Good School.
Award winning 🏆 community college journalists investigate the complexities of higher education to answer the question, “what is a ‘good school?’”. They explore the admissions process, prestige, college rankings, the faculty hierarchy, and more. Scroll down to listen!
Episode 5: The History
Akira Tisdale, Ian Kafes, and Sam Horn discuss the history of higher education in the U.S. and ponder where community colleges fit in to this history.
Episodes
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Episode 5: The History
Akira: Hey y’all! How is everybody today?
Sam: Oh, hanging in there, I kicked this semester’s whole butt.
Ian: Oh, I’m jealous, these online classes are kicking mine. My brain doesn’t want to do them, but all my required courses were only online this semester
Sam: Really? I love the online classes, they make my schedule so much easier. What about you, Akira, how are you?
Akira: I am so ready to transfer to McDaniel next semester. I love CCBC so much, but it’s time to spread my wings.
Ian: Tell me about it, dude. Did you ever just look around and ask yourself, “how did we get here?”
Sam: Well, I drove here. Why? Do you need a ride home?
Ian: No, that’s not what I mean, Sam… I mean, how did we get here, like CCBC, why does our school exist?
Akira: Interesting question, Ian! I was just trying to figure that out by researching the GI Bill, which was a major development in the history of higher education.
Sam: Well, the GI Bill might never have been passed without the Land Grant Acts that I’ve been looking into. Ian, haven’t you been finding out about the growth of community colleges in the 1950s?
Ian: Aw jeez, ok, look I started my research so it’s not quite ready for prime time, but I do know it was the 60’s not the 50’s.
Akira: Yeah, that’s why you don’t know how we got here, but we gotchu.
Akira: Today we are going to explore how we got here by looking at the history of higher education.
Sam: My name is Sam
Ian: I’m Ian
Akira: and I’m Akira
Ian: and this is Good School.
Dr. Thelin: I consider myself a historian, and I particularly like to study higher education, and also I'd like to connect the history of Higher Education in American social history to the present.
Sam: That is Dr. John Thelin….quick intro, Dr. Thelin is a Professor of Higher Education and Public Policy at the University of Kentucky. He wrote The History of American Higher Education. According to Dr. Thelin the history of higher ed goes back to 1862. While the Civil War tore the country apart, congress passed the Land Grant Act. The Land Grant Act of 1862 was a way for the government to have some sort of influence in education.
The land grant act granted each state 30,000 acres for each of its congressional seats. Funds from the sale of the land were used by some states to establish new institutes of higher education. The University of Maryland, in our backyard, was one of the schools that benefited from the Land Grant Act. We spoke with former University of Maryland President, Dr. William “Brit” Kirwan to find out how the Land Grant Act played out in Maryland.
Dr. Kirwan: Up until the Land Grant Act, which was 1864, colleges and universities were mostly packed into the North East, and they were for the wealthy, so you had to have a child of a family of significant means to go to a university in those days, and there was a famous senator name of Morrill. And he led an effort to democratize Higher Education and propose his bill that every state would have a land grant university.
Unfortunately, the women didn't go to college in those days, so this was for a young man, and also unfortunately, the schools in the South were segregated, so they created, about 10 or 20 years later, in the southern segregated south, a second land grant college that was available to African American.
Sam: 28-years after the First Land Grant was passed, the Second Land Grant was passed in 1890. Back to Dr. Thelin.
Dr. Thelin: The second Land Grant Act of 1890, it was a deal with the devil. Because the federal government said, if you use federal money for your state colleges, you cannot have racial exclusion, but they put in a weasel clause, they said, but you can do that if you create separate institutions. So you have historically white and historically black State Land Grant institutions, and so, not surprisingly, the former confederate states and many other states went for the, what I call separate but unequal arrangement. And so that is why I believe Maryland has a historically black state land grant institution, and I think about 16 states do. On the one hand, I promoted access, but it also attended to perpetuate racial separations, an example of a mixed legacy from that.
Sam: The Second Land Grant Act created the 1890 Historically Black Land-Grant Universities, which were some of the first Historically Black Colleges and Universities or HBCUs in the nation. There are 19 historically Black land-grant institutions. Now back to Dr. Kirwan.
Dr. Kirwan: In Maryland, we have the University of Maryland College Park, which is the state’s Land-Grant University, and we have the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, which is a historically black college university, which was the counterpart land grant university created back in the time of segregation.
So the Land Grants Acts were two congressional actions that established the current system of higher education, but they weren’t the only ones.
Akira: No, they weren’t. The G.I. Bill has a long history. Originally named the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. The purpose of this bill was to provide an array of benefits for Veterans for WWII. Dr. Thelin explains.
Dr. Thelin: The genesis of the GI bill was that looking at the legacy from World War I, what happened was there was a terrible situation in which large numbers of veterans who had served in World War I were without pensions, without jobs, they were really just kind of forgotten.
Akira: So since the soldiers after WWI were left with nothing, the government decided to do something better for soldiers returning after WWII. The GI Bill became a turning point for higher education.
Clip: Now he returns, with all his experiences in the fight to kill fascism
Dr. Thelin: So what happens as World War II starting to wind down, one concern was, you were gonna have literally hundreds of thousands of veterans entering into the job market, and there was a real fear that there would be civil unrest, and the idea of like a scholarship or financial aid to go to college, was really only one of about 10 programs.
Clip: In Washington, there were a group of congressmen with long memories who were in the last war. They knew that when a man gets out of the Army or Navy or Marines, he’s worried most about a job, an education, and a home. And that’s why congress, led by the president, passed a law: The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. Better known as the GI bill of rights.
Dr. Thelin: What nobody expected was how appealing the idea of financial aid, where the federal government would pay for college tuition, and even for living expenses. They thought it was just gonna be one of many parts, but it just blossomed, and it became the most attractive part of all the services for GIs.
And so what you would find is that like state universities in the late 1940s and early 1950s, because of their appeal to former veterans, their enrollments would go from like 7,000 to 21,000. The GI Bill greatly increased the seriousness of purpose at many colleges, the returning veterans were very serious students, many of them came from very non-traditional backgrounds, a lot of them had not graduated from high school, and they just really changed campus life into being much more diverse. It also changed the whole character of who might be able to go to college.
Akira: Although the original GI Bill expired in 1956, by the time it did expire, 1 in 3 high school grads were going off to college. The term GI Bill is still used today to refer to programs that assist veterans in going to college. Another important congressional Act created The Pell Grant in 1965.
Dr. Thelin: The Pell Grant, a lot of it was modeled on the idea of the GI Bill where, the idea that if you meet the conditions of the program, it is an entitlement, you are entitled to this tuition voucher, and above all, it was portable. By that it meant that if you were a recipient of the Federal Financial Aid, you could carry that, you got to choose the college where you would enroll, so not only in access and affordability, it increased choice, that was just unprecedented.
Akira: Hey Ian, did you know that roughly 1,000 CCBC students are veterans using the current version of the GI Bill?
Ian: And 30% of CCBC students use the Pell Grant. By making education more accessible for soldiers, education became more accessible for everyone. We can see that happen again with the evolution of online school. According to Dr. Kirwan the growth of online education is also tied to returning soldiers.
Dr. Kirwan: This was back, right after World War II, and we had of course our military stationed all over the world. The military, in part because of the thinking coming out of the GI bill, is well we’ve got all these soldiers overseas, how in the world— we need to give them a chance to get a college degree! So, the federal government put out what I’ll call an RFP, and asked universities to bid on winning a contract to take education overseas to the military bases. And so the University of Maryland, of course being right here in Washington, had a- I think an inside crack—anyway responded to this opportunity and won the contract. It created this separate institution which was called the University of Maryland University College, as technology began to advance, the idea that maybe we don't have to send faculty through Gaithersburg to give a class, we can maybe start using online education.
And so over the years, while we still maintain overseas campuses– they've shrunk in number, but they still exist– University College has built up this online capacity with its courses. It is the largest non for profit online university in the United States. But, University College really grew out of winning this contract to take its courses overseas to the military bases. And now we’ve gained so much knowledge and capacity, and expertise in using technology to deliver instruction. And so here will surely be some hybrid version that will occur as we move into the post COVID years.
Ian: I feel like we’re all living proof of that right now.
Dr. Kirwan: Yes
Ian: I mean, I'm taking four classes this semester and only one of them are on campus.
Dr. Kirwan: Right. And I’m sure you get value out of that on campus experience but, there's gotta be some convenience or value to your overall life that at least some of the work you do is online. Am I right?
Ian: Oh, yea!
Dr. Kirwan: How do the rest of you feel?
Sam: The same. All my classes at CCBC have been online, so I'm a very good example of how everything has just been so convenient.
Ian: For my, let's call it less than traditional paths to my degree, online classes have been indispensable. For one, it has allowed me to do this podcast completely remote. And for another, it has allowed me to work on my degree while working full time, so I can, you know, pay rent and live. It has afforded me opportunities I could not have taken without it.
Akira: Ok, so the Land Grant Act and GI Bill explain how some were able to go to college, and how college is more accessible to people like us, but how did community college get here?
Ian: The origins of community college, originally called the junior college, can be traced to the University of Chicago. In 1892, the university’s then president, William Rainey Harper, split University of Chicago into two distinct programs: the junior college, which covered the first two years of college where students underwent traditional instruction, and the senior college, which were the final two years when students transitioned into performing their own research. Harper’s end goal was to keep universities free of any people not up to their high, “prestigious” standards.
Akira: Haha Jokes on Harper because community college students hold some of the most prestigious jobs you can have. According to US News, Eileen Collins, the first woman in NASA history to command a space shuttle earned her Associate’s degree from Community College ; Morgan Freeman, studied voice and diction at a community college, Oscar winning actor, Tom Hanks, says he owes his success to attending a community college; Steve Jobs started at a 4 year university and dropped out only to later attend a community college;
Ian: And American TV host, Mike Rowe, actually went to Essex Community College.
Sam: We’re in good company!!!! So Harper created community colleges back in the 1800s but when did they start taking off?
Ian: Well, the majority of this growth occurred in the 1960s and 70s, otherwise known as “the boom years.” This was also the time when the Pell Grant became popular. One major advocate and catalyst for this growth was Edmund J. Gleazer Jr. Gleazer was the president of the American Association of Junior Colleges from 1956 until 1981 and, as a result, he became the face of the community college movement in the United States. Gleazer appeared on talk shows, delivered speeches, and wrote extensively advocating for community colleges. During his tenure, community college enrollment grew from less than 600,000 to 4.8 million students.
Akira: And that is how we got here.
Sam: So without the land grant act, the GI bill, the rise of community colleges, and online school we might not be here.
Ian: You’re so right, Sam! With each new development, there are more opportunities for more people to get a college education.
And I guess that’s a wrap. Sam, can I get that ride home?
Andrea: This episode was produced by Community College of Baltimore County students Katlyn Drescher, Akira Tisdale, Ian Kafes and Sam Horn, with help from ForReal Media.
Hosted by Akira Tisdale, Ian Kafes and Sam Horn
Writing Consultant and Editor, Stacia Stein
Edited by EJ Snyder and Kyle Woodworth.
Original music was composed by Kyle Woodworth.
Audio engineering by Nicholas Karlin.
Cover Art by Jacob Elliott.
Thank you to the American Council of Learned Societies and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundations's Humanities for All program for funding this episode.
Thank you to CCBC Librarians Jean Boggs, Jamie Whitman and Elizabeth Godwin for research support, Professor Jeremy Caplan for his support and guidance, Journalist Sara Hebel and Scott Smallwood for consulting on this episode.
Kelly Hurr, and Arielle Niesenblatt for marketing consultation, Angel Lewis, Kayleigh MacIntyre and Andrea Alvarado Avila (that's me!) for managing our social media,
Dr. John Thelin and Dr. William Brit Kirwan, for participating in this episode and to the whole Good School. crew for hanging in there and working hard over the past 2 years to produce this podcast series.
Good School. is a production of ForReal Media, a Baltimore podcast production house, “Removing perceived barriers to media production and bringing more inclusivity to storytelling”.
Find Good School. on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @goodschoolpod
Tell your friends, your family, your students, your colleagues, and anyone you think would be interested about our podcast. Leave a 5-star review to help others find us.
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, so you will always know when new episodes drop.
Go to forrealmedia.city/good-school for more information about this episode. You’ll find a transcript of the episode and more good stuff in our show notes.
Bye for now!
Episode 4: The Faculty
What makes a good college professor? And what does tenure have to do with it? Host Olivia Yates spills the tea with an adjunct professor, a tenured professor, and a nontenured professor as they uncover the realities of the faculty hierarchy in higher ed and explore how the hierarchy can affect the student experience.
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Episode 4: The Faculty
Angel: I think what made him a great professor is that he genuinely cared about his students, um… I think that is a really important factor. I think he understood that like…you don't know what the student is going through at home before they get there.
Sam: What really makes a great professor is somebody who really cares about the students and really just, like, wants to really, you know, try to work with each student try to help them with their individual needs and really be there…
Akira: A professor that actually enjoys teaching what they're teaching. Like, they actually have a passion. They're not just doing it for the tenure, they’re not doing it for the paycheck, they genuinely want to talk and let other people learn about this.
EJ: For me, what makes a good professor is somebody that's there 'cause they genuinely want you to succeed. They're not just there to get their paycheck. And I've dealt with an equal amount of both, but the teachers that I've genuinely have learned the most from are the ones that have gone out of their way to message me when I've been doing bad on assignments, just check up on me.
Liv: That was the Good School crew answering the question: what makes a good professor? We heard from Angel, Sam, Akira, and EJ. They want professors who care about their students, have a passion for what they are teaching, and want to help their students and see them succeed.
My name is Olivia Yates, and this is “Good School.”
Although we all want our professors to have these qualities, there are a lot of issues they face as faculty.
Depending on their specific job as faculty, they might have different day-to-day tasks. But they all have a lot on their plate. Besides the time they spend teaching, they have to hold office hours, create and grade assignments, build curriculum, attend meetings, publish scholarship, advise student clubs, develop campus wide initiatives, network with peers both within the college and nationwide, and promote students and the college.
There are different types of faculty, today we are going to talk about three: full-time tenure track, full-time non-tenure track and adjuncts.
Liv: Tenure track is what most professors aspire to because of the prestige, job security, and good salary. Full-time non tenure is similar to tenure without the prestige, they have job security and a somewhat less salary. Adjunct professors work part-time, have no prestige, no salary and no job security.
I have gotten to know three professors while working on this episode. They have different challenges because of their place in the faculty hierarchy, but the same goal, to help students realize their potential. I want to find out how the faculty hierarchy affects students, and the role it plays in a “good school”. Let’s meet the three professors.
Dr. Monica Son, full-time tenured professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Dr. Son: Tenure, it definitely gives you the feeling that you could say and do whatever you want. I am a very mindful person, so it's not like I do whatever I want, but for me, as a woman of color and as a chair, it allows me to influence the administration, especially the provost, the president, in a way that leans towards really student success, and really advocating for students of color, really advocating for issues that impact access and opportunity, and being a voice to that.
Liv: Meanwhile, Professor Carr Kizzier, a full-time non-tenured track professor, at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), is trying to organize a faculty union for non-tenured professors, so he can have some of the safety nets of a tenured professor.
Prof Kizzier: We do not have tenure at CCBC...I just started a new five-year contract, so I have job security I suppose for the next four years.
I think that having a faculty union would give the faculty a sense – well, it would give us real sort of power in the workplace...
Liv: Finally, Professor Rob Bennett, a colleague of Professor Kizzier, and an adjunct faculty confronts the reality of being part of the professorial gig economy.
Prof Bennett: There is no job security in being an adjunct. You basically work for hire. You could be let go at any moment for any reason…
Liv: So all three professors have different job titles and roles, but what do they mean? Here is Dr. Adrianna Kezar, a professor at the University of Southern California and the Director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education, explaining the different faculty models in higher education.
Dr. Kezar: So actually, the type of institution that you're at matters less because these three types of faculty exist across all of them. The first type is the one that is decreasing significantly. There are about 30% of the faculty are left on tenure track full-time appointments, which means that not only are they employed full-time, but they have protections from being let go from their employment. And so tenure has been a protection against politically motivated individuals who, over the course of the last 100 years, have fired or tried to fire faculty who do research or teach things they find controversial. That's 30% of our faculty; used to be about 80% of our faculty.
Dr. Kezar: Then the other group is the largest group, and that is part-time adjunct faculty, they’re now 52% of the faculty. They are hired semester to semester, so the length of their job security is four months, as you can imagine, that makes it pretty precarious. They were initially hired to fill in specialized expertise in curriculum.
Liv: So an adjunct professor has no job security and a tenure professor has job security. And in the middle of the job security spectrum is the full-time non-tenured professor who works on multi-year contracts.
Dr. Kezar: If we're not returning to an academy that has a commitment to tenure, at least we could have a commitment to long-term contracts which would at least protect speech in the classroom and in research, it would make that more possible.
Liv: The type of faculty that are at an institution and the way they are treated impacts student success. At CCBC, where I graduated from, about 37% of the faculty are on long term contracts. The other 63% are adjuncts. This means most of my classes were taught by adjuncts.
Liv: Research has shown that students who take more classes with adjuncts are less likely to persist through college, less likely to graduate, less likely to have a high GPA, and more likely to drop out. It is not because adjuncts are not good teachers, it is because adjuncts are often given very little time to prepare. They are usually teaching multiple classes at multiple institutions. In contrast, a full time tenure track professor might only teach one class a semester and can devote more time to each individual student, preparing for classes, grading, providing feedback, writing letters of recommendation, and doing everything a professor needs to do to help their students succeed.
Here is Dr. Son, the tenured professor, telling us about her schedule.
Dr. Son: I'm an early riser. So a lot of the writing work, research work happens in the morning. And teaching, we have, because of all the other work that we do, we teach one class per semester, so that allows time to really focus on teaching well. Which is not an opportunity that most folks have. A lot of our time contractually, about 80% of our time is spent meeting with students, so that is a lot. So one day would be for research and scholarship, and of course, because we're faculty, we would have our January winter and summer if you weren't teaching or have some other kind of obligation to the department. As I was talking with one of my faculty earlier this week, you know, even the summer is challenging because you first need a pause from the whole year, and then you want to actually enjoy the summer.
Liv: Now here’s Professor Bennett, talking about his schedule as an adjunct.
Prof Bennett: So this week, Monday morning I had my ten o'clock class at Dundalk. Came home, did some work until my 6:30 class today. I had a 10:00 AM meeting with my client, and then I worked for my client's office from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, then drove to UMBC where I have two classes tonight at 5:30 and 7:10.
Prof Bennett: Tomorrow morning I will get up early as usual, walk the dog, go to class at 10:10, grade, and do freelance work between 11:30 and twelve. I have a Dean search committee meeting from twelve to two tomorrow, then class tomorrow night from 5:30 to 8:30-ish. Thursday, I have a networking meeting at 8:15 AM. I am giving blood at 10:00 AM. Basically day grading all day Sunday. Cause you know, that was just needed to get done. I'm still way behind. Uh, it's a story of my life in grading.
Liv: Professor Bennett’s schedule is not the exception, but the shared reality for the majority of adjuncts. They have crazy schedules, trying to fit everything from service to the institution to office hours to grading all while being paid little. The American Federation of Teachers found that adjuncts earn less than $25,000 a year. They rarely get breaks or summers off.
Prof Bennett: I'm one of those adjuncts that does this basically as my job and I need that revenue... and I mean fortunately enough for me I'm doing consulting too, but that's extra revenue but really for a while it was just teaching and not knowing at the end of July or early August whether you're gonna have two classes or three classes come the semester... that makes a difference in your life. I guess what it comes down to... now I know adjuncts are a dime a dozen … as they say. There are tons of them, but I like to think I'm a pretty good teacher, and that people would want me teaching their students.
Prof Kizzier: I like working at CCBC very much. I feel like I have a lot of…freedom. I have a lot of, I have a lot of room to be creative in the way that I approach my classes. So typically, I'll teach four or five classes. Lately, I've been teaching five and then getting a little bit of overtime. And then I'm required to have five hours of office hours during the week. So, that's my like, at school schedule, so it's pretty, you know, it’s pretty cushy.
Liv: Professor Kizzier teaches 4–5 classes a semester because he works at a teaching institution. In general, Community colleges are teaching institutions. This means their emphasis is on student learning rather than faculty research. Dr. Son, who we heard from earlier, teaches at a research institution. While teaching one class a semester, she’s researching “systems of oppression [and their] impact [on] access and opportunity” in education.
You will not find many people doing in-depth research like Dr. Son is doing at a teaching institution like CCBC. Even though he thinks teaching 4-5 classes is pretty cushy, Professor Kizzier still wants a union.
He is fighting for a union for full time non-tenured professors at CCBC, but that would not include adjuncts like Professor Bennett.
So why doesn’t Professor Bennett just become full time?
Prof Bennett: I’ve applied a couple times…I applied at CCBC, but didn’t even get an interview because I didn’t have a quote-unquote communications degree. Um, I guess a masters in com- a masters in visual and written communication and a bachelor's in journalism isn’t quite enough to equal communications.
Prof Bennett: Um, so yeah, I laugh about that. Um, kind of funny that you work somewhere for twelve plus, ten plus years or whatever and can’t even get an interview…
Liv: Even though it is contrary to logic, adjuncts are usually not seriously considered for full-time positions in the institutions where they already work. I had a conversation with Scott Smallwood and Sara Hebel, journalists and founders of Open Campus, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigating and elevating higher education, about how hard it is for adjuncts to become full-time.
Smallwood: ...You've already demonstrated to me that you're not a full time faculty. How do I know that? Because you're an adjunct in our department. It's really, like, gross, but it's almost like a logic puzzle where you're like, “Oh, clearly you're not because if you were then you wouldn't have this job.” You're categorically different.
Hebel: We tried to get at this when I was editor of a section that also involved some faculty stuff. And it came from just a conversation like this where we had somebody who was a real, strong activist, for adjuncts that we talked a lot to, and he was like, “What I just want, basically, people like me to know is don't get your hopes up”, right? Like, people always think that they're going to be the exception. I mean, we all do that, I think, to some degree, like, “Oh, I'll be the exception and it’s- no, it usually doesn't, because there's an average for a reason.
Hebel: The fact of like an adjunct really continuing to put themselves in these long hours, not great paying jobs. Some people do many of these, right, and especially people in the regions like ours, where they're urban centers, you can go to Baltimore, and DC and all a bunch of places in Philly if you wanted, and you could spend your whole day in your car and like patch together a bunch of these things and people do that, because they have hold out hope. So he wanted to inject some reality into this conversation. And we took that, and we actually looked at sort of, we went through a good exploration of how long those odds really are in a couple of searches. So anyway, just another thing to keep in mind, is that, really, that the chances of that for any person, really just are mathematically quite low.
Prof Bennett: So this is a story of being an adjunct. It’s a week before classes start, you get an email from a coordinator that says, “Hey, Rob, I’ve given your class to a full-time person, and sorry, but your classes at Catonsville and Dundalk are fine.” Anyways, um, I- yeah it’s frustrating. I did actually shoot out an email and I picked up a class in February at Catonsville, so, who knows? But, uh, to have to worry about the stress of all of that is just, right? Cause, that-that effects budgets, right? That effects long-term planning, that effects living! Um, so, I, yeah, so you know, it’s-it’s the ins-and-outs of adjuncting.
Liv: To me, what students want are professors who care. To us, their place on the faculty hierarchy doesn’t matter at all. We don’t care about tenure status, or if they are at a research or teaching institution. All that matters is that they help us be our best. But what I’m learning is that the issues affecting the faculty hierarchy and what I earlier thought of as prestige, could mean professors have more time to perfect classes and connect with their students.
Prof Kizzier: What do I think makes a good professor? Okay, so first and foremost, I think is a passion for the material. I think a good professor is someone who really cares about the material that they're teaching, and I think that... I think that shows. I think the students can sense that, you know what I mean? Because if they have passion for the material, then they'll… Well, they can bring that energy to the students, right? I think that also makes a good professor, is someone who's willing to work with students to help to find the way that they can best discover this material.
Dr. Son: I love that question. Someone who has humility, who really is walking in with a sense that they're also a student, and they're also learning. And really someone who thinks about teaching and learning as transformational, that understands that there's a capacity for real change to happen.
Prof Bennett: I think the most important aspect of being a good teacher is actually empathy. So on that aspect, you can connect with them, I think once you've been able to connect with them in that way, through that empathetic lens, it just makes it easier to really teach them, grow with them, inspire them…
Liv: Empathy. Or as Angel, Sam, Akira, and EJ said, “a professor who cares.” Today we’ve heard from 3 of them. And their status on the faculty hierarchy doesn’t seem to affect whether each is a good professor in their student’s eyes. What seems to impact student success most is not, are the professors good, but rather … is the school good to the professors.
Andrea: This episode was produced by Community College of Baltimore County students, Luisa Schauffert, Madeleine Peyton, Kayla Zimmerman, Katie Roberts, and Olivia Yates, with support from ForReal Media.
Hosted by Olivia Yates.
Writing Consultant and Editor, Stacia Stein
Edited by EJ Snyder and Kyle Woodworth.
Original music was composed by Kyle Woodworth.
Audio engineering by Nicholas Karlin.
Cover Art by Jacob Elliott.
Thank you to the American Council of Learned Societies and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundations's Humanities for All program for funding this episode.
Thank you to CCBC Librarians Jean Boggs, Jamie Whitman and Elizabeth Godwin for research support, Professor Jeremy Caplan for his support and guidance, Kelly Hur and Arielle Nissenblatt for marketing consultation,
Angel Lewis, Kayleigh McIntyre, and Andrea Alvarado Avila (that's me!) for managing our social media,
Dr. Monika Son, Professor Carr Kizzier, Professor Rob Bennett, Dr. Adriana Kezar, and Journalists Scott Smallwood and Sara Hebel for participating in this episode and to the whole Good School. crew for hanging in there and working hard over the past 2 years to produce this podcast series.
Good School. is a production of ForReal Media, a Baltimore podcast production house, “Removing perceived barriers to media production and bringing more inclusivity to storytelling”.
Find Good School. on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @goodschoolpod
Tell your friends, your family, your students, your colleagues, and anyone you think would be interested about our podcast. Leave a 5-star review to help others find us.
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, so you will always know when new episodes drop.
Go to forrealmedia.city/good-school for more information about this episode. You’ll find a link to the article Journalist, Sara Hebel mentioned, a transcript of the episode and more in our show notes.
Bye for now!
Episode 3: The Rankings
In 1996, Dr. Richard Freeland was appointed president of Northeastern University. His main goal as president: to break into the U.S. News & World Report’s top 100 Colleges. Does a high U.S. News Ranking make a good school? Follow host, Abby Spies, as she tries to answer this question.
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Episode 3: THE RANKINGS
Dr. Freeland:…reputation is a very hard thing to achieve in higher education, and it's a very hard thing to lose right now. I love to say, you know, everybody thinks Harvard is a great university. Almost nobody could tell you why Harvard is a great university, almost nobody has any facts to back that up, they just know it.
Abby: That was Dr. Richard Freeland, the former president of Northeastern University. In today's episode, we are going to hear the story of Dr. Freeland and the rise of Northeastern University in the U.S. news rankings.
My name is Abby Spies and this Good School.
We always want the best, and we want to be told what the best is. If you go to a good school, doors are open, people automatically assume you are capable and smart and important.
There is one ranking that looms large over our idea of how to define a successful person.
News clip: The new 30th edition of ‘Best Colleges’ was just released this morning. We’ve got it.
Abby: The US News and World Report annual college ranking. The ranking system first started based on which schools had the most faculty publications and which had the most widely read and cited publications. It seems like originally rankings were based not so much on student learning, but mainly on faculty scholarship.
Robert Morse: The rankings started in 1983, and they were much less elaborate than they are today, and it was before the internet, so they were obviously not as accessible as they are today. And we were doing them for the same purpose back then as we are now which is to provide information for consumers and our main audience is prospective students and their parents. So that's who we're doing it for and our intent is to just provide them with one tool to use in admissions and not to be the sole factor
Abby: That was Robert Morse, the man behind the madness, so to speak. Robert Morse came up with the college ranking system for US News and World Report.
In this interview from Higher Education Today, produced by the University of the District of Columbia, Morse says his goal is to provide us with information. But I’m not sure what information he is providing the consumer because the US News College Rankings are notoriously opaque.
Abby: The information they use to rank the colleges is not clear. What is clear is that the prospective students are consumers and everyone wants our money!
Media companies, like US News, know what sells. Savvy college administrators know how to use that media to woo these consumers of US News. They are … strange bedfellows … working together to sell young people and their parents the promise of future success.
But is it all smoke and mirrors?
After he was president of Northeastern, Dr. Richard Freeland, who we heard from at the top of the episode, decided that his school needed a better ranking. Here’s his rationale.
Dr. Freeland: So it had a very strong constituency of exactly the kind of kids who usually go to public urban universities, and so when the state started building University of Massachusetts in Boston, where I worked for 20 years, UMass just took that constituency away from Northeastern and Northeastern found itself losing enrollments and unable to compete with the public sector, and so the board really under my predecessor concluded that Northeastern needed a fundamentally different business model. We needed to attract more students who could actually afford a private institution, and we needed therefore to reach out to a wider constituency, not just Boston, and attract more middle income and upper middle income students.
Abby: Dr. Freeland wanted richer students at his school and decided that the rankings were the key to attracting the wealthy parents of wealthy future alumni.
Dr. Freeland:…the whole world knows about the Ivy League, the whole world knows about Harvard, Yale, Princeton and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. … So how do you compete with that, how do you raise your reputation when the whole idea of reputation is amorphous and without a factual basis? It's just something that's out there in the general consciousness, and what I realized was that the rankings gave us a playing field on which we could compete. By the time I became president, the rankings were already established as a significant factor in admissions. We understood by then that parents and students were reading them. Parents and students were desperate for information about colleges-
Abby: Instead of providing prospective students of Northeastern with information, or reasons why Northeastern might be a good choice, Dr. Freeland came up with a plan to get a better ranking from U.S. News. So he took the information US News published and started piecing together how the different colleges were ranked and why.
Dr. Freeland: US News is a business, you have to pay for some of this stuff, you have to join the club and pay a fee. So, we did pay the fee, we did figure out how it worked, and then from there it was just a lot of elbow grease, and mobilizing the whole institution around that goal, and because the rest of the industry was basically hostile to the rankings, almost nobody else was playing the game exactly the way we were playing it. We were, we were pretty unusual. Now, everybody does that.
Abby: Instead of being hostile to the rankings, Dr. Freeland made a business decision to embrace the rankings. He paid the fee, but paying the fee was just the beginning.
Dr. Freeland: They tell you about how the formula works in very general terms, there are a lot of things inside the numbers that they don't publish for one reason or another, so we started with what was public information. So what we did, and I'm not a particularly quantitative person, but I was surrounded by people who were. And they basically figured out how the formula worked by taking the results and sort of working backwards to the inputs, and they got so sophisticated about it that by the time by the end of my presidency, we could pretty much predict if we move this metric, if we move the graduate rate metric by five percentage points, exactly what the impact on our rank would be. So we could model every conceivable policy change in operational change we would make and know what the input—so that helped us, once again, figure out what would be most important, what would be most powerful, what would move the needle the most.
Abby: Dr. Freeland — what is happening here? Almost no one else is playing the game? I feel a little embarrassed to just now be realizing my future is a game and my graduation is a metric.
Dr. Freeland, after coming up with his game plan, used himself and his staff to talk to other colleges that were a higher rank, so he could finalize what he needed to do.
One of the ways US News ranks colleges is by peer review, so Dr. Freeland took it upon himself to make a sort of sales pitch to other universities to see if he could get other colleges to rank him better.
Dr. Freeland: So I had the presidents, my provost had the provost, my enrollment management vice president had the enrollment deans. And we each systematically set out to reach our counterparts at these 120 institutions. And so whenever I had a chance to meet with a president from one of our—one of the other 120 institutions in our category, I would grab it. At a conference, if I was in the city, and I would talk to them, and we try to… I would have some excuse for wanting to talk, but my real point was to try to get in front of them and tell Northeastern’s story. And I would always know what their numbers were, so if they ranked higher than we did, as many of them did, I would then try to share places where our numbers were better than their numbers, to kind of embarrass them a little bit
We ran it like a political campaign.
News clip: Step right up folks, see the mental marvel of the campaign, Mr. McGOP. He promises to solve all your problems, ask him any question.
Dr. Freeland: We actually moved our score from, a 2.2 on a scale of 5 to 3.1…and it was that movement that was the largest factor in our jumping into the top 100 as we did in my final year.
Abby: Dr. Freeland figured out what data points could influence the rankings, but these data points are self-reported. So… can we even trust the data? Here’s what Robert Morse says.
Robert Morse: No, I mean we're- that's obviously a big question, and it's an important question. I think broadly speaking, the schools are honest, and they care about the data integrity. I mean there’s certainly been in 2012 there was this week with George Washington or last week, but there's been Clermont McKenna and Emory and Iona College. So there's been a few really high-profile cases of data falsification or at least mega misreporting, whatever we want to call it.
News clip: A math professor at Colombia has called out his employer for providing faulty data to the US News and World Report magazine, in order to secure a higher ranking
News clip:Students at George Washington University woke up today to learn their top-tiered school no longer ranks number 51 in the country.
Robert Morse: But I think those exceptions.
Abby: The day that Dr. Freeland retired, Northeastern broke the top 100 of the US News rankings. It was ranked at 98. Once it cracked the top 100, applications came flooding in. This increase in applications helped sustain Northeastern in the rankings, since “number of applicants” is a factor in the rankings. The top 100 is in that way somewhat of a self-propelling ranking. Most importantly, this increase in applications meant that Northeastern was now reaching the upper class students who could pay full tuition. Prestige means rich people.
Dr. Freeland: I continue to defend the rankings. The idea of institutions being accountable to the public to share information. I feel that the community is off, but I still have a little piece of me that says, you know,“Did we get it right?”
Abby: There’s a question. Did you get it right, Dr. Freeland? Are you asking me, or are you asking Robert Morse? Did you crack the code? Maybe. Did you enhance the reputation of Northeastern? Probably. Did you make Northeastern a good school? There’s no telling.
No one’s been able to tell me what that means, and I sure as hell don't know. I’m at a community college.
Let’s hear your students’ podcast.
Andrea: This episode was produced by Community College of Baltimore County students, Katlyn Drescher, Renita Obichere, Sam Martignetti and Abby Spies, with help from ForReal Media.
Hosted by Abby Spies.
Writing Consultant and Editor, Stacia Stein
Edited by EJ Snyder and Kyle Woodworth.
Original music and sound design by Kyle Woodworth.
Audio engineering by Nicholas Karlin.
Cover Art by Jacob Elliott.
Thank you to the American Council of Learned Societies and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundations's Humanities for All program for funding this episode.
Andrea: Thank you to CCBC Librarians Jean Boggs, Jamie Whitman and Elizabeth Godwin for research support, Professor Jeremy Caplan for his support and guidance, Kelly Hur and Arielle Nissenblatt for marketing consultation.
Angel Lewis, Kayleigh McIntyre, and Andrea Alvarado Avila (that's me!) for managing our social media,
Dr. Richard Freeland for participating in this episode, and to the whole Good School. crew for hanging in there and working hard over the past 2 years to produce this podcast series.
Good School. is a production of ForReal Media, a Baltimore podcast production house “Removing perceived barriers to media production and bringing more inclusivity to storytelling”.
Find Good School. on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @goodschoolpod
Tell your friends, your family, your students, your colleagues, and anyone you think would be interested about our podcast.
Leave a 5-star review to help others find us.
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, so you will always know when new episodes drop.
Go to https://forrealmedia.city/good-school for more information about this episode. You’ll find a link to Robert Morse’s full interview, a transcript of the episode, and more good stuff in our show notes.
Bye for now!
Episode 2: The Application
A high school student dreams of a college with dogs in the dorms but first must confront college counselors, essay coaches, and admissions officers— oh my! Featuring Eric Hoover, Senior Writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education; Christopher Wild, Associate Director of Admissions at Goucher College; and Calvin Pickett, essay coach at College Essay Guy. Hosted by Keith Anstead.
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Episode 2: The Application
Sara: My dream school would be a school that is about medium-sized. I don't want to go to a super huge school where the teachers don't even know your name because of how big the classes are, but I also don't wanna go to a super small school where I'm seeing the same people in every class over and over.
Keith: That was Sara…
It is Spring of her Junior year of high school, and she is trying to decide where to apply to college.
Sara: I would like to go somewhere that's close to where I already live, mainly because I do not want to go far away from my dog...If there was a dream school for me, there would be dogs in the dorms.
And I would also like somewhere where I could major in guitar and then have a few different minors. I really wanna do Spanish, Political Science and Musical Theater in college, and extracurriculars. I would probably want some type of sports teams that aren't super-competitive sports teams because I really like to play soccer but since I haven't really been doing it all of high school, it'll have to be like a less competitive team.
Sara: I really wanna do like a choir, different types of choirs to choose from, and I would also like somewhere where they have musicals that are open to everyone.
And as far as students, I just want a mix of all different kinds of students…
Yeah, another thing, like a nice cafeteria or food court would be also pretty cool, but other than that, I'm kinda just looking for something that's medium-sized, close to my house, where I'm able to do a lot of the things that I'm interested in.
Keith: In this episode we follow High School student Sara as she navigates the admissions process.
Keith: In our last episode, The Students, community college students Katie and Alyssa talked about how important those last two years in high school were for them. So we wanted to take a closer look at what exactly happens during that time.
My name is Keith Anstead and this is Good School.
We are picking up with Sara at the end of her Junior year.
Sara: So on Monday of this week, I had a meeting with the college counselor at my school, and I think it went pretty well.
Before the meeting, I had to write down some safety, target and reach schools that I'm interested in going to. So like safety schools are most likely state schools that I could get into easily, and then a target school would be a school where the GPA, average GPA and SAT score are very similar to mine, and then reach is obviously an Ivy League school that I might get into, but not a great chance. And so I already had quite a few colleges written down, and my college counselor gave me 18 more, which is kind of crazy. So that's a little overwhelming. I have to go now and look up all of those schools and see if they have majors that I'm interested in. So that's gonna be a lot of work. She liked the ones that I had written down, kind of. So I didn't want to, but I wrote down Princeton, Harvard, and Yale as some of my reach schools.
Keith: Holy cow. 18 schools? Sara thinks it’s crazy to have to research that many schools and I agree. Students are generally encouraged to apply to 10-12 schools, which is still a lot. In fact, the average number of schools students apply to has tripled since 1995! Because students are applying to so many more schools, high ranking schools like Harvard have seen an increase in applications which results in a smaller percentage of students admitted. In 1995 the acceptance rate at Harvard was 11.8%, today it is 3.19%, the lowest in the history of the school. We’ll talk about this more in our episode about rankings.
Keith: But while the acceptance rates of the most highly ranked schools are going way down, the acceptance rates of most schools across the country have gone up. In fact 80% of all ranked schools have an acceptance rate of over 50%. So again, why should students apply to so many schools?
We talked to Senior Writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education, Eric Hoover, to find out.
Eric: Yeah, that's a great question. I can tell you so many high school counselors I've talked to who give advice like that. Many of them don't like giving that advice. But here's why even counselors who don't love seeing their students apply to 10, 12, 15, 20 colleges…It's a strategy they want to make sure that their students have as many options as possible. It has become more difficult to predict outcomes… and as that predictability has waned, counselors have advised students to apply to more colleges in a particular category, say more safety schools, more reach schools.
Eric: ..And it's also, I think, for many college advisors, high school counselors working with the bulk of American students for whom affordability is the main issue, not– not some magical notion of fit. But am I going to have any affordable options, reasonably affordable options? It's one thing to get in, as we all know, it's another thing to get in and get a financial aid package that is within the realm of reasonable possibility.
Keith: So we know that students apply to a lot of schools, and we also know these schools want a lot of applicants – high school students are inundated with hundreds of marketing messages from schools across the country.
Keith: But how do these schools know who the college bound high schoolers are? How do they know those teenagers addresses? And emails? And the type of school they are looking to go to after graduating?
Christopher Wild, an Associate Director of Admissions at Goucher College, provides some insight.
Tape 016
Christopher Wild: So when we look at that kind of first part of recruitment, right, this is trying to kind of get a group of students, a pool of students from what you hope applications will come, and so we do that a number of different ways. There's plenty of services out there, where we go out and we purchase names. College Board will sell us the names of students who have taken the PSAT or AP exam, or the SAT or ACT will sell us ACT names, right? There's all these companies we're buying student names, and they charge 55 cents a name, and so you go out, and you buy 150,000 names because you know they'll convert to about 10,000 or 13,000 inquiries and hopefully the applications you need, and then hopefully they're all admissible you know. Admissions is both an art and a science. It's kind of like...
Christopher Wild: A lot of my job is predicting what 17 and 18-year-olds are gonna do, which is like... It's kind of trying to predict the weather.
Keith: Did you know that high school students’ names are being sold to colleges? What other information is included in that profile? How are the names and profiles bundled and sold? Why are the admissions officers trying to predict the future of individual students who they know of only because they paid 55 cents?
The College Board, the company selling those names, is a billion-dollar company that owns the PSATs, SATs and Advanced Placement courses that college bound students are expected to take. All of these tests are expensive, somewhere between $60-$90 each.
Keith: So we know Sara’s name and personal information is about to be bought by a bunch of colleges for 55 cents.
She just unknowingly sold her identity to the College Board and is preparing to take the SATs.
Sara: Okay. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about my SAT class that I've been taking for the past two months. So it's Monday through Thursday, from 5:00 to 6:45. There's three classes. There's Reading, Math, and Writing, and we have two to three of these classes every day, depending on what day it is. And when I first heard about this program, I really did not wanna do it because...this would be taking away my homework or practicing time. But I decided to do it anyway, because my mom said that I should, and my college counselor said that I should, so I did it, so I could get into a good college. But I don't know if it's really helped me a ton.
Keith: While some schools have now made standardized tests an optional part of the application, the tests are still widely used. Part of their inherent inequality stems from the 30 billion dollar test prep industry. Those with the means to take a test prep class, often get higher test scores because they have been taught to beat the test. That being said, the quality of these test prep classes can vary widely.
Sara: …So when I'm thinking about taking and preparing for the SATs it honestly just feels like a waste of time sometimes because it's really not my strong suit, I have really good grades, I have other things that will help me get into schools better, like just looking at my transcript and the school that I go to, and my essay, will all be a lot stronger than my SAT score. I can say that for a fact. So I don't even know if it's worth it. And my college counselor told me earlier this week, that she doesn't think I will have to submit my SAT score. She says that if it's above 1300, I should. But I really don't think I'll be able to get that, at least, not when I take it this Saturday.
Keith: Sara took the SAT Spring of her junior year, but ended up not submitting her SAT scores. Despite all the effort she put into studying for the test, she was still afraid it might not look good enough for the schools she wanted to attend.
With the SATs behind her, as she prepares to start her senior year of high school, Sara is focused on preparing her applications.
Sara: I just got an email from my college counselor and the subject line says applications are ready.
Okay, it says “Hello seniors. It's August 2, which means that most college applications went live yesterday.”
“This means that they have shifted from the class of 2021 to you the class of 2022. They're ready for you to start entering information. Go to the admissions pages of colleges to which you're applying and you will find out how to apply. If you get a lot of this done now, you will be “soooooo” grateful when school starts. Some colleges have their own applications but many except the common app or the common black college app, you have to go to each admissions page to find out how they want you to apply. For the schools you know you want to apply to, get started on these applications now. I'll be scheduling individual college meetings starting September. Your goal for that meeting should be to have a first draft list of schools. To check your GPA’s go to your Naviance account, page 32 of the college handbook has login instructions. Once you log into your account, click on ‘About Me’ and then ‘My Account’. In the bottom right box, you will find your unweighted and weighted GPA’s. Your cumulative GPA’s won't change until you graduate, but schools will see your first quarter in first semester senior grades.”
Sara: It ruined my day when I saw that email.
Keith: The admissions process is complicated. It is daunting and inscrutable for students and parents. Sara is lucky that she goes to a school where her counselor has spelled out everything she needs to do to get to her dream school.
Even if she doesn’t know what that dream school is.
At the beginning of her senior year, with the help of her guitar teacher, Sara narrowed her list to 7 schools.
Sara: He wanted to know what my list was, and I told him my list. Peabody, Eastman, Oberlin, Berkelee, Shenandoah. I told him those, and he liked it a lot… He just said those were good, he was going through them. He talked to me a little bit about them. And then he said “I don’t think you really need any more” and then I was like “What about some safety schools?” so then he gave two schools that are kind of close to us that have good guitar teachers…
Keith: Sara ended up applying to nine schools, fewer than the 12 that her guidance counselor initially recommended. Spoiler alert – it ended up okay – she gets into college even without 12 applications. But before that can happen, she needs to fill out the applications.
But what are admissions counselors looking for when they review all of these applications? Back to Associate Director of Admissions at Goucher, Christopher Wild.
Christopher Wild: What we go by or what we use here at Goucher is a holistic review, which every college talks about and everyone– And it means something different at every school. It's one of those college admissions buzzwords, ‘we do a holistic review, everything's looked at’ like, What does that mean, actually? And so, in reviewing applications, we're looking for new students who think we're gonna be successful here, we talk a little about that kind of looking for students who have the potential, with the diamond in the rough. So I always start with the student's high school transcript. I wanna see what classes you've taken, what grades you've got in those classes, what are trends, have you taken advantage of advanced course offerings? And so that way when I have this academic profile of how they've done in their high school experience, counting the number of courses and academic subjects, that I can have an idea of academically, where the student is. And this kind of having that there, I can then look for things like, okay, I see in their sophomore year, their grades tanked, then they brought them back up and they're doing great, and they're doing great their mid year grades.
Christoper Wild: …So from there, I'll move to letters of recommendation, counselor, teacher, what are they saying about the student? I then go to the student portion of the application, which we use the the Common App. The Common App has you know biographic and demographic information, which you can just kinda just glance at 'cause it's names and stuff it’s not… and then looking at activities, what are you involved in in your community? That's different for every student, right? There are some students who are involved in tons of stuff at school and their president of everything, and you have students who are involved in one or two things, but are really committed to them.
Christopher: And then you get to the essay, which is always my favorite part, because this is where you finally get to hear the student voice, everything else is numbers, GPA, other people talking about the student. Now I'm getting to hear the student in their own words.
Calvin: …My name is Calvin, Calvin Pickett. I am a college essay coach with the College Essay Guy, a company that helps support students in telling their stories in their college essays.
Christopher: And so you're reviewing the essay, and we're looking at it not only for just content, getting to know the students, but we're also... We're a liberal arts college, Liberal Arts colleges in general tend to require a good bit of writing, so we're also looking at it as like; okay, do they have a good writing skill, a good grasp of writing, and kind of getting to know the student in that way,
Keith: Admissions officers like Chirstopher Wild look at essays to evaluate good writing, And concerned parents hire only the best writers, like Calvin Pickett.
Tape 024
Calvin: Our process looks like using a set of brainstorming exercises that students complete beforehand that try and get students to think about a few different things, really what we're trying to encourage them to do is be vulnerable. So we have these brainstorming exercises that ask them explicitly about what are your top ten values?
Calvin: Top five, top three. We ask them to think about twenty-one random details about themselves. And then as essay coaches we then start working with the students, and we start picking through that pile of stuff and thinking, what are some themes that are emerging? What are some kind of rich topics, objects, ideas you have that could help us showcase those sides of you?
Calvin: And then it's just a process of writing and revising and revising and revising and revising and revising until you have a great essay.
Keith: Calvin is almost like a therapist who highly curates your life story and revises it and revises it and revises it – until he thinks it's good enough to get you in.
And how much do you think it costs to work with Calvin? (pause) It depends. A three-school package costs $4,200 and it goes up from there. If you pay for it, your essay will be amazing!
Calvin: And so there is definitely... I think it's important to own that there's a little bit of ethical gray space in all college admissions work. I think that's something that makes the work more emotional too outside of it, and trying to think through that and what that means. Especially for me kind of pivoting from a non-profit opening doors of opportunity for young people who may not have had those doors opened for them without some support; to kind of being the person standing in the doorway, ushering the person through who has always had that door opened for them, that change it has been a little bit challenging.
Sara: My college essay, I was looking through all of the common app prompts and I didn't really feel inspired about any of the topics that were on there. It just seemed all like super generic, and I didn't really feel like I could write a good essay on any of those topics….
So then I saw option number seven, which is the last option. It said that you can share an essay on any topic of your choice, and it could be one that you've already written. So this gave me an idea to use an essay that I wrote my junior year. It was probably my favorite essay that I've ever written because it was about Taylor Swift and sexism in the music industry, and I was super proud of it. So I basically just took that essay and revised it a lot. But… I think that, that, like that using my own topic kind of lets colleges know a little bit more about me and it's just not like same five prompts that they're reading over and over. So I think it was a really good choice for me.
Sara: Yeah, it was very nice to not have to write a whole new essay, because that really saved me a lot of stress and saved me a lot of time too.
Eric: … I would say generally essays do not play a large role across the bulk of applicants in any given applicant pool at any at most, most colleges I should say.
I've had admissions officers, when I push them, usually off the record. Really, truly, you just told me about your new essay prompt, and you're so proud of it. But really, give me a number off the top of your head of how many applicants the essay truly makes a difference for. They’ve told me over the years, things like, oh 5%, 6%, 10%, one in 100, even. I think they tend to be used in ways that are going to confirm impressions that other parts of their applications convey.
Eric: Generally speaking, all of this furious effort to write and rewrite and polish up these essays, I think, is generally for naught for most students.
But an important point here is that colleges that require one or more essays, and or particular kinds of essays are very much, or certainly can be, barriers to applying in the first place.
Keith: So colleges use the essays to evaluate someone's writing skills. But then there are supplemental questions. These short answer questions can usually be answered in a paragraph and can be about anything – really anything.
Christopher: We are not looking for some metaphorical allegorical reason for why you're applying. If it was because we required a study abroad, you like the location, just write about those things. And then the last question is in 10 words or less, if you could write one wrong, what would it be. And this is purely a fun question. I've never wanted to change an admissions decision based on what a student wrote here. It's just kind of fun to see what they write in that, and then we actually take all of those responses, and we create a poster ‘the responses to the ten words or fewer’, and we send it out to the students. These are what your classmates are thinking about, just like a cool little like mark, it's part marketing piece, but it was just a cool thing to be like, what are your classmates thinking of?
Keith: So prospective students' short answers won’t make or break the student, but they are great marketing for the colleges — these schools are really getting their money's worth out of the names they bought for 55 cents. Is anyone else feeling like these high schoolers might be being used?
Sara: I ended up applying to nine schools.
Submitting college applications costs so much money. Out of all the schools I applied to, most of them cost between $50 to $100. So I ended up spending probably about $500 on college applications, which is insane. I don't know why they would do that when it's just preventing some people from applying. But I was able to get fee waivers for, I think, one or two schools, but I paid everywhere else, and it really added up.
Sara: And there’s still like, even after I applied to everything, which I finished all my applications by January 1st, I think, we still had to do the FAFSA. My Mom filled out the FAFSA that took her at least an hour, it took a long time. And then we just had to do the CSS profile, which is very similar to the FAFSA, and some other colleges also, some colleges also like, have their own financial aid things, so we’ve been doing all of that stuff.
Sara: … I just wanna know, like where I got in, so I can finally decide. And even for some of the schools I’ve gotten into they don’t even have their financial aid packages ready yet, so, even for those I’ll really have to wait until March, probably before I really know how much money I’m really getting, so it’s a really long process. I know that national decision day is May 1st, and I hope that I am able to decide by then, but I’m not sure.
So yeah, I’m just going to be waiting.
Keith: After all that time and money, you should feel like you accomplished something. And yet, you just wait.
In terms of time – it's years. One eighth of Sara’s life was spent on the application process. And the quarter of it called high school was largely focused on this one thing – getting into college.
The applications are done. And now it's a waiting game.
Keith: Applications are generally submitted in December and January. Students generally find out if they have been admitted sometime in April. Even if you get admitted, you still have to negotiate a financial aid package. Yes, I said negotiate. This is where the safety and reach schools come into play. They help with leverage.
Financial aid negotiations must be finalized in less than a month. A 17-year-old has just a few weeks to decide how much debt they want to take with them into their bright future.
Andrea: This episode was produced by Community College of Baltimore County students, Keith Anstead, Olivia Yates and Harley Bosco with help from ForReal Media.
Hosted by Keith Anstead.
Writing Consultant and Editor, Stacia Stein
Edited by EJ Snyder and Kyle Woodworth.
Original music and sound design by Kyle Woodworth.
Audio engineering by Nicholas Karlin.
Cover Art by Jacob Elliott.
Thank you to the American Council of Learned Societies and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundations's Humanities for All program for funding this episode.
Thank you to CCBC Librarians Jean Boggs, Jamie Whitman and Elizabeth Godwin for research support,
Professor Jeremy Caplan for his support and guidance,
Kelly Hur and Arielle Nissenblatt for marketing consultation,
Angel Lewis, Kayleigh McIntyre, and Andrea Alvarado Avila (that's me!) for managing our social media,
Sara Baunoch, Christopher Wild, and Calvin Pickett for participating and to the whole Good School. crew for hanging in there and working hard over the past 2 years to produce this podcast series.
Good School. is a production of ForReal Media, a Baltimore podcast production house, "Removing perceived barriers to media Instagramproduction and bringing more inclusivity to storytelling".
Find Good School. on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @goodschoolpod
Tell your friends, your family, your students, your colleagues, and anyone you think would be interested about our podcast.
Leave a 5-star review to help others find us.
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you will always know when new episodes drop.
Go to forrealmedia.city/good-school for more information about this episode. You’ll find a transcript of the episode and more good stuff in our show notes.
Bye for now!
Episode 1: The Students
Life long friends, Katie and Alyssa, discuss their path to community college and why they didn’t end up at a "good school". Are they happy with the way things worked out or are they simply making the best of it? Hosted by Attia Robinson.
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Episode 1: The Students
Alyssa: Honestly, I didn't want to go to college.Katie: I feel like I didn't really wanna go either, because both my parents didn't go to college and, I mean, they're doing ok…
Attia: That was Katie and Alyssa, two life-long friends and community college students. Katie just graduated from the Community College of Baltimore County with a major in Mass Communication and Alyssa graduated from Harford Community College where she played for their softball team.
In this episode, we will listen to a conversation between Katie and Alyssa about their path to college.
How did Katie and Alyssa, two friends who didn’t want to go to college at all, end up as community college students on their way to a four-year institution?
My name is Attia Robinson and this is Good School.
In truth, kids start having these conversations when they are like 5 years old. People are always asking kids: “What do you want to be when you grow up” Sometimes college is a part of a kid's imaginary life plan, but sometimes it’s not.
Alyssa: My dream has always been to be a baker and have my own bakery business, like my little bakery or café or something. And that's always gonna be a kind of side gig for me, I guess, 'cause I mean I bake for family and friends all the time, obviously. You know.
Katie: She makes really good apple cider donuts.
Alyssa: It’s a favorite… It’s a fan favorite. ‘
Katie: I thought you were gonna say a vet. I feel like we have a small friend group from our neighborhood. I feel like we all went through a stage where we wanted to be a vet… when we were like seven.
Alyssa: Yeah, it was a vet, a teacher, and a baker
Katie: I wanted to be a vet, but then I realized you have to put animals down… I said, “never mind”. I feel like I wanted to be a vet, and then I kinda also just felt like I was gonna be a celebrity. I just kind of just waited, I was like, I'll be famous by then, I don't have to worry about a career. College who? We don't need that.
Attia: By the time kids transition from elementary to middle school, pressure about the future grows in intensity.
Katie: Did you ever worry about your grades in elementary…
Alyssa: Yes, 100%
Katie: Why?
Alyssa: Because of my older sister, she is brilliant, she's a genius and got straight A's … So growing up, I felt like I had to follow her and be that smart as well. I'm not… Not smart, it's just I'm kind of skating by. I would get A's, maybe a B or C here or there, but I did definitely worry about my grades because I felt like I had to follow in her footsteps.
Attia: The people around us do influence our choices. Our community is in a lot of ways our world. Our family plays a big role in who we are and who we will become. Alyssa admired her older sister and her grades, but she bonded with her dad over softball. They watched college softball together on TV, and her dad told her she could play college ball one day too.
Alyssa: I started softball, like I said, when I was three, and then I think I started club ball around… I really got into it when I was, I believe, eight or 9… you're practicing three days a week, and then .. Every single weekend is a tournament …. My friends were my team. It really does take up a lot of your time, but I didn't care 'cause it was something I loved. I thought it was going to take me somewhere.
Attia: Katie thought college was going to take her somewhere too – mainly somewhere other than Maryland.
Katie: I was convinced I was gonna go to Florida or something. I don't know any schools that were in Florida, I was like middle school like. Yeah, I'm gonna go to Florida. And I'm gonna go to a big school. Sorority Life. That's all I thought about–
Alyssa: Like living on campus, walking around. That kind of living on your own.
Katie: Yeah, I don’t… That was my first idea of college.
Our sisters are both four years older than us. So, I was in seventh grade when my sister graduated high school, 'cause I feel like in middle school, I started thinking about college 'cause I was looking at where she was going…
Alyssa: Yeah, I saw her going through the whole process of talking to colleges and applying for colleges, and I was like, even though she was four years older than me, I was like, “When do I have to start doing that?”
Katie: Yea, … I think it was seventh or eighth grade, they made us do a … 10 or 20 year timeline for our future.
Attia: Woah, 20 years?
As a middle schooler – that’s longer than you’ve been on earth. Aren’t you just thinking about what you are going to do after school or maybe the weekend if you are really a planner?
Not if you want to go to a good school.
At 12 years old, middle schoolers are already thinking about high school because the right high school can get you into the right college.
Katie: We grew up in the public school system in Baltimore County. And then we grew up in Perry Hall, so yeah, Perry Hall Middle, Perry Hall Elementary. So you were just automatically going to Perry Hall High unless you decided otherwise.
So my mom was kind of nervous for me to go because Perry Hall started to go down hill. She's like, “You don't wanna go to Eastern Tech?”, and I was like, “No…”
Alyssa: It’s kinda a college vibe where you specialize in something, like they have culinary and they have engineering
That's a good thing 'cause it kind of prepares you for moving on because it makes you– It gets you more interested and gets you like focusing on certain things. And if you wanted to be a nurse, and you went to Eastern tech, and then you didn't like it, then you wouldn't be wasting money going to college at first for like nursing.
Katie: I remember people in middle school, the ones that ended up going to Eastern Tech were the really smart kids, but the ones that kinda had helicopter parents. I feel like it was more of the parents like, “Oh, you should go here…”
Attia: While some students might have helicopter parents, and others might want to study nursing at a technical high school, there are many students like Katie and Alyssa who simply go to the local public school. However, no matter the school they go to, the classes they take, or the grades they get, their high school years often lead to the same place – college applications.
Katie: When did you begin preparing to go to college?
Alyssa: Very late into my senior year, like actually preparing and applying for colleges. I'm gonna be honest, I didn't apply to a single four-year.
Attia: Alyssa had dreams of playing ball in college, but she didn’t apply to a single 4-year school. It is fairly common for community college students not to have applied to any 4 year universities.
Left to their own devices, what teenager would?
Alyssa: I feel like for me, since I grew up watching college softball on TV, that's always been like my dream to go play college softball. So I was thinking about that, but not thinking about the part that I have to apply for college, apply for colleges. I have to pay for college, I have to actually take the classes.
Katie: Me neither. So, you don't really think you prepared?
Alyssa: No, not really. Honestly, the start of junior year really with the was it the PSAT’s or the SAT’s? The SAT’s. They're really starting to prep you, and then I was like I kept pushing it off, and I don't know what I wanna do. I'm like, college is far away, I have time, I'll be fine. And then I got to the spring of my senior year, and they're like, “What are you doing?” I was like, “That's a good question.” So colleges already are waiting for your application, they're already accepting people, and they're filling up, I was like, “I don't know, I guess, community college.” and they were like, “Are you going to community college?” I was like, “Sure, I guess!”
So I was figuring out the happy medium of like Yeah, I don't have to go to college, but maybe I should. And just see where it takes me.
Katie: Yeah, I feel like I started around the SATS, That's when I feel like it hit me junior year. Yeah, and then all my friends, like I said, they were super smart, super straight A’s like AP classes all the time, so they were all stressing about the SAT, but I was like, screw the SAT.
I just looked on Google. I was like, Hey, where do I wanna go? And then my mom would always try to push the question on me or the conversation like, “So what do you wanna do? “
I was like.” That's a good question.”
Alyssa: I feel like for me, my mom was like, she was fine without it, but my grandmother was the one who was like hard core and like, Where are you going? What are you doing? You're going to college, right?
I definitely feel like when talking... 'cause I feel like in high school, once you get to that point in high school, the conversation that you have with your friends is about college, so whenever we were talking about–
Katie: It was always college, because all my friends are in AP English, and in AP English they made you write your college essay in the class, and it took two months.
Attia: As seniors in high school who hadn’t yet applied to any colleges, the clock was ticking for Katie and Alyssa – and they weren’t alone. For a lot of us, college goes from something that you want to be when you grow up to something you have to do right now. When everyone around you has been preparing you for college for decades, is there another option?
Katie: …There was a field trip you could go on if you were in that class to New York. And so I went to New York, and at this point I had this little GoPro and I would just make videos of my friends like a lot of vlog or whatever. So I took it to New York, and I remember Mr. Probes, he was my AP US history teacher, and I made the video, and I put him in it, and then I showed it to him when I finished, and he was like, This is so cool, like I wanna use it-. He wanted to use it for the next year's APUSH class to kinda convince them to go on the trip.
And then he was like, You should think about doing this for a career like video, and I was like, You know, that actually... That sounds really cool.
Katie: Then I saw a High Point University in North Carolina. So that was my first school, I was like, Oh, I wanna go there.
And the school still had the digital media option, so that I was like, Okay, I'll go there, but it was really expensive. I think it's like, 'cause private technically, and I was out of state, so it was like 60,000 a year, so I was like, uh… no. So that's when CCBC really became more of an option, 'cause my mom was like, ‘Okay, if you wanna go to like High Point, you should start at CCBC because they're just gonna make you take the same classes and it's gonna be cheaper’, but I didn’t like the idea of going Community College, 'cause nobody else in my friend group was, and I feel like whenever I said something about community college for people our age, they kinda looked down on it, like that’s where everyone that didn't wanna go to college went.
Katie: But then I think after a while, I was just like, it makes sense for me. Screw what other people think. And I looked at the digital media program at CCBC, it seemed like it was a good program. I like looked at all the classes that would take, it all seemed interesting. And then my mom was like, You should just go there. You don't even know 100% if that's what you wanna do, like digital media, so I was like, okay, I'll go there. So I had that kind of idea, I think like middle of my senior year.
Attia: In high school, Katie did not know what she wanted to do. She wanted to be a celebrity, and be in a sorority but hadn’t given college too much thought otherwise. A positive interaction from a teacher got her thinking more concretely about her future plans. And community college gave her an opportunity to take classes in digital media without the commitment and price tag of a four-year university.
A positive interaction also helped Alyssa figure out her college plan.
Alyssa: It was a high school game at home, it was actually a really big game, and I was pitching the first game. And when college coaches come to your games, club ball or high school, they like, they don't wanna be noticed 'cause then you're gonna be a try hard, and then you're gonna mess up. They wanna see how you actually play when you're playing your best. So it was her name, it was Coach M at Harford, and she came to my game. I had never heard of her, I knew Harford had an amazing softball program from years before, but um she came to the game, and then I got a random text saying, “Hey, I don't know if you've been looking at colleges, I know you're a senior already… It's pretty late into the deciding process, … Have you ever thought about Harford?” I was like, I haven't, but now I will
Alyssa: And then she offered me a scholarship, and I was like, woah, it's also cheaper to go to community college, but it's out of county for me, so it would have been a little bit more expensive, right. And then she gave me almost a full ride, so I was like, why would I say no to that? You get to play college softball, and I'm getting a scholarship. That's awesome. So that's like, after she talked to me, I applied to Hartford, I had applied nowhere until she talked to me, and then I was like, alright, well, I'm going, Harford. They don't turn people away. Especially when they have a coach vouching for ‘em.
Attia: There’s a lot of insecurity around getting accepted to …or god forbid rejected from a college. Sometimes a little encouragement is just what we need.
Having each decided on going to community college, Katie and Alyssa still felt certain insecurities with their decision.
Due to stigmas surrounding community college and the pressure to go straight to a four year, they could both feel unsettled at times.
Katie and Alyssa: So it was the vibe the face you got on to the lull of the conversation, and I feel like people I did know that went to CCBC from watching them go,
Alyssa: I feel like when I was in younger grades in high school, and I would watch the older kids go, the ones that went to community college were always the partiers in high school that had no future, so I was like “is that me?”
Yeah, I feel like I started off defending myself
I was like, yeah, I'm going to community college, but look I'm playing a sport… I'm taking the exact same class as you, just at a different school.
Katie: I feel like, Yeah, I went in the honors program, I had to prove that I was– I was working in community college. I was like, No, I'm doing this because I’m smart, not because I'm stupid, for lack of a better word.
So I feel like you and I were in the same boat kinda 'cause your friends are all doing nursing or something, so did you feel pressure from them?
Alyssa: Yeah, 100%
Katie: Yeah, I did too. But then I finally was like, it hit me, and I was like, My path isn't everybody else's path, right? So I had to do with best for me, they're gonna do what’s best for them. Good for them.
Alyssa: Right. The thing I regret is not starting earlier...
Katie: Yeah, I don't regret not going or want to... I feel like I don't regret anything, but I kinda do wish that I did a little bit more prep in high school, I kinda knew what I wanted to do, because– I am glad I went to community college because I was able to explore other options there, but I wish I kind of knew in high school, so I could go to a four-year right away just to get more of a college experience.
Attia: Katie and Alyssa successfully completed 2 years at their community colleges. Katie missed out on being in a sorority, and Alyssa didn’t play D1 college ball.
But dreams grow, change, and evolve. Katie realized that her path isn’t everyone else's path.
And there are many paths to college. But few are the people who navigate their path alone. In listening to Katie and Alyssa’s stories, I got to thinking about Katie’s history teacher who encouraged her to pursue digital media and Alyssa’s college coach who encouraged her to play for Hartford. Other people do make a difference in our future. Other people do help to create our dreams.
The disconnect between college dreams and reality is real. It sometimes seems like you need someone with connections to help you make the connection.
Attia: And really, how much of our futures are affected by having the reputation of a good school in our past?
Katie and Alyssa seem to think it makes a difference.
And the more people who believe it does, the more true it becomes.
Andrea: This episode was produced by Community College of Baltimore County students, Katie Roberts, Olivia Yates, Bryan Kim, and Lisa Gray, with help from ForReal Media.
Hosted by Attia Robinson
Writing Consultant and Editor, Stacia Stein
Andrea: Edited by EJ Snyder and Kyle Woodworth.
Original music and sound design by Kyle Woodworth.
Audio engineering by Nicholas Karlin.
Cover Art by Jacob Elliott.
Thank you to the American Council of Learned Societies and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundations's Humanities for All program for funding this episode.
Thank you to CCBC Librarians Jean Boggs, Jamie Whitman and Elizabeth Godwin for research support,
Professor Jeremy Caplan for his support and guidance,
Kelly Hur and Arielle Nissenblatt for marketing consultation,
Angel Lewis, Kayleigh McIntyre, and Andrea Alvarado Avila (that's me!) for managing our social media,
Katie Roberts and Alyssa McLaughlin for participating in this episode.
And to the whole Good School ccrew for hanging in there and working hard over the past 2 years to produce this podcast series.
Good School Is a production of ForReal Media, a Baltimore podcast production house, "Removing perceived barriers to media production and bringing more inclusivity to storytelling".
Find Good School on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @goodschoolpod
Tell your friends, your family, your students, your colleagues, and anyone you think would be interested about our podcast.
Leave a 5-star review to help others find us.
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, so you will always know when new episodes drop.
Go to forrealmedia.city/good-school for more information about this episode. You’ll find a transcript of the episode and more good stuff in our show notes.
Bye for now!
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