Study Reveals Growing Cynicism
In its September 25 issue, InsideHigherEd.com ran a story on a report released by the Education Conservancy regarding the perceptions of high school seniors of the college-going process (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/24/admit). The report, citing findings from focus group interviews held in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, cast a cynical spin on the manner in which colleges engage students in the recruitment and selection processes.
According to those surveyed, there is growing frustration regarding the disingenuous overtures of colleges in a courtship that drains the personal joy and educational benefit from young people as they approach the college application process. Quite frankly, it is about time these voices are heard. The process has lost its balance as young people struggle to maintain a competitive edge in search of the places to which they are told they must aspire. Test prep, essay coaching and prescriptive summer programming have taken over the teenage years in place of lives well lived. While few would argue with this assessment, I was amazed by the callous and cynical response the article drew from some of its readers.
Rather than hailing the initiative, a number of readers characterized Thacker as money-grubbing and opportunistic. One also chimed in to suggest that the students surveyed are simply reaping the outcomes of their own misguided ambitions. While “one robin doesn’t make a spring”–and these responses certainly can’t be characterized as overwhelming and conclusive–I find their tone disturbing. One might take exception with Thacker’s gameplan, but he is far from a charlatan. And I have trouble assessing young people with responsibility for the predicament in which they find themselves. They are simply responding to the process and expectations that have been set before them.
Rather, educators–and I count myself in that group–have the opportunity if not the responsibility to help students feel “comfortable in their own skin” as they make their way through the college process. We can begin by reminding them that the pathway to happiness and success does not have to lead through the campuses of a select few institutions.
Regrettably, the whole of higher education is becoming tainted by the lack of sincerity and transparency in the recruitment and selection processes. As Thacker’s study points out, the gap between the rhetoric and the reality is growing perceptibly. Much like other service providers in this space that are considered boorish and insensitive in their relationships with consumers, the institutions of higher education are on the brink of losing their exulted status as educational icons.
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