The commercialization of the college admissions process has undermined educational values and goals, according to a study that will be presented Saturday at the National Association for College Admission Counseling National Conference at the Austin Convention Center.
The rise in recruiting, stakeholders and money involved in the process has turned recruiting into a business venture where selective colleges and high-achieving students attempt to sell themselves to each other, said Lloyd Thacker, executive director of the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit Portland, Ore. group seeking to reform the admissions process.
"Admissions has distorted the way education is perceived and pursued between students, parents, families, high schools and colleges," he said. "What we set out to do was to discover how this admissions process has become a transactional one rather than an educational one."
Thacker said the study attempted to find out what high school seniors are learning in the admissions process.
"We found out that they're learning good things: how to think about themselves, how to communicate about themselves, how to plan for the future," Thacker said. "But they're also developing some negative attitudes and behaviors that are not educationally desirable. Their level of cynicism about higher education is not something that educators would respectively want, and it's a result of the practices and signals that they're hearing."
Timothy Brunold, associate dean and director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Southern California, said that the increase in competition among schools can generate some "unhealthy" side effects.
"There is certainly a lot of competition now, and I do agree that there is unhealthy competition," Brunold said. "We feel like at USC our process is very transparent and very personalized, but I do think there are quite a few businesses that see an opportunity and a great marketplace for their services. I think it's disappointing that the process is so frenzied that families are feeling the pressure to get whatever edge they can in the process."
According to the Education Conservancy Web site, ongoing studies seek to answer questions such as: "What do students think colleges are seeking in admissible students?" and "What are students learning about themselves and society in this process?"
Austin High senior Andrew Ramirez, who is currently applying to Notre Dame, UT and Texas Christian University, said he sees the admissions process as fair, though he did feel pressured to participate in extracurricular activities to improve his resume, which is one of the things students have expressed in similar studies as part of the process.
"I don't know about the whole top 10 percent thing for in-state, but everything else I think is pretty reasonable," Ramirez said. "I don't really feel like it's gotten in my way."
Be the first to comment on this article!