It is hard to avoid comparing private colleges and universities to well-oiled businesses. College Trustees govern as a board of directors would -- deciding on policy, appropriating funds, and growing the endowment. Schools across the nation have developed complicated marketing schemes to attract potential clien... uh, applicants. And many, if not most, pander to a ranking industry that claims to measure worth and places status on a pedestal. In an increasingly market-driven world, students, parents and administrators alike have bought into the idea that college is a business: We the students are the consumers and the product being sold to us is our education. Indeed, with ever-increasing tuition prices, it can seem like we are literally buying our college experience.
Are such comparisons legitimate, particularly at Dartmouth? More importantly, at an institution of higher learning whose primary goal should be to instill an education rather than sell it, are such analogies appropriate?
The obsession with rankings is one indication of how colleges nowadays are inordinately concerned with status, prestige and popularity in a way that seems downright corporate. Indeed, whether we would care to admit it or not, image and brand name have become important criteria for selecting a college. Rankings have become so ubiquitous, many now view them as some sort of objective measure of the relative value of a particular school, as if something as unique, complex and wonderful as the college experience could ever be encapsulated by a few numbers.
This preoccupation with prestige has led colleges to develop marketing schemes tailored to attract applicants. As a striking example, a group of Cornell students, dissatisfied with their school's standing, formed an "image committee" earlier this year whose goal is "to press the university into marketing and branding itself more aggressively, and to help it climb higher in college rankings," according to the New York Times. This kind of mindset is exactly what transforms a prospective student into a prospective customer and supports the unhealthy notion that a "good college" is a prize to be won or a product to be purchased, rather than an experience to be had.
The business model analogy also sheds light on the commercialization of admissions policies. As Jacob Baron '10 pointed out ("Fairness? What Fairness?" Oct. 18), if admissions patterns seem unfair to particular groups, it is because policies are structured primarily to benefit the College. This implies that a premium is placed on policies that will attract the most tuition dollars, raise the rankings, and increase overall status. Certainly, it is the College's responsibility to attract and accept a diverse student body. But what about policies like legacy admissions? Is that in the College's Mission Statement as well? Is that one of its equally noble but overlooked "essential elements," to ensure that its coffers will continue to be filled with the cash of wealthy alumni? Or is this indicative of its bottom-line, business mindset?
Despite the fact that complete fairness is impossible, the admissions process must still be based on some established framework of meritocracy. After all, isn't creating a "talented and intellectually curious student body" also essential to benefiting the College? I realize that the financial realities of running a private institution necessitate a concern with obtaining funding. But that concern should not override the deeper educational mission of the College, and should not result in policies that divorce that mission from the business practices undertaken to pursue it.
The apparent commercialization of the college experience is hard to ignore. And yet, I refuse to give in to the cynical notion that the College has business interests that are completely alienated from the educational interests of its students. I prefer to think that Dartmouth has my best interests in mind and that there are those in the upper echelons of the administration who prioritize educational values over market interests.
This trend is not as indicative of administrative motives as it is of a growing societal fixation with "bottom-line," Machiavellian concerns like "getting the most bang for the buck" and securing a sense of worth by attaching the name of a prestigious college next to your own. Perhaps these concerns -- and the corporate mindset they engender -- are the ones that are misguided. As Lloyd Thacker, a former guidance counselor, poignantly pointed out in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education last year, "Education is a process, not a product." Indeed, more than anything else, it is this transformative process that lies at the heart of the college experience.