Colleges have been using reliable brokers to identify prospective students. But what happens if a new broker appears?
Increasing test-optional policies could persuade more people—especially low-income and minority students—to opt out of the test, which means colleges can’t afford it.
A team of researchers weighed that question in a new report released Tuesday by the education and advocacy group the Institute for College Access and Success, known as TICAS. It’s enlightening reading for anyone with a stake in student recruitment and the large, unregulated industry that helps colleges produce “leads.” He says the industry is “undergoing a radical change that will make college access more difficult.”
First, let’s review some history. The standardized testing industry has long been the dominant medium in recruitment. High school students taking the ACT, SAT and Advanced Placement tests can get their contact information from ACT Inc. And they can opt-in to share with colleges that buy from the College Board, both nonprofit organizations and others. Sellers. (The College Board administers the SAT.)
Those lists contain specific parameters about the students (eg, test-score range, high-school-grade-point average, and zip code). Colleges use that information to recruit them (ie, bombard them with brochures and emails).
In short, student lists are the lifeblood of admissions. But they are problematic, the researchers say. Last week, TICAS released the first two of three related reports. Both students argued that colleges perpetuate racial and socioeconomic inequality by excluding low-income and underrepresented minority students from recruiting opportunities. why? For one thing, colleges can use search filters to zero in on certain geo-demographic categories, prioritizing students from well-off high schools and affluent areas. That may help explain why one student hears from 30 colleges, while another with a similar academic record hears from only a handful.
That said, there’s an important paradox here: student profiles, while imperfect, play an important role in college access, the researchers wrote. A recent study by the College Board shows that students who find colleges using the College Board’s student search service are 23 percent more likely to apply to a participating college than students with the same major. About 20 percent of students invited to apply to a college through a student search service also enroll, increasing the likelihood that someone who bought their contact information will apply to a college by 22 percent. These effects are twice as large for traditionally disadvantaged students,” the study found.
Students can access the service through BigFuture, the College Board’s college planning website — even if they don’t take the organization’s tests. But if the student’s name is not completed in the database provided in the first place, the college cannot find them there or sometimes, anywhere. So what happens in a world where fewer college applicants take the ACT and SAT — and may not know about BigFuture?
Ozan Jacquete, an associate professor of higher education at the University of California, Los Angeles and leader of the Student List Project, predicted that the epidemic in test-choice policies will disenfranchise many students, especially low-income students. and underrepresented minority students, to opt out of testing altogether. “For better or worse, testing agencies have become an important means of college access,” he says. “If those agencies are not leaders in the student listing industry, are we going to be better or worse than what we had before? When every student thinks they should take these tests, will new sources of student listings have the same coverage that ACT and the College Board previously had?
Those questions bring us back to the broker. The student directory industry includes several for-profit vendors that sell information on prospective applicants to colleges. Sources of student detailed information include college search engine websites and college planning software used by high schools. EAB, a large enrollment consulting firm, is one of the entities that the report says are poised to further grow the student list market — and likely will. of Broker. Unlike ACT Inc. and the College Board, which sell names to colleges “on a whim,” the report says, EAB and other companies maintain separate databases of student names and restrict access to colleges that pay for subscriptions and/or consulting. Services.
That business model, the report says, raises policy concerns that federal agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission, should consider regulating. “Without government intervention, we are concerned that the death of the SAT/ACT test will lead students to unwittingly rely on for-profit organizations, providing shelter only to universities that pay expensive subscriptions or consulting services.” Fair college access is critical to the market today, and that will be even more true as the new for-profit players enter the scene.
It is important to remember two things here. First, the ACT and SAT, while less important, are alive and well these days. Also, student lists are tools: Institutional leaders set enrollment goals and priorities, which these tools can achieve. “If a university wants to enroll affluent students, controlling student enrollment does not force the university to enroll poor students,” the researchers wrote.
Still, the nature of the recording devices – how exactly they work – is a matter of debate among researchers. The choices colleges make when purchasing a brand, he says, “are structured by the architecture of student-specific products—the promises embodied in the product, the target behaviors allowed by the product, and the target behaviors encouraged by the product.”
In a paper released this week by TICAS, Jacquete — Karina G. Salazar, assistant professor at the University of Arizona’s Center for the Study of Higher Education, and Crystal Hahn, a data scientist — proposed an alternative. Student Directory Industry: “The Public Option. That is, a free, robust national database loaded with students’ addresses, high school GPAs, and courses they’ve taken.
The researchers acknowledge that greater collaboration between states, districts, and schools is needed, creating many technical challenges. And who pays for it?
“The idea is kind of heavenly,” Jacquette says.
But he hopes it will spark more conversation about how student lists work for and against college access.
“There are students who go to college no matter what,” says Jacquet. For them, the student’s profile can influence which institution they attend. But there are students who choose to go to college or not, or attend a two-year college instead of a four-year college. It is important for colleges to reach out to those students and make them feel wanted.
