities to reign in their unreasonable marketing efforts," says
Bob Laird, the retired director of undergraduate admissions at UC
Berkeley. "They are so worried about maintaining their enrollment or
moving up in the prestige category that they do a lot of questionable
things, from purchasing (student) names from the College Board and
deluging them with marketing literature, to sending partially filled
out electronic application forms with names, addresses and other
demographic information." Laird notes that at 28 cents a name, selling
lists to colleges is a profit-maker for the College Board, the
nonprofit that oversees SAT testing.

In addition, some university departments change their names and images in order to increase "brand recognition".

<snip>
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