Should a college counseling office serve the educational part of a school’s mission or the advancement part of its mission? I remember discussing that question several years ago with a friend whose school was considering placing the college counseling office organizationally under the same umbrella as the development and admissions offices.
I argued then, and continue to believe today, that college counseling is first and foremost educational, that the college search is ultimately about students figuring out who they are and what they care about. I also recognize that it’s not that simple.
Early in my career, I remember a strategic planning process where I fought for my office’s work to be described as “counseling” and not as “placement.” I argued that language is important, that “college counseling” is about process, about helping students find the right college fit, while “placement” is about results and suggests that a school places students in the way that a Hollywood agent or corporate recruiter places clients. I lost the battle but stuck around long enough to ultimately win the war.
I particularly think about the two conceptions of college counseling at this time of year. Later this week my school will hold commencement exercises marking the end of each senior’s high school journey. At a school that describes itself as a college preparatory school, part of that journey is preparing students for admission to and success in college.
At the same time, this time of year can easily deteriorate into seeing college choices as public relations opportunities. The communications office at my school always publishes an ad in the local newspaper celebrating our graduates, a practice begun by our sister school. The ad focuses on the colleges where the graduates will matriculate.
At least the ad lists all the colleges where graduates will attend. Once upon a time the ad cherry-picked the college list to highlight the “prestigious” names. I argued that we should be proud of every student’s college choice, that we should celebrate going to college rather than going to certain colleges. But I also recognize the reality that people in our community draw conclusions about the school and about the college counseling program based on the college list.
I have been considering this issue in a new light in the wake of the news about the student from New Orleans who applied to more than 200 colleges and received more than $9 million dollars in scholarships, leading the school to put in a claim with Guinness World Records. I wrote about that issue in my last post, but it may also become the poster child for a school losing sight of the point of the college process.
Last week there were two interesting developments in the case. The student in question went to D.C. with his family and the head of the school and received a tour of the U.S. Capitol as well as several congratulatory tweets from his Congressman. And I received an email from someone who works at the school.
The email indicated that the concerns expressed in the last post were shared by many of the faculty and staff at the school. They feel that the attention given to the one student in his quest to set the “record” came at the expense of other seniors at the school.
The email alleges that adults at the school were responsible for preparing many of the 200 applications, and that the school’s priority on advancing the scholarship narrative meant that other seniors didn’t receive time, attention, and the help they needed. The correspondent suggested that one of the school’s conscious PR strategies is to identify one “golden child” and relentlessly promote them at the expense of other students.
I am not part of the school community, so am not capable of judging what is true and what is not. I did go to the school website, and immediately saw a pop-up that takes you to a page all about the student’s achievement, including the opportunity to donate for the trip to Washington, D.C.
Some of the allegations in the email are troubling. If the student was able to apply to 200 colleges and for all of the scholarships only with major assistance from adults at the school, that’s ethically questionable or wrong, depending on the level of assistance. If the effort to set a record was a conscious PR stunt, then both the student and his classmates are being taken advantage of by adults.
It’s easy to pass judgment on the school in New Orleans, but I prefer to focus on the larger issue of how we make sure as counselors and educators that our motives are pure and in a student’s interest rather than our own. In any given year, I might have a handful of students with the potential to be admitted to a prestigious, “rejective” college. I know how hard those acceptances are to earn, and I know that my school (and perhaps the College Counseling Office) looks good when we have success with those schools.
The question is what we do with that knowledge. Obviously we want to support those students who face a higher bar, but are we doing that for their benefit or ours? And do we end up treating those students differently than their classmates who will end up at less “glamorous” college destinations?
I hope not. I believe that my job as a counselor is to provide every single student with the same level of “customer service” (a term I hate), helping them achieve their dreams and serving as a trail guide on their journey. I believe that the college search should be about fit rather than prestige, but I also know that the prestige world-view saturates our culture and can be hard to inoculate yourself from. I hope that being aware of the trap helps keep me from falling into the trap.
Martin Buber’s I-Thou relationship is an important concept in counseling, calling on us to value the dignity and worth of those with whom we interact and treat them as subjects rather than objects. We have to be particularly careful of that in college counseling, given how easily a student’s college destination can become a stand-in or metric for qualities that are otherwise hard to measure.
In the last post I made a point to congratulate the student in question for an impressive accomplishment. My beef is with the adults. I’m not sure that they have sent either the student or the rest of us messages that we should feel good about. The student recently announced that he will be attending Cornell. I hope and trust that Cornell won’t become another ring in the PR circus this has become.