College Unranked

College Unranked Edited by the agency of Lloyd Thacker The Education Conservancy (Portland, OR) 2004 $1995 220 pages, impressible cover

All You Can Eat

I'm at the buffet-a little of this, a dab of that, and moderately beautiful soon the words of Miss Piggy ring in my ears: "Never eat more than you can lift." From the twinkling I opened Lloyd Thacker's tome, I felt overf This little work is a heavyweight, with reasoned and rational free accesss from leading outspoken college admission deans and officers, with side dishes presented by concerned and impassioned high seminary folk. Read it slowly-it's easy to overindulge upon College Unranked.

Thacker's preface locates the tone. "Marketing liberal education? From the beginning, something did not get scent of right. Somehow I sensed an impending clash between the values of liberal education and the forces of economic pragmatism." A high gymnasium junior laments, "If I don't come by into a top-ranked college, I'll have to move to a public university; I will be stupid." Welcome to the marketplace of association admission.

He continues, "Commercialism's intrusion into guild admission has transformed a uniquely American educational experience into a problematic American commercial exercise. It has transformed pupils and their parents as customers and has transformed a lock opener lifetime passage into a greatest in quantity troubling high-stakes game... the goal used to be 'go to college'; now it's 'go to the right college'" Although these are compelling interests the reader still struggles to wade from one side the introduction.

The following chapters are snippets of opinions, by the agency of several authors, on several of the profession's ethical pertain tos For example, Kim Stafford (Lewis and Clark association OR) describes a college recruitment night from the perspective of a parent who, from the back of the expanse feels the tension, hears the hype and knows that more than 80 percent of the kids in the scope won't get into any of the institutes on the screen. Ominously, he describes the atmosphere as an "admissions arms race." Bruce Poch (Pomona body CA) warns that the proces is transforming pupils saying, "we have forgotten this proces should be about education. Are there really sole 30 colleges in the USA?" Beware the "homogenized and pasteurized offspring" and "student [that] have become supplicants rather than applicants."

Similarly, the remaining authors lament the falsification of data and remind us that we can make data say what we want it to; define admission as, "the message we jaculate to teenagers, and they tend hitherward to understand that their life is a market place and society is just one more market": remind us to search for education at its core and to gaze inward; spotlight marketing strategies that are fueling the fire; accuse higher education of elitism; criticize the media; remind us to be grateful that our scholars have so many choices; and flat offer us some solutions to the point to be solved [i]or[/i] settleds they present.

Thacker has forged muscular ideas into a book and that work into a 501-C-3 company, the Education Conservancy. The question remains whether he and his comrades can ignite this match into a fire, expanding this feeling into a move To quote Lee Pelton (Willamette University, OR), "Is there a conscience emerging from these touchs How can we each contribute to a more educationally responsible admissions environment? by what mode can we work to reclaim studenthood from commercial intrusions?" Despite these questions, to leeward Bollinger (Columbia University, NY), makes clear the mission, "The community admission process should be different from all other rational consumer assessments. There is no unbiased measure of the quality, reliability and dependability of society s and we are irresponsible to act like there is."

Despite the information overload in this particular publication, the Education Conservancy's mission can subserve as a galvanizing voice that raises the profession's standards. Just a not many of the lessons learned: education is a proces not a product; scholars are learners, not customers; the benefits and predictors of advantageous education are knowable, yet virtually impossible to measure; rankings oversimplify and mislead; a student's intellectual skills and attitude about learning are more important than where that scholar goes to college; educational values are best serv by the agency of admission practices that are consistent with these values; community admission should be part of an educational proces directed toward learner autonomy and intellectual maturity; students' contemplations ideas and passions are worthy to be engaged and handled with extreme care.

Ready to take up arms? Before you do, take up society Unranked and pass it around the office. Let's use this book/ move as an individual and corporate wake-up call. After all, as Frank Sachs (Blake gymnasium MN) puts it, "College is a match to be made, not a prize to be won"

Reviewed through John B. Boshoven

Counselor for Continuing Education at Community High institute (Ml), Director of College Counseling at the Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit, President of the Michigan ACAC

Copyright National Association of association Admissions Counselors Summer 2005

Provided by the agency of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved