President Donald Trump gestures towards members on the media on the South Lawn of the White House in … [+]
Trump’s Department of Justice apparently believes that increased competition by colleges, for students will reduce the costs of college. That’s not the case. But because they think that, they may actually make going to college more expensive.
The Department has persuaded the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), the governing body of college admissions officers, to revise its ethics rules and open up more students to ongoing college recruitment offers. By “persuaded,” of course, everyone means something far less civilized. The Chronicle of Higher Education, described the NACAC decision as “under pressure from the Justice Department” and something done, “because they saw no other choice.”
According to The Chronicle, the NACAC was pressured to eliminate rules that, “barred colleges from offering incentives, such as special housing or better financial-aid packages, exclusively to applicants who apply under binding early-decision programs” Also gone are provisions which provided that, “colleges must stop recruiting a student once he or she has submitted a deposit to another institution. And the code [that] said colleges can’t solicit transfer applications from a previous applicant or prospect unless that student inquires about transferring.”
Until the Justice Department got involved it had been considered ethical behavior for schools to respect the decisions of students or were already enrolled. It was considered ethical not to engage in marketing and bidding wars for students. No longer.
By creating a no-limit hunting season for students, the Justice Department has made it clear they have no idea how student recruitment and enrollment works. They don’t understand, for example, that increased competition does not lower costs, it increases them.
They could have listened to the experts, the very people who set the rules in the first place. Or they could have just thought about this for one minute – never in history has a prospective college student had more choices, more competition than they do right now. Is it cheaper?
The evidence is not difficult to find. Over the past 25 years or so, for-profit colleges popped up everywhere and their enrollments grew exponentially. Did the competition drive down tuition costs? No.
Similarly, online schools and programs, with no restraints on campus or classroom space and unencumbered by geography, can compete for students everywhere – without limit. Has the new, unlimited competition driven down tuition costs? No.
That’s partly because recruiting and advertising to students is quite expensive. More competition means more marketing, which means more cost. Three years ago, one college expert said competition and marketing in college recruitment had driven up costs so much, colleges could soon spend $100 billion a year just luring students to their programs. He called education marketing and recruitment a “new and bizarre arms race” that could “make recruiting the most expensive component of a higher education.”
Good policy would find ways to limit what colleges spend on marketing, not incentivize more of it.
Where does the Justice Department think the money for this new student outreach will come from? The answer, of course, is where higher education money always comes from – students and taxpayers.
And that’s just the outreach for new students. Because of this new, activist intervention, schools will now also have to spend money keeping the students they already have – shielding them from aggressive poachers.
Other consequences of the policy changes won’t be good either. To keep students who have already made deposits – students who were off-limits but can now be recruited by other schools – some colleges will raise their deposit amounts, increasing the penalty for saying yes but backing out. That’s “a strategy that … enrollment officials plan to adopt to deter poaching,” The Chronicle reported.
It’s hard to see how increased enrollment deposits are good for students.
It’s also clearly a bad development for small and mid-size schools, those regional players probably will not spend their limited resources advertising to and chasing the newly poachable students. Those schools probably also cannot afford to spend much on retention efforts either. If anything, those schools are more likely to be prey than predator in this new, unnecessary game. That’s not helpful either.
The change does help the outside companies that schools hire for their recruitment and marketing. Those companies can now offer more services and charge more money for what they do. Some already sell the same student “leads” to multiple schools and “share” in tuition payments made by students they recruit. That’s only going to get worse. And more money will now flow from federal education funds and student pockets into the hands of private investors.
Perhaps what’s lost most in all of this is that students aren’t marks, they should not be swapped like dry cleaning coupons. The education choices young people make stay with them forever. We should want policies that afford them the space and information to make good choices, not subject them to more predatory marketing. If anything, we need less of what the Justice Department forced on schools, not more.
