Ron Lieber recently completed writing a book called “The Price You Pay for College,” and if you’re interested enough in this stuff such that you’re listening to this, then you should read this book. He was kind enough to check out this show and he says it was actually pretty helpful to him in terms of podcasts that taught him a thing or two.

You can buy Ron’s book from his local bookstore here and even choose a message for him to include! www.communitybookstore.net/lieber

Here’s some data on the pitiful value of a Pell Grant over time, and President Biden has committed to change it, albeit not by much. His budget proposal is clear about the kinds of good things it would do for higher ed, including the Pell increase, and a boost in funding for HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions.

MUSIC
The Prune, Arnie and His Soul Brothers (Ron’s dad’s band!)
I Can’t Go For That – 2 Chainz
Is It Always Binary – Soulwax

The post Episode 44: Ron Lieber on the Price of College appeared first on The Crush.

In the United States, just 6% of college faculty members are Black. It’s a really tough career pathway for anyone, but as we’ll learn from my guest today, there are so many additional hurdles to clear if you are Black. Marlene Daut is Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of Virginia, is the author of many books and articles about Haiti as well as a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education where she shares her own tenure-track truth called “Becoming Full Professor While Black.”

FURTHER READING

Becoming Full Professor While Black – Marlene Daut

Teaching Perspective: The Relation Between the Haitian and French Revolutions – Marlene Daut

The First and Last King of Haiti – TED.com – Marlene Daut

www.haitianrevolutionaryfictions.com

An Ivy League Professor on Why College Don’t Hire More Faculty of Color: “We Don’t Want Them” – Marybeth Gasman, Washington Post

US College Faculty and Student Diversity – Pew Research

National Center for Education Statistics – Faculty Diversity

https://diversitydata.virginia.edu/

For a Black Mathematician, What It’s Like to Be the ‘Only One’ – NY Times

We Built a Diverse Academic Department in 5 years. Here’s How – Harvard Business Review

Princeton Faculty Letter to President

The post Episode 43: Prof. Marlene Daut on “Becoming Full Professor While Black” appeared first on The Crush.

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Puerto Rico is subject to a number of unique barriers to accessing college whether they leave the island or stay. These barriers simply don’t exist for any other US state or territory and are a direct result of its colonial relationship with the United States. It’s an issue close to my own heart and something that I’m really glad to try to emphasize in our national debate about college access along with my guests today, longtime college access professionals and current college counselors in Puerto Rico, Celeste Suris-Rosselli and DJ Meehan.

Thanks for tuning in, folks! Please rate the show! Follow me on Twitter @Crushpod!

If you want to join our brand-spankin’ new NACAC SIG dedicated to college access in Puerto Rico, here’s an interest form you can fill out. You don’t have to be a NACAC member to join the SIG.

Below are some articles and things mentioned in the episode that are worth reviewing to build a little context for this conversation.

In Puerto Rico, the odds are against high school grads who want to go to college (Hechinger Report)

Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico’s College Admissions Process (Roberto Jimenez)

Puerto Rico governor Ricardo Rosselló scandal timeline (CNN)

Bad Bunny on Jimmy Fallon

Julia Kelleher arrested for fraud (CBS News)

Julia Kelleher defends her tenure in Puerto Rico (Chalkbeat)

More on Julia Kelleher (Remezcla)

Only $4m of $80m allocated to UPR has been disbursed (Tweet by David Begnaud) 

And of course, all of this and more can be found at www.crushpodcast.com/puerto-rico

The post Episode 42: Celeste Suris Rosselli and DJ Meehan on College Access in Puerto Rico appeared first on The Crush.

The coronavirus has forced some wildly unprecedented anxieties into an already extremely anxious space. Mindy Rose and Mark Moody of Shanghai American School have had to roll with the punches in a very unique college counseling community.

FURTHER READING

Open Doors Asia report
https://p.widencdn.net/aumflg/Asia

Open Doors China fact sheet
https://www.iie.org/-/media/Files/Corporate/Open-Doors/Fact-Sheets-2019/Country/China.ashx

Shanghai American School College Counseling
https://www.saschina.org/academics/school-and-college-counseling/college-counseling

SAS Pudong Campus Profile
https://www.saschina.org/uploaded/2018-academics/SAS_College_Profile_2019-2020_Pudong_Campus.pdf

 SAS Puxi Campus Profile
https://www.saschina.org/uploaded/2018-academics/SAS_College_Profile_2019-2020_Puxi_Campus.pdf

How Coronavirus is Affecting Admissions
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/03/09/how-coronavirus-changing-admissions

IBO Online Learning, Teaching and Education Continuity Planning

Click to access online-learning-continuity-planning-en.pdf

What’s Worked for Us in Distance Learning (Moody and Rose)

The post Episode 41: Mindy Rose and Mark Moody of Shanghai American School appeared first on The Crush.

Jon Boeckenstedt is as fearless as he is smart as he is dedicated to Doing The Right Thing as a leader in the realm of college enrollment management. He’s one of these people that everyone in our field looks to first with questions that require evidence-based answers, and over the better part of the last decade, his voice has emerged as one of the strongest and clearest on the biggest questions related to the use of standardized tests in admissions.

FURTHER READING

• Some Final Thoughts on the SAT and ACT – Jen Blankenstork’s blog
• My grandma talking about being in Iran during the revolution
• The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Colleges – Joe Soares
• Who is Really Adrift? Robert Sternberg, IHE
• Measuring Noncognitive Variables: Improving Admissions, Success, and Retention for Underrepresented Students – Bill Sedlacek
• The Years That Matter Most – Paul Tough
• What College Admissions Offices Really Want – Paul Tough, NY Times
• Will UC Schools Drop Their SAT Requirement? – LA Times
• US News Methodology 
• Jon’s Argument for Test-Optional at OSU 
• ‘Welcome to the Wild West’ – Changes to NACAC’s Standards of Principles and Good Practice (SPGP) – Hoover, Chronicle of Higher Education
• The latest on the DOJ-related changes to admissions practices from NACAC President Joyce Smith

The post Episode 40! Oregon State University’s Jon Boeckenstedt appeared first on The Crush.

The humanities are in a tough spot these days, and the discipline of philosophy often ends up in the crosshairs as an exemplar of Undergrad Majors That Will Waste Your Time and Money. Good news though: it isn’t!

Dr. Phil Walsh is a lecturer at Fordham University in the Department of Philosophy and he has been hard at work to promote philosophy as a critical area of study, and used it as a means of explaining to his undergrads what the point of college is.

Here are a few of the people and resources mentioned in the episode:

The Humanities are in a Crisis (Atlantic)

Surfing With Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry into a Life of Meaning – Aaron James

Assholes: A Theory – Aaron James

Infinite Baseball: Notes From a Philosopher at the Ballpark – Alva Noë

Hi Phi Nation podcast – Barry Lam 

Weapons of Math Destruction – Cathy O’Neill

Humanities Indicators

The post Episode 39: Dr. Philip Walsh on the Value of Philosophy appeared first on The Crush.

It’s fall! Which means this is the time of year when legions of college admissions counselors traverse the globe to find those eager minds to fill the seats in their classrooms. It is a whole hashtag life that thousands of people in this economy lead and in my case have lead. 

Well not long ago, a media representation with actual famous people! came out and showed the world what it’s really like in admissions. Or did it..? As my guest today former admissions counselor and current high school college counselor Sam Schreiber and I discuss. 

FURTHER READING

“Admission” Review (Rolling Stone)

Metacritic reviews

Ivy League Admission Isn’t as Boring as ‘Admission’ Made it Look (Atlantic)

“The College Admissions SCANDAL” (Lifetime)

Sage Grouse footage

The post Episode 38: Sam Schreiber and I Review “Admission” appeared first on The Crush.

Dr. Andrew Moe is the Director of Admission at Swarthmore College and has been leading a national effort to focus the eyes of his colleagues more on students coming from rural communities.

Andrew has been organizing his efforts mainly via the National Association of College Admissions Counseling’s Special Interest Group designation as the co-leader (along with Peggy Jenkins of Palouse Pathways) of the Rural and Small Town SIG.

As you’ll hear, in the few short years they’ve been at it, there have been a ton of folks join up and dial into the resources the membership has been able to generate and provide.

There’s more information below for those who want to check it out for themselves, and don’t forget to follow Andrew on Twitter @andrewsmoe

Subscribe to this podcast on Apple podcast and other podcasting platforms!

Follow me on Twitter @crushpod!

Send me an email crushpod@gmail.com!

Say hi to me on the street!

FURTHER READING

NACAC Rural and Small Town SIG Interest Form

Rural College Access Readings (via NACAC Rural and Small Town SIG)

Shrinking Rural Population

The Status of Rural Education (National Center for Education Statistics)

Recruiting in Rural America (Inside Higher Ed)

Place Matters: A Closer Look at Education Deserts (Hillman, thirdway.org

Those Left Behind: Gaps in College Attendance by Race and Geography (Center for American Progress)

The post Episode 37: Dr. Andrew Moe on College Access for Rural Students appeared first on The Crush.

In the summer of 2016, a Facebook group emerged to quickly become the primary space in which professionals on all sides of college admissions would gather to discuss the challenges and potential solutions to some really hard problems.

For instance, how do we make the spaces that college admissions occupies, and with which it interacts and intersects fairer to and more representative of racial minorities and other marginalized groups? Especially given that it was set up and is still run in a lot of ways that keep them out? ACCEPT, as it is called, which stands for “Admissions Community Cultivating Equity and Peace Today” was led into existence by school, college and admissions counseling professionals Brandi Smith, Steve Frappier and my guest today Marie Bigham and it is now nearly 6,000 people strong. 

For the uninitiated and for those who didn’t read the Chronicle article yet,  here’s the official description of who ACCEPT is and what they do:

ACCEPT empowers college admissions professionals who seek to center anti-racism, equity, and justice in our work and communities. As educational gatekeepers, college admissions professionals hold the most responsibility in removing barriers to post-secondary education; everyone in this work has a role to play. ACCEPT will lead the college admissions profession in creating an equitable, just, and anti-racist path to post-secondary education.

FURTHER READING

The Admissions Activists Are Here to Make You Uncomfortable (Chronicle, Aug 2019)

The Admissions Activists Are Here to Make You Uncomfortable – The Chronicle of Higher Education (PDF)

https://www.acceptgroup.org/ 

NACAC Excellence in Education Award 

How to Be an Anti-Racist (Kendi, 2019)

Race and Intersectional Studies in Educational Equity

Where Do College Recruit? Wealthy and White High Schools (Inside Higher Ed, Apr 2019)

The Joyce Foundation

The Roddenberry Foundation

The post Episode 36: Marie Bigham of ACCEPT appeared first on The Crush.

Soon children everywhere will be saying goodbye to their parents and to their communities and the times and the places that made them into the adults they’re on their way to becoming in college. Dr. Susan Matt, Presidential Distinguished Professor of History at Weber State University in Ogden, UT, wrote a book called “Homesickness: An American History.”

Some of them will do a bit better at handling the distance – both in terms of time and geography – than others. Well, they’re certainly not alone, and they aren’t alone throughout the history of this country when you consider the countless ways that giant groups of people that moved from the familiar to the unfamiliar. 

So where’d all this come from? And how does “nostalgia” play a role in it all? How is this an American phenomenon, or at least, what American things happened to contribute to homesickness and nostalgia being woven into our national fabric? What about the role of technology nowadays making it insanely easy to stay in touch? Or its ability to make one’s experiences seem outwardly perfect via Instagram and other social media tools?

FURTHER READING

Homesickness: An American History (Susan Matt, Oxford University Press, 2011)

The New Globalist is Homesick (Susan Matt, NY Times 2012)

Beware Social Nostalgia (Stephanie Coontz, NY Times 2013)

The Ethos of the Overinvolved Parents (The Atlantic, Laura McKenna, 2017)

Involved Parents Get Their Own College Guide (Chronicle of Higher Ed, Julia Piper 2019)

@supersnackstore on Instagram

Why Peter Thiel Fears Star Trek (New Yorker, Manu Saadia 2017)

A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction (New Yorker, Jill Lepore 2017)

Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid (Fernandez, Matt; Harvard University Press, 2019)

Don Quixote, College Choice and the Myth of Fit (Chronicle of Higher Ed, Moody 2011)

The post Episode 35: Dr. Susan Matt on the History of Homesickness in America appeared first on The Crush.

If you pay attention to the world of college admissions, then you not only know this guy, chances are he’s helped you form your understanding of what goes on in said world. Eric Hoover has been writing about admissions for about as long as current college freshmen have been alive. What has changed over that period of time? What are the constants? If I give him enough beers, will he tell me who the next big names are that will be going “test optional”???
Eric and I spend nearly 2 hours talking about all manner of admissions things over a few brewskis. We talk about how he came to this profession and this admissions beat. In the second half, we talk about his trip to Nepal to learn more about the students whose offers of admission were revoked at UT Tyler and the ensuing trip he made to Nepal to learn more about the environment they were coming from. We also discuss the matter of “financial aid verification” which is an under-reported phenomenon affecting poor families who require financial aid to go to college and the additional difficulties our government puts them through.

Here’s the collection of stories Eric did about Nepali students trying to get to college in the US.

Link to “The Verification Trap” about the pitfalls of applying for financial aid while poor in this country.

Link to the article that won Eric the Eugene S. Pulliam National Journalism Writing Award called “The Arc of Her Survival.”

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The post Episode 34: Eric Hoover of the Chronicle of Higher Education appeared first on The Crush.

Professor Marybeth Gasman is the Director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions and a professor of education. Soon she’s moving herself and her center to Rutgers University in New Jersey.

In this country, there are over 700 2 and 4-year colleges and universities designated as Minority Serving Institutions which educate 26% of ALL college students and over 40% of college students of color. Almost 80% of their students receive Pell grants, and these schools include Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Asian American and Native Pacific Islander Serving Institutions.

Professor Marybeth Gasman has helped institutionalize and elevate the work of these critical American spaces, their staff, faculty, and students as the director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions at the University of Pennsylvania and has learned a lot along the way.

***SUPPORT COLLEGE SIGNING DAY ON MAY 1st!***
www.bettermakeroom.com/collegesigningday

FURTHER READING/VIEWING/LISTENING

• Five things no one will tell you about why colleges don’t hire more faculty of color (Hechinger Report)
• Why don’t colleges have more minority faculty? We Don’t Want Them (Washington Post)
• Federal MSI guidelines
• CollegeNet Social Mobility Index
• The MSI Social Mobility Bump (Inside Higher Ed)
• Raj Chetti’s poverty, inequality, social mobility research
• Timeline of the history of Minority Serving Institutions 
• TM Landry and the Myth of Meritocracy in American Education (The Atlantic)
• Atlantic article author Will Stancil
• Landry students on Ellen
• Strong and weak link thinking
• “My Little Hundred Million” (Malcolm Gladwell, Revisionist History podcast)

The post Episode 33: Professor Marybeth Gasman appeared first on The Crush.

This week it became known via a federal indictment that rich people used their wealth to break the law in a variety of appalling ways, all with a mind to skip the line and receive guaranteed admission to famous/elite/highly-selective colleges. Nobody knows more about this world than Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Eric Hoover…let’s unpack #AuntBeckyGate emergency-style!

So much more to read here:

“Bribery Scandal Reveals ‘Weak Spots’ in the Admissions System. Don’t Look so Shocked.” (Hoover, Chronicle)

“Admissions Officers Didn’t Create the Scandal. But They Helped Shape the Culture That Spawned it.” (Hoover, Chronicle)

“They’re Already Rich. Why Were These Parents so Fixated on Elite Colleges?” (Becky Supiano, Chronicle)

“Born on Third, Stealing Home, Paying off the Ump: The Unhinged Greed of College Cheats” (James Murphy, Vanity Fair)

The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

…And hey I was on Good Morning America, so that’s cool!

Part 1

Part 2

The post Episode 32 ***🚨EMERGENCY AUNT BECKY SCANDAL PODCAST With Eric Hoover🚨*** appeared first on The Crush.

Temple University Economics Professor Doug Webber does some fascinating research on the impact of our academic choices in college. In a world plagued by a lust for prestige, how much does it really matter in terms of your ability to earn a good living?

I’m thrilled to have Doug back as my first repeat guest! Make sure and take a listen to Episode 18 where we discuss the value of New York State’s “Excelsior Scholarship” which is meant to provide a free college education to a certain segment of New York’s households. Here we spend more time on the research that really occupies his time, which is the impact of college on the labor force. Are there good jobs for humanities majors? Will you, in fact, be doomed if you do not attend a Top 25 US News-ranked school? Are the robots coming for our jobs, and how soon? Professor Webber was kind enough to host me in his fancy corner office on campus at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.

Further listening/reading:

“My Little Hundred Million” Malcolm Gladwell, Revisionist History

“It Depends What you Study, Not Where” The Economist, 2015

“Examining the Interstate Mobility of Recent College Graduates” Kelchen and Webber, 2018

“Is College Worth it? Going Beyond Averages” Webber, Third Way, 2018

The post Episode 31 – Doug Webber 2: The Return of Doug Webber! appeared first on The Crush.

Nike and Oregon – the state as well as its flagship university – go way back, and their relationship became a template for underfunded state universities all over the country. Josh Hunt takes a deep dive into this complicated and painful reality in his new book, “The University of Nike: How Corporate Cash Bought American Higher Education.”

I grew up in Portland, Oregon alongside the growth of Nike from a hip local shoe company to a global empire. Michael Moore’s film “The Big One” came out in my junior year of high school, and first blasted Phil Knight and Nike’s lack of action to curb its exploitative labor practices into the national spotlight. We all saw the swooshes on the jerseys of athletes at Oregon, and also at Michigan, Florida State, and my alma mater USC. But I definitely never understood the depth and breadth of the bargain Oregon and its then-president, Dave Frohnmayer, made with Knight and Nike, and the grip its implications still has on our public systems of higher education. But then I read this book, and I encourage you all to read it too.

Further Reading and Listening
– www.viajoshhunt.com
– https://twitter.com/viajoshhunt
– Communications Director Out at UO (Eugene Weekly, 2018)
– Oregon’s New “Football Performance Center” is a Decadent Monstrosity (Deadspin, 2013)
–  State Higher Education Finance Report (SHEEO, 2017)
– “The Filthy Fifteen”
– Twitter thread on the Sackler/Purdue Pharma/OxyContin court case
– Aaron Sorkin Tells AOC to Keep Her Frisbee Off His Lawn
– Grateful Dead. Eugene, OR June 17, 1994 setlist
– Led Zeppelin – Ten Years Gone

The post Episode 30! Josh Hunt on “The University of Nike” appeared first on The Crush.

Emmi Harward is the Executive Director of the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools (ACCIS), and it’s her job to keep her finger on the pulse of the college counseling profession so she can help her members do their best work helping kids apply to college.

As they put it “ACCIS is a national membership organization providing support, shared knowledge, and professional development programming for college counselors based in independent (non-public) schools across the country and internationally. ACCIS counts nearly 600 schools as members, represented by over 1700 counselors and office assistants working to support the students in their care.” Emmi spends her time in airports, schools, and her home base of San Diego, California, and joined me in new york, and she and I talked in a conference room in the Collegewise New York City world headquarters at WeWork on 49th street in Manhattan.

Further reading: NACAC State of College Admissions 2018

The post Episode 29: Emmi Harward of ACCIS appeared first on The Crush.

The Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success emerged 3 years ago to provide an alternative application platform for, at first, 32 colleges, and now over 150 of them. Executive Director Annie Reznik is helping this group of colleges execute a mission to improve the college attendance and graduation chances for more of the kinds of students who don’t go and don’t graduate.

Further reading:

List of Coalition Application member institutions

Coalition Application Board of Directors

Breakaway Group Seeks ‘Retro Common App’ (Chronicle of Higher Ed, 2014)

Coalition of the WIlling or the Wealthy? (Inside Higher Ed, 2015)

The Common Application Has Been Accused of Running a ‘Collusive Cartel’ in the Admissions Industry (Daily Pennsylvanian, 2017)

How Admissions Competition Brought New Rivalries, Strange Bedfellows, and ‘An Us-Versus-Us’ Lawsuit (Chronicle of Higher Ed, 2018)

Why One College Has Second Thoughts About Joining the Coalition – and Another Has High Hopes (Chronicle of Higher Ed, 2018)

The post Episode 28: Annie Reznik on the Coalition Application appeared first on The Crush.

Reach Higher is former First Lady Michelle Obama’s college access initiative, operating under the leadership of my guest this episode, Eric Waldo. 

He’s hard at work countering the systematic efforts to dismantle the education policies of his old bosses, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan and John King. Reach Higher is responsible – and perhaps best known – for College Signing Day, but also for recognizing the School Counselor of the Year, for their Beating the Odds Summit to control “summer melt” and make sure students who enroll in college actually show up there in the fall, and UpNext, an innovative texting platform to deliver important college admissions information to students’ cell phones.

Eric and I spoke from the annual NACAC conference in Salt Lake City, UT.

Articles referenced at the end of this episode:

College Scorecard Cuts the Context

DeVos Ends Obama-Era Safeguards Aimed at Abuses by For-Profit Colleges

8 Facts That Will Make You Think Twice Before Enrolling at For-Profit College

The post Episode 27: Eric Waldo of Reach Higher appeared first on The Crush.

6 million people attend community colleges in this country, and yet we somehow don’t tend to consider it as “college.”

Bart Grachan earns his keep doing everything he can to help students succeed at LaGuardia Community College, and also to helping us all change the conversation to include these students, their concerns as well as their successes.

Community colleges disproportionately serve low-income and minority students and can act as a massive social mobility device, but we put a lot of roadblocks in the way of these students making the most of this experience, especially as pertains to transferring to a 4-year college and graduating on time. In addition to helping us understand the role of community colleges in our national system of higher ed, Bart talks about those roadblocks and the kinds of things that 4-year institutions could do to help these students on their road to success.

You can learn more about community colleges here at the Community College Research Center at Columbia’s Teachers College.

The post Episode 26: Bart Grachan on Community Colleges appeared first on The Crush.

It’s a company with a loyal following to rival almost any brand, and everyone in college admissions is buying it. Slate is the technology of choice that admissions offices use to read applications and manage every interaction that students make with that office, from mailing list subscription to every click on an email to admission notification.

I talk to Technolutions/Slate CEO Alexander Clark about his personal path to creating Slate, why it’s so popular among admissions offices, and where it’s headed. We also discussed any would-be rivalry with Naviance, the phenomenon that is the Slate Summit, digital privacy issues, and how Slate figures into the conversation around “demonstrated interest.”

Subscribe to this podcast and make sure to rate it on iTunes!

Visit www.crushpodcast.com

Follow me on Twitter @crushpod

The post Episode 25: Alexander Clark, CEO and Founder of Technolutions/Slate appeared first on The Crush.

Stanley Nelson has been making movies for a long time, and his latest film – airing Monday, February 19th on PBS – called “Tell Them We Are Rising” is the first of its kind fo explore the topic of Historically Black Colleges and Universities or HBCUs.

NYC native Stanley talked to me about his personal connection to these schools, their place in our history and in our national culture, and how they’re uniquely stuck “between a rock and a hard place” in Trump’s America.

RESOURCES

“Tell Them We Are Rising” trailer

“Black Colleges in the Age of Trump” NY Times Op-Doc 

“Fast Facts on HBCUs” (National Center for Education Statistics)

“The Changeing Face of HBCUS” (U Penn/MaryBeth Gasman)

“Blacks and Hispanics are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago” (NY Times)

Brown-Tougaloo College Partnership 

“Harvard’s Next President: Another ‘White Male Economist Named Larry'” (Chronicle of Higher Ed)

“Eluding the Endowment Tax” (Inside Higher Ed)

“It’s Time to Bust the Myth: Most Trump Voters Were Not Working Class” (WaPo)

“My Little Hundred Million” (Revisionist History Podcast)

The post Episode 24: Stanley Nelson on HBCUs and His New Film “Tell Them We Are Rising” appeared first on The Crush.

Professor Nathan Grawe of Carleton College developed a demographic model which says that ’round about 2030 this country is going to lose a giant share of its population of college-going age. How will this impact colleges and universities and how will it impact each kind of higher education environment? I talked to him about his book “Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education” to learn more.

During the great recession, the fertility rate in America fell 13% in 5 years. This plus several other demographic factors have conspired to guarantee that the nation’s enrollment managers have a big job on their hands: How do we continue to sustainably operate if there are fewer students to serve? Professor Grawe digs into a really dynamic and complex national picture of demand for higher education to deliver a prognostication that gives the people in enrollment management world a lot to consider both in terms of problems and solutions.

Buy Professor Grawe’s book here!

The post Episode 23: Prof. Nathan Grawe on the Changing Demographics of America’s College Bound appeared first on The Crush.

Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez visited the island of Puerto Rico to see how people were recovering at its most important institution of higher education, the University of Puerto Rico.

Her story – available in both English and Spanish – tells a tale of, as she puts it, “higher education at its most improvised.” The well-being of Puerto Rico is in many ways linked to its cherished university system, and over 120 days after Hurricane María struck the island, neither has recovered substantially. Fernanda humanizes an experience that has been overshadowed in part by high-minded economic debates and low-minded tweets from President Paper Towel. Meanwhile, the people of Puerto Rico attempt to carry on, to get an education, to build a future for themselves against obstacles that feel painfully familiar.

0:00-11:11 – Brief History of Puerto Rico
11:11-44:16 – Interview with Fernanda
44:16-50:21 – Wrap up

READ MORE:

Please read this piece “How to Help the University of Puerto Rico – And How Not To” by Godreau, Bonilla, and Walicek

How Universities Are Trying To Do Right by Puerto Rico (CUNY/Chronicle)

This is the plane my in-laws took to get to the mainland, thanks to JJ Barea and Mark Cuban, and the Dallas Mavericks organization (seriously).

How Dependence on Corporate Tax Breaks Eroded the Puerto Rican Economy (Reuters)

Tax Bill Could be a Big Hit to Puerto Rico’s Economy (NPR)

https://www.npr.org/2017/12/21/572699193/tax-bill-could-be-a-big-hit-to-puerto-ricos-economy

Puerto Rico’s Mass-Migration is Re-Shaping Florida (Bloomberg)

Residente (and my cousin Lilliana) performs “Hijos de Cañaveral” at the Latin Grammys (YouTube)

Animation of the “Political Topography” of the Caribbean, by Rutgers professor Yarimar Bonilla (Vimeo)

Puerto Rico’s University is Paralyzed by Protests and Facing Huge Cuts (NY Times, 5/17)

Forced Sterilization in Puerto Rico (Our Bodies Ourselves)

The post Episode 22: Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez on the University of Puerto Rico appeared first on The Crush.

The Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC) is a group of over 150 private schools that have coalesced around an idea that our current model of grading students is not only outdated, but harmful to their development. Scott Looney is the Head of School at the Hawken School in Cleveland, Ohio, and is the driving force behind the Mastery Transcript, a brand-new way to consider how we assess student achievements in high school. 

We live in an age of disruption, and ripe for consideration in our collective educational consciousness is the notion of grades as we know them. Scott Looney and the member schools of this consortium are interested in assessing students based on mastery within different areas of learning that include the development of character, not just subject area knowledge.

While it won’t be in operation for between 6 to 8 years, you can click here to see a few examples of what the MTC is hoping will become reality. A student’s achievements are presented in an online format with clickable elements, allowing the viewer to drill down all the way to individual assignments that contributed to the result you see on the transcript, should you so desire.

Mr. Looney is committed to make sure that admissions counselors with few precious moments to spare in the review of hundreds and hundreds of files won’t have to spend any more than 2 minutes reading Mastery Transcripts. And while those in admissions may have functional concerns about how this fits into the logistics of reading applications, there have been others raised about the impact this is liable to have on college admission outcomes for students at environments with fewer student support resources than Mastery Consortium schools.

I spoke with Mr. Looney during the annual NACAC conference in Boston in September, 2017.

More news about the Mastery Transcript

A Plan to Kill High School Transcripts…and Transform College Admissions (Inside Higher Ed)

Why Getting Rid of Grades Would Help Rich Kids and Hurt Poor Ones (Washington Post)

Independent Schools Come together to Build a New High School Transcript (National Association of Independent Schools)

Mastery Transcript Consortium: Big Idea to Upend College Admissions Process (Medium)

What if Your High School Transcript Didn’t Include Grades? (Boston Globe)

6:13 – Interview begins

7:00 – MTC origin story

11:05 – What’s the big deal with these transcripts?

14:00 – How should admissions counselors read this?

15:10 – What problems does this seek to solve?

21:40 – What feedback have you gotten from colleges?

26:45 – Why the MTC is only independent schools

29:36 – Is this related to the Coalition Application?

33:58 – Role of teachers in the MT’s development

36:27 – How could the adoption of the MT work in public schools?

38:53 – What has the criticism been?

45:10 – How might the MT impact the role of standardized tests in admissions?

49:22 – Is the MT meritocratic?

51:32 – What do kids think about this?

54:25 – Final thoughts

The post Episode 21: Scott Looney on the Mastery Transcript appeared first on The Crush.

Akil Bello is a friend of mine who is also one of these odd sorts who concerns himself in life with all things Standardized Test. Following up from Episode 4 where I pledge to take the SAT, I finally sit down to register to do it, which in itself can take up to an hour. Naturally, I thought this would make for gripping radio. We document this epic experience of simply registering for the exam and attempt to read the minds – and fine print rivaling the iTunes terms of service – of the College Boarders who’ve put this experience together.

The post Episode 20: Akil Bello Helps me Register for the SAT appeared first on The Crush.

So we have literally all of humanity’s knowledge at our fingertips thanks to the Internet, and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are making it easier to get more education to more people for free. Dr. Andrew Ho has done research on MOOCs and their impact and assessing the knowledge obtained in a MOOC such that any credential you receive after passing a class matters in the marketplace. 

What are these and where did MOOC’s come from? Will they replace college as a physical destination? Are they making the world smarter and knocking down socioeconomic boundaries to accessing education?

Read more here:

HarvardX and MITx Report on 4 Years of Open Online Courses (January 2017): https://harvardx.harvard.edu/blog/harvardx-and-mitx-report-4-years-open-online-courses

“The Power of MOOCs” (April 2015) https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/15/04/power-moocs

“The Great Education Equalizer?” (December 2015) https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/15/12/great-education-equalizer

“Students who are the least well prepared for traditional college also fare the worst in online courses” https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/12/study-questions-effectiveness-online-education-risk-students  

The Gartner Hype Cycle: http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp

Impact of a college education on the 2016 presidential election: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-predicted-who-would-vote-for-trump/

The post Episode 19: Dr. Andrew Ho on the Reach of MOOCs appeared first on The Crush.

New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo recently championed and passed the nation’s first plan to offer free college tuition to state residents attending state public colleges called “The Excelsior Scholarship.” Free always sounds good, but does it make for good policy? Professor Doug Webber, a labor economist at Temple University who has contributed to fivethirtyeight.com, Fortune, and has testified before congress on matters of higher education, helps us understand what about this plan is good, and what about this plan might actually be really bad policy. We use NY Times columnist David Brooks’ scathing 8-point critique (“The Cuomo College Fiasco” NYT 4/14/17) as a frame for this discussion. Here are some links for further reading on the subject:

By my guest, Prof. Doug Webber:

“This U.S. State’s Free College Plan Isn’t All it’s Cracked Up to Be.” (Fortune)

“To Ease the Student Debt Crisis, Hold Colleges Accountable” (fivethirtyeight.com)

“Fancy Dorms Aren’t the Main Reason Tuition is Skyrocketing” fivethirtyeight.com)

More coverage on the Excelsior Scholarship:

“Mr. Cuomo’s Free* College Plan” (NY Times)

“Cuomo Adopts Middle Class Mantra” (NY Times)

“Free College, but With Caveats” (NY Times)

“Why Governor Cuomo’s Free Tuition Plan Won’t Help NY’s State of Mind.” (Heschinger Report)

“6 Reasons You May Not Graduate on Time (and What to Do About It)” (NY Times)

BONUS: Check out Governor Cuomo changing one lucky voter’s tire!

Gov Cuomo helping a stranded driver along the Sprain Parkway pic.twitter.com/XgKy3aMscq

— Melissa DeRosa (@melissadderosa) February 9, 2017

The post Episode 18: Prof. Doug Webber on NY’s “Excelsior” Scholarship appeared first on The Crush.

Right now, college applicants are anxiously waiting to hear back from the colleges they applied to, while legions of admissions counselors read their applications and those of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of their fellow applicants. That’s a lot of decisions to make. How are they made? What influences that process? What can research tell us about how to do it better so that we can be fair to students and their circumstances, while also being fair to the admissions counselors and their (physical, mental, emotional, marital) health? University of Michigan School of Education Professor Dr. Michael Bastedo has done research on exactly these questions, and I caught him at the NACAC conference in Columbus OH this fall to ask him about his research.

The post Episode 17: Dr. Michael Bastedo on the Bias of Admissions Counselors appeared first on The Crush.

I needed to go back to something that I think Oregon State Representative Lew Frederick is uniquely qualified to talk about and something that’s been on my mind almost every day since about the 2nd presidential debate: and that is, is Donald Trump racist? And if he is, how should we feel about that? More specifically what does it mean if you vote for him? What does it mean if I know people who are voting for him, does that make them racist? I veered from the path of this podcast’s mission of discussing higher education in this one instance because the opportunity presented itself and in my mind and placed it into it’s own “part 2” and I called Lew back to ask him some of these questions.

The post Episode 16.2: Lew Frederick on the Question “Is Donald Trump Racist?” appeared first on The Crush.

As a candidate running unopposed for the State Senate of Oregon from a Portland district, Lew Frederick stands to be one of the most if not the most influential black politicians in the state of Oregon, which makes him one of the most influential black politicians in this country. I wouldn’t normally use the qualifier “black” but Lew is one of two elected officials in the state legislature who are black and that characteristic is particularly meaningful especially in this day and age as we consider the direction of society and the politicians who want to direct it. He’s been active in politics his whole life, and active in the politics of Oregon – and apropos of this podcast, Oregon’s systems of education – for decades.

Learn more about Lew and his work here: http://www.lewfrederick.org/

Here is an article referenced in the episode: “This is why finland has the best schools.” http://www.smh.com.au/national/this-is-why-finland-has-the-best-schools-20160324-gnqv9l.html

The post Episode 16: Rep. Lew Frederick on Race, Politics, and Education appeared first on The Crush.

Dr. Christina Warinner works at the University of Oklahoma’s Laboratories of Molecular Anthropology and Microbiome Research (LMAMR) and studies some incredibly cool and incredibly small things: the bacteria in the teeth of our ancient ancestors. She does this to learn about our ancient diet in an attempt to gain insight into the nature of periodontal disease. I interviewed her because I wanted to learn more about this stuff, and also to have her provide insight into the value of doing research as a component of your college education, and what it’s like to be a woman making an academic career in science. Oh also: The “Paleo Diet” is silly and she can prove it.Subscribe on iTunes, rate the show, follow me on Twitter @crushpod, more to see at www.crushpodcast.com

Learn more about Dr. Warinner’s work at www.christinawarinner.com

Watch Dr. Warinner’s extremely popular YouTube video “Debunking the Paleo Diet:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8

The post Episode 15: Dr. Christina Warinner on 10,000 Year Old Teeth, Science Research, and Women in Academia appeared first on The Crush.

Maria Maisto is the Executive Director of the New Faculty Majority, an organization fighting to improve working conditions for adjunct and contingent faculty at American institutions of higher ed. The name grew out of the reality that only in recent history has higher ed leaned on adjuncts to the degree that they comprise 75% of the teaching workforce.

They’re members of the “faculty,” at 75% of the teaching labor force in higher education they are the “majority,” and it’s “new” because a combination of factors have only recently made them the unstable majority of the teaching workforce. 
Follow @nfmajority on Twitter for updates on their activities and progress, and if you want to learn more, I recommend checking out the articles that the New Faculty Majoirty have compiled on their website: http://www.newfacultymajority.info/media-2/adjuncts-in-the-news/

The post Episode 14: Maria Maisto on the Struggle of Adjunct Faculty appeared first on The Crush.

Julie Lythcott-Haims, former Dean of Freshmen at Stanford and mother of two herself, has been on a world tour promoting her book How to Raise an Adult in an effort to help today’s parents to, well, back off. Because “we” aren’t going to college, are “we”? 

You can follow Julie on Twitter @deanjulie and get updates on the book at www.raiseanadult.com and chances are pretty good she’s coming to your town to talk if she hasn’t already. Learn more about the podcast she hosted on college admissions “Getting In” here: http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/getting_in.html

Follow me on Twitter @crushpod and rate the show on iTunes! Send me an email at crushpod@gmail.com and check out more info at www.crushpodcast.com

Here’s the NPR story that I referenced at the end of this episode about whether or not college should be for everyone:
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/07/10/482784573/why-high-school-students-need-more-than-college-prep

The post Episode 13: Julie Lythcott-Haims on Parenting the College-Bound appeared first on The Crush.

Rick Weissbourd and Lloyd Thacker are new partners trying to solve an entrenched problem: How can college admissions change to better encourage healthier student outcomes and to promote ethical engagement in their communities? Their “Turning the Tide” report is their best and latest stab at it.

Lots of people refer to the college admissions system as “broken.” Admissions offices at selective schools have turned more into “denial” offices with historic rates of selectivity…kids are applying to a million colleges and packing their high school schedules with a million AP courses…the extracurricular activities list is a reflection of things kids did to get into college more than it is a reflection of the lives they’re naturally inclined to live in spite of the process…the essays are boring or narcissistic…SAT scores create too much stress and don’t actually tell us anything meaningful about the student.

But what’s to be done?

Over a hundred colleges have signed on to endorse the recommendations laid out in the report titled, in full, “Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and and the Common Good Through College Admissions.” Lloyd and Rick talk to me about the climate that gave rise to this report, why these recommendations are the right ones to create change, and the challenges inherent in these recommendations actually generating the social change they’re seeking.

The post Episode 12: Lloyd Thacker and Rick Weissbourd on “Turning the Tide” appeared first on The Crush.

Dr. Denise Pope is a professor of education at Stanford and a founder of “Challenge Success,” an organization that “partners with schools and families to provide kids with the academic, social, and emotional skills needed to succeed now and in the future.” She’s out to reduce stress among teenagers through a variety of methods including a reduction in homework and more sleep. These were two of my favorite concepts when I was in high school, but for some strange reason even the students are pushing back.

Follow me on Twitter @crushpod – visit www.crushpodcast.com for more info – Subscribe and rate The Crush on iTunes!

Visit www.challengesuccess.org for more information on her organization and their efforts, and visit http://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/collegeadmissions to read the “Turning the Tide” report on reforming college admissions.

The post Episode 11: Denise Pope on The Pressure to Succeed in High School appeared first on The Crush.

Jon Burdick is the VP of Enrollment and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at the University of Rochester. He was also my admissions counselor when I went to USC, and now he’s my boss. He’s also one of the more articulate (and relatively fearless) thinkers and speakers on all things college, so I put the money questions to him. It took up almost two hours, so I’ve split it into two parts.

This is part 1! Follow Jon on Twitter @deanburdick

Follow me on Twitter @crushpod — Like the show on Facebook www.facebook.com/crushpodcast — Subscribe and rate the show on on iTunes!

The post Episode 10.1: Jon Burdick on Money and College appeared first on The Crush.

Jon Burdick is the VP of Enrollment and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at the University of Rochester. He was also my admissions counselor when I went to USC, and now he’s my boss. He’s also one of the more articulate (and relatively fearless) thinkers and speakers on all things college, so I put the money questions to him. It took up almost two hours, so I’ve split it into two parts.

This is part 2!

Follow Jon on Twitter @deanburdick — Follow me on Twitter @crushpod — Like the show on Facebook www.facebook.com/crushpodcast — Subscribe and rate the show on on iTunes!

The post Episode 10.2: Jon Burdick on Money and College appeared first on The Crush.

As a full-time anthropologist at Intel (recruited at a bar in Palo Alto off the faculty at Stanford), Genevieve Bell has a job that makes a lot of us go, “Wow…what’s that?” She sits at the intersection between anthropology and computer science, and as such, a big part of what she does is to help her company  – and by extension us – understand the future to come, and our place as humans in an increasingly technological and data-driven world. Relative to the mission of this podcast, I was really interested to learn about the intersection between seemingly disparate disciplines in creating a job that earned her a place among Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business,” and placed her ideas into publications like the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Wired, Forbes, The Atlantic, and more.

She also has one of the top 10 laughs of all my 9 interview subjects thus far. In fact, I might place her at a tie for the top spot with Siva Kumari.

Follow me on Twitter @crushpod — Like the show on Facebook www.facebook.com/crushpodcast — Subscribe and rate the show on on iTunes!

The post Episode 09: Genevieve Bell, Intel’s Anthropologist appeared first on The Crush.

The weirdness created by a lack of obvious, consistent formula determining who gets into selective colleges makes it feel super secretive. Stephanie Shyu and her colleagues at AdmitSee think they’ve come up with a tool that can help cut through some of the static, and it’s rankling some folks in the college counseling world.

AdmitSee is many things, one of those things is supplying a platform for the buying and selling of successful college applications. In this interview we talk about the beginning of this new company, how it works, plagiarism, how international students might be especially interested in learning how to “apply like an American,” the value of authenticity in college admissions, and how much AdmitSee’s top earner has garnered from selling the contents of the applications he used to get in to college. Bonus: I also find some way to use “Total Recall” in an analogy about college admissions!

Follow me on Twitter @crushpod — Like the show on Facebook www.facebook.com/crushpodcast — Subscribe and rate the show on on iTunes!

The post Episode 08: Stephanie Shyu, Co-Founder of AdmitSee appeared first on The Crush.

On March 30th, Ben Casselman blew up a Facebook group I’m a part of with about 10,000 members in it, all of them college admissions professionals in one way or another, high schcool, college, independent consultants, all of ’em. He blew it up with an article titled: “Shut Up About Harvard.” The premise of the article is that the “frenzy” and “panic” around getting into college is driven by the idea that only the most selective colleges matter, and that those are impossible to get into and you might as well die trying. It’s a topic close to the hearts of everyone trying to help high school kids figure out where to place their energy (emotional included), and needless to say, I’ve got a lot of questions for him.

To show you how popular his article was in this particular Facebook group, here’s a message from the group’s admin to spell that out:

The post Episode 07: Ben Casselman, Chief Economics Writer at fivethirtyeight.com appeared first on The Crush.

Students always talk about the “feel” of a college campus being that indescribable and critical deciding factor that influences their decision to apply and eventually to enroll at a college. Are colleges supposed to feel a certain way? Why? Where’d this feeling come from and what are today’s designers thinking about when designing spaces of higher education? Nader Tehrani, former head of the architecture department at MIT and current Dean of the School of Architecture at Cooper Union helps me answer these questions and more.

It’s April in the college admissions world (in the rest of the world too I guess) and that means that admitted students and their families are visiting campuses across the country in the final effort to make up their minds about where to enroll. This always involves fairly heavily-curated and well-produced dog and pony shows meant to display all the glory that is any given campus. The “feel” of a campus is one thing that really won’t be the same at any two places. So what’s behind that feel?

In this episode, Nader Tehrani of gives us a heady explanation of the art, history, and sociology involved in helping design spaces for learning in a community. We talk about the differences between colleges in the middle of a city (like his alma mater the Rhode Island School of Design) versus the more traditional “New England Campus” (like RISD’s neighbor down the street, Brown). We talk about how the history of collegiate instruction and how that has shaped learning space, the value of “brick and mortar” campuses in the era of MOOCs and online learning, the value of “the spaces in between” those which are designed, and how elements of campus space can in themselves be offensive.

The post Episode 06: Nader Tehrani on the Look and Feel of College Campuses appeared first on The Crush.

The International Baccalaureate, or IB, is the hardest and most thorough preparation for college out there today. Not only is it out there, but it’s really out there as a global curriculum in almost 150 countries, and it’s growing. Dr. Siva Kumari is the leader of this complex and fascinating entity, and she is also an utter delight. She spoke to me via Skype from The Hague…which is not a bad place to have an office.

Here is the study I reference in this episode, demonstrating that the IB is doing great work in low-income communities.

The post Episode 05: Dr. Siva Kumari, Director General of the IBO appeared first on The Crush.

Tests suck and they suck real bad. I know because I cried the day I got my SAT scores in the mail. BUT- we need them in our lives in the college admissions world…or do we? Adam Ingersoll, is the co-founder of the west coast’s leading test prep company, Compass Education Group, and he helps us think about the value of these tests, their present and future, and whether grownups like me should take the new SAT. And then cry about it for old time’s sake.

So, as referenced in the interview, here’s a fun look at what an already-smart person can do when it’s also this already-smart person’s job to take the SAT.

Behold: Adam’s recent score history, and the tragedy that is a nearly-perfect SAT score on multiple exam sittings, but…never quite getting there.

Let’s all weep.

The post Episode 04: Adam Ingersoll on Standardized Tests appeared first on The Crush.

Bob DeMars lived the dream of kids in streets and backyards everywhere when he played college football for the University of Southern California. He paid a heavy price, and entered into a fraternity he didn’t see coming. With the release of his new documentary “The Business of Amateurs,” which has been met with wide-ranging acclaim, which includes being used in John Oliver’s absolute The People’s Elbow-ing of the NCAA on “Last Week Tonight,” Bob hopes to spread the word to kids before they make the decisions he and the film’s subjects did.

Here’s the speech that Junior Seau’s daughter, Sydney Seau, would have delivered had the NFL Hall of Fame had the guts to let a daughter honor her father, the first Polynesian to make it into the Hall of Fame.

Here’s some data direct from the NCAA about the probability of making it pro after college (consider playing Powerball instead…?)

(Click photos to enlarge…especially the one where Bobby has someone’s brains in his hands)

The post Episode 03: Bob DeMars, Director of “The Business of Amateurs” appeared first on The Crush.

Emily Harris has an incredible job as the Jerusalem correspondent for National Public Radio. How do you get a job like that, and how do you prepare for it in college? (Hint: You kind of don’t.) Being a radio correspondent in Jerusalem requires a pretty diverse skill set. How did college prepare Emily for her job? (Photo credit: Ahmed Abuhamda for NPR)

I know Emily tangentially, which is to say, not really at all except for email correspondence and our conversation for the show. She was a student’s of my dad’s at Lincoln HS in Portland, OR and is still in touch with him. My fondness for NPR has grown over the years from it being that background buzzing noise in my kitchen growing up, to it being the same thing now, only I tend to actually pay attention to it. At any rate, I’m fascinated by these personalities, why they do what they do, what it’s like working in a war zone, and how it is to be far away from home (if such a thing even exists as an international correspondent). I asked Emily about all this stuff last summer (yeah, it’s taken me that long to get this done) and the result is a fun and informative conversation.

The post Episode 02: Emily Harris, Jerusalem Correspondent for NPR appeared first on The Crush.

So what’s the point of college? Bill Deresiewicz wrote the book “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life” which I’ve come to regard as one of the most important books about college available today. The nature of going to college has changed dramatically from its early inception, and economic forces have shifted the conversation away from developing people into better human beings and citizens, to one based on “return on investment.” What’s the point of going to college, anyways? Bill Deriesewicz has some compelling ideas. WARNING: The F-word gets said one time. By me. Sorry. 

The post Episode 01: What’s the Point of College? With Bill Deresiewicz appeared first on The Crush.