by Bob Massa, Bill Conley and David Holmes from The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 6, 2021 In his recent Chronicle Review essay, “The Abiding Scandal of College Admissions,” Matt Feeney decries college admission officers as administrators, not educators, who take it upon themselves to probe an applicant’s character and authenticity. Among the small group […]
Category: Insights
by Bob Massa and Bill Conley You have heard it all before. The media has been replete with observations on how the current admissions season and undergraduate enrollments are being impacted by the pandemic. Wild trends in application volume – up, up for the elites; down, down for almost everyone else- foretell a volatile spring […]
By Bill Conley and Bob Massa In our December 2020 article (Standardized Testing and College Admissions: Plan for a New Relationship) we observed: “For decades, the purchasing of student test-taker names has been fueling college recruitment’s time-honored funnel.” We went on to discuss the many ways a long-term shift away from requiring standardized testing […]
By Bob Massa and Bill Conley This past fall, we wrote about how Early Decision (ED) programs would play an increasingly important role in helping colleges meet their fall enrollment goals. With the financial fallout of the pandemic making enrollment levels more difficult to achieve, we suggested that getting a larger group of enthusiastic students […]
by Bill Conley and Bob Massa Is standardized testing dead? Or, to paraphrase Mark Twain, are the reports “greatly exaggerated?” In March 2020, about one thousand of the 2300 private non-profit and public Bachelor granting colleges and universities offered students the option to apply to their institutions without submitting SAT or ACT scores, and several […]
by Bob Massa and Bill Conley Exactly a year ago, and in the shadow of a Department of Justice threat, members of the National Association of College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) reluctantly voted to remove from its Code of Ethics language that prevented colleges from recruiting students who had committed to another institution. They also struck […]
Bill Conley and Bob Massa Principals, Enrollment Intelligence Now By August 2020, more than 10 million cases worldwide were reported, and 500,000 deaths were attributed to Covid-19. Vast multiples of those staggering numbers have been touched by the […]
Bob Massa and Bill Conley July 24, 2020 “Cost is not always related to price. If it were, we’d have to charge a lot more in tuition.” So is a traditional stance taken by colleges whose costs are underwritten by endowments or public funding in defense of their “sticker price.” No two colleges arrive at […]