No, not the original. Last night, as I was scrolling through the news, I saw this article, reporting on the statement by Harvard University on the Immigration Order issued by the president. Using my personal account, I tweeted out this: One RT, and one heart. OK, no one got the joke except a constitutional law […]
There has been a lot of discussion recently about several free tuition programs that are under consideration. Because I frequently point out that we’re not sending enough poor kids to college in this country, you’d think I’d be all gaga about the possibility. You would be wrong. This is because of one simple reason: Free […]
We hear it all the time: Demographics are changing. And of course, they are. But turmoil in higher education goes way beyond just the numbers of people who might be graduating from high school. I’ve been doing a presentation on our campus to talk to people about how things are changing: Important economic and societal […]
I had another title all picked out for this post: It was going to be “An Interesting Week for the College Board” or something like that. But after I typed the title, I realized that the College Board and the Catholic Church share a lot in common, at least from where I sit. (And this […]
You’ve undoubtedly heard by now about Suzy Lee Weiss, the young woman who wrote To All the Colleges That Rejected Me in the Wall Street Journal. The privileged Ms. Weiss, it seems, felt bruised and battered by the college admissions process. Or did she? She’s now suggesting that her article was intended as satire; indeed most people who cite […]
I don’t remember when I first heard about Goodhart’s Law, but it was probably several years ago. But as I think about the higher education in general, and admissions specifically, it seems to be more and more relevant to our daily lives. Goodhart’s Law was first articulated by Charles Goodhart in a 1975 paper, as “As soon as […]
I like provocative, abstract, conceptual ideas as much as anybody. Even absurd comparisons can sometimes be instructive. I think this has to do with my appreciation for what Samuel Johnson called the “Metaphysical Poets,” like John Donne and Andrew Marvel. The poets shared a flair for something Johnson called “discordia concors” or finding similarities in things […]
I graduated from high school in 1977 (I’m 54…to save you the math). Up until then, I had lived my whole life in Dubuque, a great place to be from, and a city that is probably in better shape today than it was then. In our family, you went to Catholic School, but after sophomore […]
There are very few people who understand that Enrollment Management is, at some level, an exercise in managing trade-offs. Even though the old Michelob Light commercial suggests that you can have it all, in fact, you can’t. And in reality, if you could, you wouldn’t be working in higher education. (Those of you who know me […]
The other night my wife and I were sitting on our deck with guests and long-time friends Nancy and Al Maly from Grinnell. Among us we have about 60 years of college admission experience, so naturally the topic tends to come up when we get together. That, and Al’s fascination with the proper way to […]
Jon Boeckenstedt's Admissions Weblog 