Ethical College Admissions: Is Professional Ethics an Endangered Species?

Is professional ethics an endangered species? That was the focus of my keynote address at the Pennsylvania Association for College Admission Counseling conference last month in Hershey, Pa.

The speech was focused more specifically on the ethics of the college admission counseling profession. Is ethics an endangered species now that the National Association for College Admission Counseling no longer polices its ethical standards following a consent decree with the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice?

That question raises a more fundamental one: Does college admission counseling qualify as a profession?

Those of us who work in college admissions and college counseling have historically thought of ourselves as a profession. That suggests a higher calling than mere fealty to our employers, serving not only institutional interest but also the public interest. Is that still the case given the increasing commercialization of college admission/enrollment management?

The concept of professional ethical standards is embedded in the definition of professions. In his Pulitzer Prize–winning history of the American medical profession, Paul Starr identified three defining characteristics of professions:

• Professions claim authority based on technical, specialized knowledge.
• Professions are oriented toward service rather than profit.
• Professions are self-regulating, with standards of good practice and a code of ethics.

How does college admission measure up to Starr’s definition?

Of the three tenets of professionalism, the claim to technical, specialized knowledge is the weakest for college admission. Despite numerous attempts to institutionalize credentialing for college admission officers and school counselors, there is not a clear path for entry into the admission field, and we are still fighting the school counseling establishment to acknowledge that courses in college counseling should be a required part of graduate programs.

Once in the field, training and professional development are haphazard. The practice of college admission and college counseling remains more art than science, and it’s never been rocket science. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

That might also be changing. Both college admission and college counseling require far more knowledge and skill than when I started my career.

Is college admission oriented toward service rather than profit? That’s a harder question to answer, and it might not be an either-or question. There is no question that higher education is an industry, with the admissions office functioning as the sales/marketing division. Admissions offices help colleges and universities achieve institutional goals ranging from revenue to diversity to mix of students.

I hope we are more than that. Saying that we are a profession means that we have a higher calling, that we serve not only our institutions but society at large. We help students make life-changing decisions about their futures, and that is noble work. We are educators rather than salespersons, colleagues rather than competitors.

The value of being a profession became clear over the past couple of years as COVID-19 forced us to retreat into our homes and offices. College admission and college counseling can be lonely jobs. No one on your campus or in your building knows exactly what you do, but they all think they do. More than anyone else at my school, I have a network of colleagues on both sides of the desk that extends not just locally but nationally. I can reach out to those colleagues with a question or to vent and they will understand.

I worry that may be endangered. Are we one profession with two sides of the desk or are college admission and college counseling becoming two different professions? I hope that Angel Pérez and the National Association for College Admission Counseling will give attention to that issue.

The third tenet of Starr’s definition of professions is being self-regulating, with standards of practice and a code of ethics. For decades NACAC’s foundation was its commitment to and enforcement of ethical standards for college admission. In fact, one of the reasons NACAC was founded 85 years ago was to ensure that admissions officers were not compensated on a per-head basis.

But what happens when a professional organization can’t enforce ethical standards? In 2016 NACAC appointed a steering committee to take a fresh look at its Statement of Principles of Good Practice (SPGP), first adopted in 1960. The SPGP was a set of rules rather than a statement of principles, amended annually (sometimes on the fly) in response to colleges pushing the envelope on recruiting practices.

I was a member of the steering committee, and I consider its work an example of NACAC at its best—thoughtful, deliberative, with lots of input from the membership. The result was a new document, the Code of Ethics and Professional Practice (CEPP). The CEPP was passed unanimously by both the NACAC Assembly and the membership. Anyone who has spent any time in NACAC knows that is rare, maybe even unprecedented.

Not long after the CEPP was passed, NACAC was the target of an inquiry, and later an investigation, from the antitrust division of the Department of Justice. The DOJ alleged that NACAC’s ethical rules prohibiting incentives for early decision and prohibiting poaching of students already enrolled at another institution unfairly restricted colleges from recruiting.

I would argue that the issue was not as much those prohibitions as the fact that NACAC was policing and enforcing its ethical standards. One of the first issues discussed by the steering committee was enforcement, and the consensus of the group, propelled by several members who had chaired NACAC’s Admission Practices Committee, was that mandatory ethical rules enforced by the organization were important. At the time NACAC was one of the few professional organizations enforcing ethical rules.

In retrospect it is clear that NACAC and the DOJ were operating from different assumptions and interpretations. NACAC saw its ethical code as protecting students from coercion and manipulation, while the DOJ saw NACAC as hurting students by limiting institutions’ recruiting practices, which in turn would result in students paying less for college. The DOJ seemed to see NACAC as a cartel controlling college admissions rather than a voluntary membership organization. NACAC’s enforcement of its ethical code rarely if ever resulted in penalties to institutions, as most inquiries were resolved amiably.

Nevertheless, the DOJ investigation shook NACAC to its core. The NACAC leadership determined that fighting DOJ could jeopardize the organization’s existence, and they entered into a consent decree. There is now a successor document to the CEPP, the Guide to Ethical Practice in College Admission. It does not differ dramatically from the CEPP but has made the various tenets best practices, removing any reference to monitoring or compliance.

So is professional ethics an endangered species post-DOJ and post–Operation Varsity Blues? I would argue that a commitment to ethics is more important than ever before.

Changing from mandatory to best practices doesn’t have to change the way we conduct ourselves. “Best practices” are just that, and whether or not the rules are policed, the ethical principles underlying them are still compelling, calling us to act honorably and truthfully in our professional work. Just because something is permissible doesn’t make it a good idea.

Ethics comes from the Greek word ethos, meaning distinguishing character or guiding principles. Ethics is about ideals and is normative or prescriptive, asking, “How should we act?”

So what are the ideals guiding the college admission/counseling profession?

• Commitment to truth and transparency.
• Commitment to equity and access.
• Respect for every individual, recognizing their worth and dignity, and treating them as subjects, not objects.
• Honesty and integrity, inspiring trust that we are honest brokers acting out of concern for students’ best interests.

That last one has been imperiled by the revelations coming out of the Operation Varsity Blues scandal. Even though no admission officers were implicated, the colleges involved looked less like victims than unindicted co-conspirators. Varsity Blues reinforced the idea that the college admissions process rewards the already privileged. Are we OK with that?

The good news is that a majority of those in our profession are committed to acting ethically and professionally. But we can’t take the health of our profession for granted. Ethical common ground is more like a beach than a rock. All it takes is one major storm to do permanent damage.

We need to be ethical conservationists, and we need to voluntarily keep our house in order. Failure to do so may further erode public trust in what we do. In my speech in Hershey I quoted a famous Pennsylvanian, perhaps the most famous Pennsylvanian. In discussions preceding the Declaration of Independence, he said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately.”

Words for our profession to live by.