A Modest Proposal, Redux

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 […]

Do we like complexity?

A few years ago, I was at a conference, and sat in a room with mostly high school counselors who had some bones to pick with the most selective colleges and the way they do admissions.  None of their points were unreasonable, of course: They wanted the colleges and universities to be more responsive when […]

Looking Back on 32 Years in the Business

On May 1, 2015, I’m doing a panel at IACAC on changes I’ve seen in college admissions. This is a summary of my talk there. Sometime in early December, I’ll mark 32 years of working in college admissions and enrollment management.  I don’t remember the exact date, but it was the 1st or 2nd or […]

Let’s Play a Game

Remember this scene? (Sorry for the ad before the video.  Hang with it.) A while ago, a piece in the Huffington Post kicked off an interesting discussion about the use of data in college admissions.  One part in particular seemed to be the focus of much of the attention: A new focus for predicting a […]

Disruption may be coming (at last)

A while ago, I wrote a guest blog post on the Washington Post, about using Google to manage the American college and university application process.  I got some good response to it: A lot of people thought there was some merit to the idea; some thought I was crazy, and many suggested that this was an example […]

Demographics: Numbers Behind the Numbers Matter

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 […]

Sorry, everyone: Students are not customers

Most dumb ideas are hatched by men, so I’m going to assume that whoever it was that first uttered “Students are our customers,” was probably a guy.  I’d like to kick him on his butt, although since I’m generally a pacifist, I probably wouldn’t given the chance.  Still… The idea has been floating around as […]