College Is Broken: Print Edition (on Amazon)

The Signal Solution (on Amazon)

Stop Chasing Comfort Metrics

Chapter One of College Is Broken, read by the author. Presidents and boards, the Harvard-of-wherever problem, what a 56.3 percent discount rate is actually telling you, and why the crack is easier to talk around than to treat.

Three key takeaways:

1. The machinery that protects presidents from what they need to hear
2. The discount rate as market feedback, not a lever
3. Why viewbook language establishes normalcy, not exceptionalism

College Is Broken: Print Edition (on Amazon)
The Admissions Counselor Malaise (on Amazon)
The Malaise Diagnostic

Dr. Jay Keehn was dean of students at a national university that closed underneath him. He now hosts College Closures, Mergers, and Acquisitions and runs THE CLUB, a monthly gathering of higher ed leaders that started as one guy posting a Zoom link on LinkedIn hoping to meet people.

His read on the Introduction is that the stakeholder-by-stakeholder structure is the right call, because people are impacted differently and informed differently. What he thinks is missing is the emotional bridge: the student who researched five colleges, chose one, and lost it eighteen months later with seventy credits and nowhere to put them. We get into the red flags nobody outside the cabinet can see, a bakery in Gaffney, South Carolina that lost a quarter of its business when Limestone closed, why boards often don't know what questions to ask, and his unproven theory about a president running out the clock on a contract.

Three key takeaways:

1. Closure as a human event, not an administrative one
2. Why presidents can see the crisis and still say "not us"
3. Board composition as a structural problem, not a villain

Links:

• Dr. Jay Keehn on LinkedIn (message him to join THE CLUB)
• College Closures, Mergers, and Acquisitions podcast

College Is Broken: Print Edition (on Amazon)

Stop Waiting

The Introduction to College Is Broken, read by the author. Nick at 18, the $16,000 and the parent PLUS loan nobody explained, why the education still works even though the trust doesn't, and the circular firing squad that organizes the rest of the book.

Three key takeaways:

1. What "broken" means here, and what it doesn't
2. The gap between belief in college and confidence in colleges
3. Why the author doesn't exempt himself

⁠⁠College Is Broken: Print Edition⁠⁠ (on Amazon)

⁠Stop Waiting ⁠

John McGreal has been in enrollment management about fifteen years, across two regional privates, a two-year school, a health science institution, and a state flagship, and he is currently at Ripon. He is also the person most likely to tell me I'm wrong, fastest. He warned me off several things before this book went to print. I printed them anyway. This episode is him collecting.

Three objections. The factory farm analogy, which he thinks is way out of line, because pigs can't evaluate a net price calculator and don't come out the other side with a degree. My argument that families want radical price transparency, which he says is contradicted by every family he has ever watched get excited about a scholarship. And my claim that individual colleges can start repairing trust on their own, where he points out that the DOJ already told NACAC what happens when the sector coordinates. I defended myself on all three. I think I won one and a half.

Key takeaways

• Whether the factory farm analogy holds or just offends
• Why a $30,000 school with a $10,000 award beats a $20,000 school
• Individual action versus collective action, and what the DOJ left available

Links

• ⁠John McGreal⁠ on LinkedIn
• ⁠The Ripon Commitment ⁠
• ⁠Cornell College Price Transparency⁠
• ⁠Whitworth University Cost Clarity

College Is Broken: Print Edition (on Amazon)

Small College Consulting Network

National Small College Conference

StriveScan

There have been times where our profession has waited too long to say the hard truth, and regretted it.

Today, to help us set the stage for the book readings, Carin Smith joins us to share examples of times we waited to say the thing and regretted it, as well as times we addressed the challenge and were better off for it.

Carin Smith is a Senior Associate Director of Admission and Athletic Recruiter at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. She is the founder of the Chicago Area Regional Representatives Association, co-founder of the National Association of Regional Admission Counselors, and a Past President of the Illinois Association for College Admission Counseling.

College Is Broken: Print Edition (on Amazon):

Nathan Ament is my Lunchcast co-host, VP for enrollment at Knox College, and the guy who took Loyola New Orleans test-blind before the rest of the South caught up. He's also been hearing these arguments since before they were arguments.

Part Lunchcast, part launch of College Is Broken: Podcast Edition. Nathan prosecutes the book. His case: the tactics I criticize are the tactics that work, and a VP who walks away from what works misses their number. My answer is a question. Works for who? We get into the $750 scholarship that landed as an insult, the gap between what gets said in a cabinet meeting and what everyone in the admissions office knows is happening, Whitworth cutting its sticker price in half, and whether "there are no villains in this book" is optimism or a dodge. Nathan doesn't concede. He gets as far as honest.

Three key takeaways:

1. Why "it works" is an incomplete answer
2. The case that the book is pessimistic, argued by someone who's in it
3. What the pandemic proved about how fast institutions can actually move

Links:

• Nathan Ament on LinkedIn

• Jennifer Jessie (Jenn the Tutor), quoted in the book and recommended on air
• The Admissions Directors Lunchcast
• Whitworth's price reset