An epiphany about college attendance

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I think I just realized why discussions about college attendance seem to go in circles.

 

I can say that I agree that too many students are being pushed into college, often without regard for their ability to work on a college level. I can agree with the idea that college degrees have often been watered down (a degree writ large, if not all majors).

 

But at the same time, I can say that if there is a game being played, then I want my kids to be able to kick but and take names.

 

 

In other words, I can say that I think the push for universal college is a bad idea for our society (too expensive and too many aren't in a position to benefit from attending), while still hoping that my kids will be both able to attend and able to benefit from it.

[FaithManor]

Sebastian, I can completely understand how you feel.

 

I am no fan of college for everyone. On the other hand, there is tremendous job competition out there and I want to make sure my kids can make it. So, it's college for us. I have one that would be interested in the Air Force, but unfortunately, he has hypoglycemia, is very underweight, and somewhat flat footed. They aren't going to take him! Thankfully, he is now interested in zoology and research.

 

I don't like that standards in our education system have fallen such that college is the new high school and jobs become dead ends without degrees regardless of experience and on the job training. However, whatever the game is, kids need to be prepared to play that game.

 

Even in the military, advancement in many areas is no longer based on achievement. My cousin, who had been in the army for 15 years, heavily decorated, lots and lots of achievements, special ops, you name it, was told no more promotions without a degree. They didn't even care what the degree was, just "GO GET ONE!" On top of that, he was told he could only go for so long without another promotion before being drummed out and again, without that degree.... So, he went back to college and got a business management degree. I am not certain how that benefitted him as a jump instructor, but he was then able to make captain and major before retiring.

 

Faith

[mcconnellboys]

Bingo. Who is someone else, especially another elite college professor (already well-ensconced within the system, even if he is part-time) to say that MY kid isn't intelligent enough to receive any benefit from college and should therefore be consigned to the great proletariat masses of humanity? It seems to me that such a thing would be the beginning of a sort of caste system within our country, consigning many families to never be able to rise about a certain level....

[4wildberrys]

I think I just realized why discussions about college attendance seem to go in circles.

 

I can say that I agree that too many students are being pushed into college, often without regard for their ability to work on a college level. I can agree with the idea that college degrees have often been watered down (a degree writ large, if not all majors).

 

But at the same time, I can say that if there is a game being played, then I want my kids to be able to kick but and take names.

 

 

In other words, I can say that I think the push for universal college is a bad idea for our society (too expensive and too many aren't in a position to benefit from attending), while still hoping that my kids will be both able to attend and able to benefit from it.

 

 

My sentiments exactly! ;)

[elizabeth]

Bingo. Who is someone else, especially another elite college professor (already well-ensconced within the system, even if he is part-time) to say that MY kid isn't intelligent enough to receive any benefit from college and should therefore be consigned to the great proletariat masses of humanity? It seems to me that such a thing would be the beginning of a sort of caste system within our country, consigning many families to never be able to rise about a certain level....

 

These arguments seem to be the same used by minorities to mitigate the effects of substandard test scores by some who are not able to do college level work. FTR there is no doubt that any person within the normal range of ability and willing to do the work can in fact rise to the challenge. I am just really confused by the flip side of marxist thought in your comments but perhaps I am misunderstanding your point here. Please elaborate if you are so inclined and if not no offense taken. Your sons will benefit any university or college they choose to attend and that is why I am confused as to your comments here.

[cathmom]

What concerns me is students with marginal grades and little interest in college being pushed to attend, taking out loans and then not finishing, whether due to lack of desire or ability. I think that they are then worse off than if they had just started working after high school. And, if they later discover something they would be interested in going to college for, they may feel like they can't do it because they failed before.

[flyingiguana]

Bingo. Who is someone else, especially another elite college professor (already well-ensconced within the system, even if he is part-time) to say that MY kid isn't intelligent enough to receive any benefit from college and should therefore be consigned to the great proletariat masses of humanity? It seems to me that such a thing would be the beginning of a sort of caste system within our country, consigning many families to never be able to rise about a certain level....

 

But I can understand some folks in the system saying that it wasn't all they'd hoped, and that it might not be something they'd advise others to do.

[mcconnellboys]

Yes, I do agree with this, of course. If someone knows full well that they are not going to put forth the effort to make a passing grade in school, then why go and incur the debt?

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I think there is also the effect of mismatching students with schools that are too demanding for their ability or preparation. And I am also concerned about the number of students who don't graduate within four years or who drop out entirely.

 

I just finished reading the book Acceptance by Dave Marcus and thought it was a great read. A couple take aways. There is definitely a game that is played by both students and admissions boards. A rejection may be about things far beyond the students' control (like too many students like them applying when a college is trying to increase diversity). There probably isn't a perfect school, but there are possibly several schools that would be a good fit for a student. You need to think beyond a schools branding and consider things like major, career goals, location, etc. A student has to work to bring into focus what is special and unique about them.

 

There were moments reading the book when I choked up, thinking of the pressure that the students are under. And as homeschoolers, we end up taking on the pressure that in public and private schools is distributed among parents, teachers and guidance counselors. I would highly recommend the book as a way of thinking through the larger implications of applying for college.

[mcconnellboys]

Elizabeth, I'm sorry, but I just have to say "huh"? I have no idea what you mean here! That said, let me attempt to elaborate, perhaps....

 

I've been reading various pieces in magazines (lots posted here) over the course of the past couple of years that indicate about 3/4 of young people in college have no business there. I thought the OP was perhaps referring to these arguments....

 

Interestingly, at least some of these pieces are written by college professors who already have their piece of the pie. I think it's easy for those who have achieved success (at some level) to look down their noses at others - who may have to follow a different, more difficult and circuitous route in order to achieve a similar sort of success - and shake their heads, tut-tutting about how inferior those "others" are. Time may prove them right or wrong, but I'm guessing that 75% of kids are not "incapable" of higher education, as some authors have suggested in the recent past.

 

I'm sorry that I'm not very good at searches here, so can't attempt a link, but I'm sure you've probably read some of these articles, and I was assuming that was what the OP was referencing, too.

 

I do think that we, like most societies, have built an elite class - an old-boy sort of network - that includes the ultra-rich, many in upper levels of business, and politicians in general. There have been rumblings for the past few years about changing college tracks and re-directing a larger proportion of kids into more business or technical school type training unless they show greater promise for "true college level work." My problem with such an idea is "who gets to decide"? And on what sort of parameters will such decisions be based?

 

While I do agree that we need to stop discounting things like internships for real-world business and other training, the importance of technical training (we're beginning to encounter problems due to a dearth of people in skilled trade professions), etc., I do not agree that teachers should get to track kids and decide what type of career path they will be able to pursue. I don't agree with tracking throughout the primary and secondary school years, either. I think kids get short-changed because of it. I think mislabeling of kids is rampant, particularly for boys who don't fit the "good student" mold of so many traditional schools. One teacher could ruin a kid's future.... (I think that happens already, anyway....)

 

So I agree with the OP that I think too many kids think they have to go to college, but don't really want to, and don't know how to try when they get there, so they fail. I think there should be other options for those kids, and those options should not be associated with some idea of inferiority that would cause kids to shun them....

 

What I'm seeing among some of my older son's friends who always attended traditional schools is what I've been reading about for several years from authors who write all those books about boys and their problems within the educational system (Gurian, etc.). They are not properly prepared to go to college. They have no idea how to go about studying, organizing, etc. when they get there - and if they're not in a small college environment where they get lots of guidance from their professors and/or peers, then they may well fail.

 

That doesn't necessarily mean that they are too stupid for school in my opinion, however. One boy I know who did flunk out of a good school last year is very intelligent. It wasn't sheer laziness, either. He also didn't do very well in high school. It seems to me that too many parents (especially of sons) simply accept this sort of thing and don't really try to find out what the problem is and change it at an early age in order to get their children ready for college level work; they simply accept the teacher's assertions, via grades, meetings, etc. that this is all that child is capable of - I don't buy it. The kids, unfortunately, all too often DO buy into such ideas and think that they just can't do any better than that....

 

It seems that some of the articles I've been reading about college assert that a large proportion of students there ARE too stupid to be there. While they may be ignorant and unprepared, mentally incompetent is a whole 'nother thing in my mind, and I think it would be dangerous to allow high school teachers and/or college professors to decide whether or not kids can be allowed to attend college. I hope that we never go down that path as a country....

 

If some subset of people in our country is ever given even more control over our children's career futures than they now have, what would the result be? Would whole families of kinesthetic learners, for example, be consigned to forever labor within some blue-collar job as janitors, etc., when their minds might really best be fit for engineering? I don't know what it would look like; I just think that going down such a road could totally short-change large swaths of society....

 

I mean, I see folks who seem to think that late readers are the dim-witted kids and early readers are the geniuses. If kids begin to get sorted into tracks from the very beginnings of their education based on every little thing like that, where will it end? If any types of constraints become accepted, won't they just lead to more and more, over time?

 

I don't like to see kids who are not ready for college wasting time and money there - but what is the alternative? As the OP said, I certainly want my kids to be able to have the chance at it....

[mcconnellboys]

Yes! I think mis-matching is rampant! If only there could be better efforts made to get kids into the kinds of colleges that would serve them well, I think that would alleviate half the difficulty.

 

As far as kids not graduating in four years, I've heard complaints from lots of young people that in spite of all their efforts to try to organize their classes so that they can graduate timely, because of pre-requisites and the fact that not all classes they need are taught in every semester, or because they can't always get into a class they need, they simply can't finish up.

 

What I saw when I was working with placing minorities in jobs in South Louisiana was that some not so great colleges would take in applicants who were getting Pell grants and run them through three years of college with basically failing grades (or very low grades) the whole way. Because they weren't checked for a C average until the end of their junior year, they weren't expelled until then.... There were some business colleges I ran into at that time that were doing the same thing. It was just a big game. Some of the folks I worked with told me that their "professors" didn't even attempt to teach them anything in class. They felt hopeless - and I couldn't blame them.

 

As far as thinking about all the different aspects of what will make a perfect college experience, I tend to think (I hope) that homeschoolers are doing a much better job of that than traditional school counselors. While I did hear one or two stories from other parents during our college search about terrific school counselors, by far most of them felt they had received little or no help.

[mcconnellboys]

Yes, I thought that the adjunct professor who wrote one of the articles I read earlier was expressing some degree of bitterness about majoring in a liberal arts area and then not even being able to get what he considered a decent, full-time job as a professor. So he found it necessary to steer others away from what he considered his mistake. Okay, I guess. But I was a liberal arts major too, and I always managed to get a job I enjoyed doing. And if I didn't enjoy every aspect of it, I kept looking until I found something better. I don't know, I sort of see his complaint as being a little bit brattish or cry-babyish....

 

Maybe the work world has changed a lot since I was last in it. I still deal with it as a customer on a daily basis; I still talk to those who continue to work in it; but maybe it's more different than I think.

 

I think any degree in any area of post-secondary work should equip a student with the ability to think, to organize, to find work for themselves or make a niche for themselves - not immediately, but perhaps over time - that they will be happy with. I tend to think that maybe younger people today want immediate gratification and if they think they're not getting that, they give up. Maybe that professor, for instance, needs to use his talents to do something else if he can't get a full time professorship.... I feel certain that he has the skills to do meaningful work, even if it's not precisely what he wants. And maybe the expertise he builds will allow him to get a full professorship at some point in the future....

 

We're having conversations now on a regular basis with our older son about what is reasonable for him to expect regarding landing a job. He just told us last night that he wants a 100k job out of the gate, LOL! (And we did....) Yeah, we said, so do we all....

 

Reading the post someone made just a few days ago about college students who have graduated and now think their debt was not worth it, I just had to shake my head. There is obviously not enough dialogue going on between parents or other mentors and students about what constitutes reasonable expectations. And kids obviously don't have a clue that they might not be able to do precisely what they want in a job out of the gate; they may have to take other jobs and build up a resume, build trust, build expertise, before they can get moved into the sort of position they really want. What ever happened to "you have to start at the bottom?" Kids don't seem to get that....

 

And in this same vein, I tend to think our country has gotten way out of kilter with regard to what we want. We want it all and we want it now. Or yesterday. We are SO spoiled! We need to learn to live within our means and pare down so that our means go further! I'm as guilty as the next person at having too much (although I do have to say that most of what I have is someone else's hand-me-downs or cast-offs, so at least I recycle, LOL). But when I look at all we throw away as a society, all we waste, etc. I can see how our kids don't understand what it is to ever do without. They think they should have everything (after all, haven't we always given it to them) and they don't understand the need to work and wait for good things to come....

 

Where did I just read (probably here) about so many people feeling unhappy now? Yes, I think it was an article someone posted about how to drive your kids to psychotherapy. Young people feel a sort of unspecified malaise; they're never as happy as they think they should be. Well, how do we gauge happiness? Don't we need the contrast of doing hard things, things we don't like, don't always enjoy, in order to have satisfaction when we're done? Don't we have to work hard and wait for that extended pay-off, someday, in order to enjoy the satisfaction of that? Isn't at least some of happiness tied up in deferred gratification? I think young people don't understand this....

[cathmom]

Yes, I do agree with this, of course. If someone knows full well that they are not going to put forth the effort to make a passing grade in school, then why go and incur the debt?

 

 

Because everyone tells them that they can't succeed unless they go to college.

[elizabeth]

Thank you for your very detailed and well thought out response. I do understand what your point was and certainly am debating relative merits of different majors versus emplyment prospects with dd all the time. Actually I am very conflicted about it and have decided to really push her to explore ways in whcih she can take some coursework in areas that she is passionalte about and those that are marketable job skills. I am going to reread all the posts tomorrow as today was a rough one for me and I want to read thoroughly. This struck me as significant on first read:

I do think that we, like most societies, have built an elite class - an old-boy sort of network - that includes the ultra-rich, many in upper levels of business, and politicians in general. There have been rumblings for the past few years about changing college tracks and re-directing a larger proportion of kids into more business or technical school type training unless they show greater promise for "true college level work." My problem with such an idea is "who gets to decide"? And on what sort of parameters will such decisions be based?Nepotism and the old boy network are the backbone of the elite. It is an awful thought that we should steer young people with a good work ethic and the basic skill set to do well in university as the question of who decides is more and more gruesome. I read a book regarding the Admissions group at an Ivy . The actual criteria are dehumanizing, nespotic and demeaning .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gatekeepers

That said, it seems that test scores on PSAT and SAT are all that matters in some circles. I am struggling to guide dd in such a way that her choice is her own but the range of experience she has to draw from is expanded by my frank assessment of how I failed to make good choices for myself in regard to many things. The teen years do force one into a reflective state ....it is as you know, a great deal of work, angst and the feeling that if one is less than perfect as a teacher, parent and guidance counselour our efforts will fall short and their lives ruined or not all they could be. Thanks again for giving such a detailed and reflective answer. Off to watch my hero Nancy Grace. I wish I could master the finger pointing technique she uses. It would scare the bejeepers out of some clients. Not . :lol: In any event, I adore her and am a shameless fan.

[regentrude]

Time may prove them right or wrong, but I'm guessing that 75% of kids are not "incapable" of higher education, as some authors have suggested in the recent past.

 

It seems that some of the articles I've been reading about college assert that a large proportion of students there ARE too stupid to be there. While they may be ignorant and unprepared, mentally incompetent is a whole 'nother thing in my mind, and I think it would be dangerous to allow high school teachers and/or college professors to decide whether or not kids can be allowed to attend college.

It all is a question of what level work you expect college to be. One can design a college education which is accessible to 100% of students - and which will short change the stronger students because they will not be challenged. This is what happens in one-size-fits-all public high schools.

If, OTOH, you want a universty that challenges the top students and expands their horizons, you can only admit the top whatever percent.

 

As a college professor, I am confronted with these types of constraints every day: if I teach to the level of the lowest 20% of students, the middle 60% don't have to really work, and the top 20% are bored out of their mind and, in effect, cheated of the education they paid for.

To a large extent, college has become glorified high school. In the introductory physics courses I teach, I can cover only about 50-60% of the material that was covered in the introductory course I myself took as a student, because the percentage of students admitted to university is so much larger.

So, "college for everybody" will inevitably end in dumbing down college, and will lead to a devaluation of a 4 year degree... which means, only graduate degrees will be worth anything down the road.

 

One really good thing about the college system in the US is the diversity of levels, ranging from community college over good state universities to very selective top schools. This way, a student can find a college education corresponding to his level of ability. It may not be politically correct to say so, but abilities DO indeed vary and not everybody is mentally equipped to succeed in any subject at any level. Pretending it was otherwise does not help the student.

So, I don't find anything to complain about selectve schools - any student, who does not meet their criteria, can still attend a different school (and the entrance requirements for a good state university are not all that challenging)

 

I do not agree that teachers should get to track kids and decide what type of career path they will be able to pursue. I don't agree with tracking throughout the primary and secondary school years, either. I think kids get short-changed because of it. I think mislabeling of kids is rampant, particularly for boys who don't fit the "good student" mold of so many traditional schools.

A system with tracking can be valuable, if opportunities exist to change tracks at a later point. With the one-size-fits-all public school in this country, strong students are forced to endure years of utter boredom and won't learn to cope with challenges (which was the reason why I pulled my kids out of ps - they did not learn anything). As an instructor, I encounter smart students every semester who never had the opportunity to develop study skills, to learn how to put an effort in, because they breezed through high school and are completely lost and demotivated as colege freshmen. Had they been given a chance to develop work habits and frustration tolerance by being exposed to challenges, they would do much better.

 

A tracking system does not have to mean that decisions about professions are made at age ten. (My niece, who went to school in Germany and who, because of a disability, could only attend the lower track, a ten grade school, added a three year program and graduated with the same college preparatory high school degree she would have obtained in the highest tier high school. )

[Tarreymere]

Why should a prospective student have to expect to pay more money for the same degree in a more demanding 'top tier' school in order to be challenged? I think it has become painfully obvious that colleges and universities simply want more warm bodies in the seats to pay tuition and have deliberately dumbed down as far as they are able to get away with the academic content of the coursework to make their school more attractive to the broadest number of students. Tenure seems to be based on popularity contests, and textbook publishers lure faculty into requiring newer versions of the same textbook every year so that students can't save money buying the previous year's edition with the same content. Now we are told that attending college is an important 'social experience'! Is it any wonder why at least some people are starting to question the actual value of degree these days? It is sad commentary on the state of education in the United States when employers have to insist on a college degree as evidence that a prospective employee can read, write basic sentences legibly, and accurately perform simple arithmetic.

 

I am not encouraging my own to participate in this educational cult of mediocrity anymore than I encourage participation in pop culture or obsession with the accumulation of material goods. Our path may not be wide and paved and popular, but it does exist and I expect to see more and more travellers there if the higher education establishment doesn't soon begin to make the hard decisions necessary to effect the kind of change that will reestablish the credibility of colleges and universities as institutions of higher learning.

[regentrude]

Why should a prospective student have to expect to pay more money for the same degree in a more demanding 'top tier' school in order to be challenged? I think it has become painfully obvious that colleges and universities simply want more warm bodies in the seats to pay tuition and have deliberately dumbed down as far as they are able to get away with the academic content of the coursework to make their school more attractive to the broadest number of students.

 

 

At the same time, people (even here on this board) complain about standardized tests or tracking which would make it possible to offer more rigorous coursework to qualified students. Of course a selective school which can choose the top students can cover more and more in depth material. If I have to teach students who are struggling with algebra I can not cover the same material that I could teach to students who come in proficient in calculus.

But people complain if the courses are too hard, if drop out rates of college students are too high, if too many people fail a class - and expect colleges to offer remedial courses because students enter college unprepared. You can't have it both ways. Either schools can pick students and strive for excellence - or they have to hold hands and babysit kids who are not prepared for college, because the public wants accessibility.

 

Tenure seems to be based on popularity contests

 

That is an unjustified generalization. In order to obtain tenure in our field, an impressive record of research results, a large number of publications, a win of elusive grant money AND good teaching evaluations are required. I don't know of a colleague who had this handed to him for popularity.

 

and textbook publishers lure faculty into requiring newer versions of the same textbook every year so that students can't save money buying the previous year's edition with the same content. .

This is the publisher's agenda - and not every professor is playing the game. Many instructors inform students which older editions are equivalent and can be used for their course. If the instructor doe not volunteer this information, the student can ask and will often be just fine.

(The flip side is how few of the students who did pay for the expensive book can be bothered to open it for and do the assigned reading)

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Thank you for your very detailed and well thought out response. I do understand what your point was and certainly am debating relative merits of different majors versus emplyment prospects with dd all the time. Actually I am very conflicted about it and have decided to really push her to explore ways in whcih she can take some coursework in areas that she is passionalte about and those that are marketable job skills. I am going to reread all the posts tomorrow as today was a rough one for me and I want to read thoroughly. This struck me as significant on first read:

I do think that we, like most societies, have built an elite class - an old-boy sort of network - that includes the ultra-rich, many in upper levels of business, and politicians in general. There have been rumblings for the past few years about changing college tracks and re-directing a larger proportion of kids into more business or technical school type training unless they show greater promise for "true college level work." My problem with such an idea is "who gets to decide"? And on what sort of parameters will such decisions be based?Nepotism and the old boy network are the backbone of the elite. It is an awful thought that we should steer young people with a good work ethic and the basic skill set to do well in university as the question of who decides is more and more gruesome. I read a book regarding the Admissions group at an Ivy . The actual criteria are dehumanizing, nespotic and demeaning .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gatekeepers

That said, it seems that test scores on PSAT and SAT are all that matters in some circles. I am struggling to guide dd in such a way that her choice is her own but the range of experience she has to draw from is expanded by my frank assessment of how I failed to make good choices for myself in regard to many things. The teen years do force one into a reflective state ....it is as you know, a great deal of work, angst and the feeling that if one is less than perfect as a teacher, parent and guidance counselour our efforts will fall short and their lives ruined or not all they could be. Thanks again for giving such a detailed and reflective answer. Off to watch my hero Nancy Grace. I wish I could master the finger pointing technique she uses. It would scare the bejeepers out of some clients. Not . :lol: In any event, I adore her and am a shameless fan.

 

I can understand a frustration that a system that limits entry to upper tiers of education to a select number will end up basing it on something other than meritocracy. But I would argue that we often don't have a meritocracy now.

 

Any time that you say, this is the requirement or we will take the top X%, there will be some perception of unfairness. Someone is always just below the requirement or a couple places below that top %.

 

But when you place an emphasis on things like geographic diversity, overcoming adversity in childhood, race and ethnic diversity, leveling of this or that historic injustice, you can end up with unfairness too. Take a look, for example at the trend toward Asians needing to have higher qualifications because they are perceived as being more academically talented as a group. A quota can easily become a cap (that was an issue in my undergraduate experience, where women's admissions were supposed to shadow fleet percentages and the common wisdom was that the grades and test scores of female students were higher than men's because there were so few slots and less mitigation by varsity sports recruiting).

 

I can't think of any process designed to funnel a large number of applicants into a far smaller number of admissions that could be much other than dehumanizing.

 

I also keep thinking of the underclassman I had in my squad who was from a small hollow in Hazard County, Kentucky. His school (and town) had no library. He couldn't even start in the entry level freshman math class, but was in SMOO5, a pre-calculus class, which he was failing most of the first semester. He not only wasn't partaking in the standard freshman math class, but had to be excused from the standard plebe professional demands. We were quizzing his freshman squadmates on ships and aircraft while making him do algebra problems at come arounds. Was it fair that he was accepted, in the interest of geographic and economic diversity? Was there a better prepared student in Louisville or Lexington who was turned down? Was it fair to his classmates, who were expected to master both math and the characteristics of cruisers and fighter aircraft?

 

He did graduate and last I checked, was a career Navy officer. But it can be darned difficult to define what fairness is.

 

As for me and my house, all I can do is try to teach my sons to be hard working and excellent students, who are able to produce the sort of certifying outside test results that admissions offices use as a filter.

[mcconnellboys]

I would not mind tracking if it did not seem to take effect by third grade and lock a student in for life, but I've never seen instances otherwise in the places where I've lived. I don't know why a simple note in a student record from someone other, later teachers perhaps don't know is taken as gospel, but that seems to be precisely what occurs.

 

I've seen too many kids short-changed and their educations ruined by the attitude of their teachers toward them - an attitude tainted by what others have said about them. By the time they get to you, kids are already molded into what others told them they were for all their years of growth. A lot who might have been your brightest students never do get to you, because they've been labeled such failures that they end up not going to college at all, or in community colleges. I think that's a shame....

[mcconnellboys]

I agree that there is too much diversity amongst humans to make absolute fairness possible. There do have to be some parameters, of course, but I don't like seeing quotas of any sort.

 

I'm not sure how best to develop parameters, however, and as Elizabeth has mentioned/demonstrated, at least some schools within our educational system have adopted standards with which most of us would probably not agree.

 

While my older son did not apply to any strictly "ivy" sorts of schools, we did encourage him to apply to a variety of schools and there were a couple in that mix that ended up seeming to be more interested in parents attending cocktail parties, etc. than in what he might bring to the table as a student. For me, those sorts of things were a warning shot and I did not further encourage his pursuit of those schools (and he did not end up getting into one, nor choosing the other, thankfully).

 

I think one way for us, as parents, to help our students navigate the process is not just to try to find schools that fit the bill in terms of quality of life, majors/minors offered, travel abroad/internships offered, amount of endowment/scholarships offered, etc., but also to encourage our students to apply to a variety of different size schools of different make-up (re: conservative/liberal) and in a variety of geographic locations.

 

We do all know that schools are seeking diversity in their student bodies and sometimes schools in one particular area might really want students from your geographical area, and thus might offer your student more scholarship dollars in order to attract them there. There might also be at least the perception that your area is more liberal/conservative and so a school of opposite reputation might find your student more attractive. We definitely saw some of this come into play for my son and his friends as they went through their senior year of high school.

 

For my son, schools further away that were better endowed offered more dollars, in general. These schools also tended to pull most of their students from a geographical area different than our own. (I asked at every school we ever visited what geographical area they pulled a majority percentage of their students from....) Schools closer to home that already typically enrolled a larger majority of local kids offered less money (and exactly the same amounts from one school to the next). So it's a bit of a game, yes. If students are willing to take a risk and move somewhere further away, scholarship offers may be better (at least in our limited experience). And those schools may be just as good or better than schools closer to home.

 

Interestingly, my son also got into one of the most liberal schools in the country (again, because I think they were looking for diversity that they felt he would offer); they are not as well endowed and their scholarship offer was not as good as some others, however.

 

SO, all that to say that no, we humans don't seem to be able to enforce unbiased meritocracy. It's always "who you know" or "what you know" or "where you're from" or "what gender you are," etc.

 

Since it seems to be human nature to do such things, I think it behooves us, as parents, to learn all we can about college admissions processes and work that system to the benefit of our students insofar as we can. And I think parents of kids in traditional schools really often don't get that involved in the college selection process and have no more clue than their students how to best work that system to their advantage.

 

That said, it is our students, ultimately, who should be going into interviews and favorably (or otherwise) impressing admissions officers. Even then, some kids get to school and hate it - or it just doesn't work out as a good fit for them for whatever reason. I don't think those kids should be banned from trying elsewhere.

 

And I don't think that possibly erroneous records, which might include inappropriate comments from prior teachers, should be following students and perhaps hampering them from gaining admission to higher education.

 

I don't know the answers, of course! I just feel that too many of our kids (particularly boys for about the past 3 decades) are being short-changed in traditional schools. They may well not be ready for college, but not because of mental incapability. I wish there were some sort of mediation center that could help work with such kids and get them ready for college, perhaps. I know that our community colleges are used for this to some extent, but if your local one isn't all that good, it may just be more of the same of what they've experience for the past 13 years + and it may do them no good.

 

Sebastian, you talk about that young man who came from one of the poorest areas of our country and few to no resources. And yet he had the mental ability (I'm guessing) to become an officer. He just needed to get caught up. I wish there was a place where young people could go for alternative types of schooling to help them catch up and get ready for college. If our schools did their jobs that wouldn't be necessary, but they don't....

 

I know that it's frustrating for those working in higher education to get in kids who are totally unprepared. But my angst over all this is that it doesn't mean they don't have good minds that COULD be properly prepared, with the right work. It's that they've been caught in a system that does not serve most kids very well.... What is the answer? I don't think it's to simply shuffle a large percentage of our kids into business or trades training, telling them they're not fit for anything more....