Putting Private College Counselors Out of Business

College counseling is a mess. On average, each public high school guidance counselor advises 457 students a year.

On the other hand, rich students pay up to $25,000 for private college counselors, who can give them precious 1:1 attention.

Private college counseling creates massive inequalities in college accessibility. It restricts social mobility by giving rich students an unfair advantage in getting accepted into top tier schools.

Among the most famous of these consultants, Michele Hernandez, charges around $40,000 for her services. For the same price as one year of college tuition, what do clients actually get out of this? According to BusinessWeek, "She selects classes for students, reviews their homework, and prods them to make an impression on teachers. She checks on the students' grades, scores, rankings. She tells parents when to hire tutors and then makes sure the kids do the extra work. She vets their vacation schedules. She plans their summers."

All this for $40,000, while other students are competing with 456 other students for a few minutes of attention with their high school guidance counselor. What we're seeing is the gilded age of education, where the rich and powerful are able to perpetuate their influence by getting an advantage into elite schools.

That's why today we've launched the new CampusSplash. It's a question and answer platform which allows prospective students to ask questions about thousands of colleges, grad schools, majors and educational programs. These questions are then answered by current students, experts, admission officers and alumni.

What we need is a three-pronged solution. We need foundations to continue to support college accessibility, schools and communities to invest in college counseling, and technology to innovate. We're doing our part; now it's time to do yours!

Allen Gannett is the co-founder of CampusSplash, a questions and answer website dedicated to giving all students complete information about colleges and grad schools.

 

Follow CampusSplash on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CampusSplash

Comments

[inmyhumbleopinion]

10:41 AM on 08/14/2011

This is a commendable idea, and well worth pursuing. I'll add that we need more qualified college counselors on each public high school campus who can spend more time with each student and their parents, as well as a counselor dedicated to the financial aid and scholarship application process to advise parents on their options. I'm finding that my kids' high school college counselor knows a lot about the state university system, but almost nothing about the private schools, particularly if they are out of state.

I'll even go one step further: the college advisory path has to start much earlier in the public schools, perhaps as early as 7th grade. Kids, especially those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, need to understand what it takes to get into a good college and why that's important. They can't suddenly wake up in 11th grade and find they haven't taken the right classes.