The Heart Talks Blog
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This Heart Talks workshop invites parents and caregivers to come together, settle into their quiet center, and from there make even wiser decisions as parents. You will leave with a clearer sense of your purpose, strengths, and intentions and how your truest self can transform your parenting.
Co-hosted by Dagmar Kauffman of On Balance Parenting and Dr. Kelly Flanagan of Artisan Clinical Associates.
It’s that time of year. College applications and essays are being written and submitted. Students and parents are inundated with an overwhelming number of e-mails and informational brochures from colleges and universities. E-mails with catchy subject lines and four-color glossy brochures in inboxes and mailboxes. Information overload!
University selection can be overwhelming as it is hard to discern which selection criteria to consider. To that end, I invite you to reflect on (1) trends in college and university student recruitment; (2) information on tuition, student debt, and employment prospects; and (3) why college rankings should not be a major consideration in college or university selection.
Ranking Prospective Students Before They Apply
An increasing number of colleges and universities install cookies on students’ computers while they are browsing their admission pages to track students’ online browsing habits including family income. According to this review by The Washington Post “at least 44 public and private universities in the United States work with outside consulting companies to collect and analyze data on prospective students, by tracking their Web activity or formulating predictive scores to measure each student’s likelihood of enrolling.”
Data collected includes high school transcripts, test scores, zip codes, ethnic backgrounds, web browsing histories and household income. The data is then used to rank prospective applicants with the scores from 1-100 indicating how much attention a particular candidate will receive in the application process.
In times of high operating costs and reduced government funding as colleges/universities struggle financially to stay afloat, college admission offices are now tasked more than ever with recruiting consumers who can pay full tuition. Among the institutions that track data of prospective students and/or use predictive analysis to score students are Illinois Wesleyan University, Indiana University, Marquette University, University of Kentucky, University of Mississippi, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Vanderbilt University, Virginia Tech and Western Kentucky University.
Tuition costs, Student loans, Employment prospects
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), annual undergraduate education costs (tuition, fees, room, board) at public four-year institutions rose 31 percent between the 2006-07 and 2016-17 academic year. Student loan debt is at an all-time high, and the “average student borrower will owe about $34,000 upon graduation.”
In addition to ballooning tuition costs, rising student loan debt, graduates experience a diminished return on their investment due to “significant skills mismatches between graduates’ abilities and jobs available.”
College Rankings
In considering colleges and universities, evidence suggests that a student’s successful college experience is based more on engagement within the college than on where one attends.* Rankings do not provide prospective students and their parents with valuable information. As a matter for fact, college rankings are problematic because they measure and arbitrarily weight criteria that have little or no bearing on academic quality or student learning outcomes.
This article outlines the problems associated with the rankings designed to measure ‘academic quality’ well. Among the problematic measures and their respective weights are alumni giving (5 %), smaller class size (8%), SAT & ACT scores (7.75%), faculty salary (7%) and academic reputation (20%).
Academic quality is not only a completely subjective measure but it is surprising to find out how U.S. News measures the “reputation through a survey it sends out to more than 4,000 college presidents, provosts and admission officers.” How do you ask do the chief academic officers have any idea about the quality of other institutions or the ability to objectively rate them? They don’t.
Faculty salaries have no bearing on the quality of an instructor’s teaching ability. And more often than not, high-paid faculty will not be actually the ones teaching undergraduates.
SAT/ACT scores are used by colleges to bump up their “student excellence” ratings. Students get rejected based on their test scores, “turning the rejection of students into an institutional asset.”
And while smaller class size might make initial sense in affecting academic quality, colleges often manipulate average class size by “capping initial class size only to allow more students to enroll later” when the college’s initial class size numbers have been submitted.
And finally, alumni giving is another problematic criterion in determining academic quality. U.S. News says the measure “indicates student satisfaction and continued engagement with the school.” Just this year, the University of California-Berkeley was dropped from the rankings because they had submitted incorrect data. And interestingly enough, no one would have discovered this if it had not been for the university informing U.S .News.
Character
Throughout the college application process, we need to keep in mind that colleges and universities are businesses that are focused on their bottom line. We need to acknowledge that college rankings provide little usable information and carefully weigh tuition costs and the impact of loan commitments on our kids.
We need to know that engagement in college is much more critical than the college or university our kids attend. *
We need to ensure that our kids know deep in their hearts that we-their parents and caregivers-love them regardless of where they attend college. I invite you to read the letter that these parents wrote to their son, which is included in this article, How to Survive the College Admissions Madness by Frank Bruni.
And finally, we are wise to remember to love our kids for who they are. Our kids’ worthiness and character are not determined by their choice of college. And neither is ours.
References
* Challenge Success. (2018) . A ”Fit” Over Rankings. Why College Engagement Matters More Than Selectivity. White Paper. http://www.challengesuccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Challenge-Success-White-Paper-on-College-Admissions-October-2018.pdf
Positive Alternatives Podcast (November 1, 2019)
Our interview with Dagmar Kauffman - Founder of On Balance Parenting, Collaborator, Peaceful Warrior, and Educator of Educators. We discuss how young people are losing out on the opportunity to grow and learn from their mistakes when parents step in and fix what may not really be broken.
Last week I was honored to be interviewed Doug Petit of Positive Alternatives Podcast. My heart-felt thanks for Doug’s sincere curiosity, deep listening, and mindful questions. It is such a gift.
This Heart Talks workshop invites parents and caregivers to come together, settle into their quiet center, and from there make even wiser decisions as parents. You will leave with a clearer sense of your purpose, strengths, and intentions and how your truest self can transform your parenting.
Co-facilitators are Dagmar Kauffman of On Balance Parenting and Dr. Kelly Flanagan of Artisan Clinical Associates.
#SXSW EDU 2020 #PANELPICKER #PARENT #K-12 #ENGAGEMENT #MENTALHEALTH
We invite you to vote for our SXSW EDU 2020 session proposal:
“Beyond Grades: Parenting for Kids’ Success in Life”
Starting today, Monday, August 5, the greater online community is invited to vote on our session idea through Friday, August 23. The community's input will amount to 30% of the total score for our proposal.
To vote, please sign in to PanelPicker or create a free SXSW account with just your email.
https://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/99864
Presenters: Dagmar Kauffman and Suniya Luthar
Thank you for your support!
Photo credit: siora photography on Unsplash
A 2017 research study led by Dr. Suniya S. Luthar, psychology professor at Arizona State University and professor emerita at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and others, present evidence that students in affluent communities who attend high-achieving schools are at significantly higher risk of substance misuse and addiction relative to national norms across early adulthood.
The New England Study of Suburban Youth (NESSY) followed two groups of students attending schools in affluent, suburban communities in Northeast U.S. The first group was assessed from 6th through 12th grade, and across five years after college graduation at ages 23-27 (older cohort). The second group was assessed as high school seniors and each of the four years of college at ages 18-22 (younger cohort). In this article, Luthar describes the study’s findings:
“We found rates of addiction to drugs or alcohol among 19 to 24 percent of women in the older cohort by the age of 26, and 23 to 40 percent among men. These rates were three and two times as high respectively as compared to national norms.
Among the younger cohort by the age of 22 years, rates of addiction were between 11 and 16 percent among women (close to national norms) but 19 to 27 percent among, men or about twice as high as national norms.”
~Dr. Suniya Luthar
Causes. Luthar cites various reasons for the elevated risk of addiction among students at high-achieving schools in affluent communities, including (1) students at high-achieving schools are under tremendous pressure to achieve, (2) parental and student expectations to attend highly selective universities, and (3) students in affluent communities have disposable income that makes it easy to purchase alcohol and drugs. Complicating this issue further might be that parents do not recognize that their kids are struggling with substance misuse because they are doing well academically.
Parental Containment. Study findings underscore the protective role that parents play in containing children’s substance at age 18 and its inverse correlation with the " frequency of drunkenness, and marijuana and stimulant use in adulthood.”
Recommendations. Luthar recommends (1) reducing the tremendous academic pressure that students are under in order to gain admission into highly selective colleges, (2) introducing students to adults who were successful and had picked a school that was a right fit for them, (3) raising awareness among “science, public health and social policy to take seriously the fact that youth at high-achieving schools could be a population that is at inordinately high risk of addiction,” and (4) dedicating more research to kids who grow up in a “pressure cooker.”
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Copyright © 2019 by Dagmar Kauffman, founder & executive director, On Balance Parenting.
All rights reserved.
References:
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2018). Key substance use and mental health indicators in the United States: Results from the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (HHS Publication No. SMA 18-5068, NSDUH Series H-53). Rockville, MD: Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/cbhsq-reports/NSDUHFFR2017/NSDUHFFR2017.pdf
University of Illinois, Center for Prevention Research & Development. (2018). Illinois Youth Survey.
SXSW EDU 2020 Discover, learn, connect with education thought leaders across the country!
I am honored and thrilled to share that I have been invited to serve on SXSW EDU 2020 Advisory Board. Mark your calendars for March 9-12, 2020 in Austin, TX.
Are you interested in learning, discovering and connecting with educators, K-12 & higher education administrators, students, non-profit & government, business & industry leaders?
Then SXSW EDU is for you.
Celebrating 10 years, SXSW EDU 2020 is accepting your session proposals from July 1-19th.
Get excited! JOIN ME IN AUSTIN!
How can we set sane boundaries in a high-pressure, high-stakes school culture so our kids can thrive?
Heart Talks conversation May 21, 7-8:30PM, Alive Center. Free ticket here.
Our final Heart Talks: Parenting Courageously! session is scheduled for May 21, 2019 from 7:00-8:30PM at the ALIVE Center.
Our topic this month:
Crazy Schools, Sane Boundaries, Thriving Children. How can we set sane boundaries in high-pressure, high-stakes school culture so our children can thrive?
All parents/caregivers are invited! Get your free ticket here.
Questions? dagmar@onbalanceparenting.org
Heart Talks: Parenting Courageously! is a free, monthly conversation group hosted by On Balance Parenting and co-moderated with Artisan Clinical Associates.
