Why does no one care how creepy colleges are?
I am lucky enough to have a pair of very high-performing children. I assure you I claim no responsibility, other than contributing my genes and keeping the lights on for them. They are incredibly independent and find me only tolerable, which is the only justifiable position for them.
My oldest is currently a junior in high school. She is, as they say here in Maine, wicked smart (but, if you’re reading this, you’re probably a lawyer or someone similar with similarly wicked smart kids - NBD, really). Thus, she is now being bombarded by colleges and universities who’d very much like to collect a vast sum of money from her in exchange for a middling education.
Have you seen these entreaties these days? Let’s just say that the university admissions department, writ large, has embraced content marketing. Nearly every piece of mail we get goes something like this:
Hi Daughter of Sam Pfeifle!
You’re wicked smart! We can tell because we saw your [PSAT scores/SAT scores/AP exam result], which is a piece of data we bought from the College Board or some other creepy data broker. Thus, we’d really like to sell you a mediocre education for $200,000.
But don’t listen to us! We’ve created a handy document, using creative professionals just like your father, which will help you decide which very poor exchange of education for cash is right for you. Do you want it? Well, just take this personal ID number we’ve created for you, KTHNX3452, and go to this unique URL we’ve created for you [www.CrappySchool.edu/DataHoover3452] and download it FOR FREE.
Never mind that you can get the same basic information virtually anywhere on the internet, this is something we really recommend you do, because then we can recharacterize you in our leads database as “hot” and we can assign one of our marketing drones to put you in a different behaviorally targeted campaign, which includes any number of further physical things sent to your house and email address we got from that data broker.
Please let me know if there are any other questions I can answer for you! The nature of those questions will help us focus our marketing efforts and appeal more directly to your still-developing adolescent brain!
Sincerely,
Polly Pureheart, PhD
Dean of Admissions, Crappy School
Ps.: Don’t wait to download that document you don’t really want! We might not still love you by the time you do it if you wait. And you don’t want to lose our love!
Or maybe I’m able to read between the lines a bit better than the average 16 year old?
Now, I already had many questions about these letters. Like, how is it cool for the AP to just sell the fact that my 15-year-old daughter got a 5 on one of their exams, along with her contact information? Or did they sell it to a broker who then sold it to the schools? How many companies are making margin off my daughter’s data? How can a 15 year old legally sign terms and conditions? We, as parents, didn’t sign her up - she did it herself. She doesn’t need me for anything, really.
We also get notes that are tied to her involvement in cross country or drama. Where do they get that data? Do they just scrape the race results and match against the list they bought from the AP?
I get that FERPA allows schools to share some student data with third parties, but how is any of this in my daughter’s best interests for her education? What is the theory we’re all working on where this is something we think should be legal and fine? Do colleges and universities have some kind of divine right to marketing lists? Lists of kids who may not have even turned 16? Why?
And then I get to a story like this: Colleges are literally buying lists of kids who did poorly on their SATs, soliciting them to apply to their schools, then rejecting their applications, so they can publish a lower acceptance rate.
I know I can be hyperbolic, but if this isn’t some evil, evil shit, I don’t know what is:
There are layers and layers of awfulness here:
The universities targeting low performers just so they can dunk on them.
The College Board selling this information in the first place.
The College Board encouraging the practice of dunking on lower performers because it heightens the idea that you REALLY need a great SAT, and they just happen to sell prep classes.
So, riddle me this: Do none of these universities or the College Board have a CPO? I’m pretty sure they do. Is this what ethical data use looks like to you? I was assured that the privacy profession was rooted in data ethics and that was a primary consideration for privacy professionals.
Or is the marketing department just too powerful to approach? Or is the CPO rather just a compliance officer that assures everyone that no one’s breaking any laws?
And, even more broadly, why are we as a society just cool with the College Board and universities having this relationship in the first place? Kids have mostly no choice but to take the SATs (yes, I realize there are some schools that don’t require them, but you get the idea - I’m sure the ACT does the same thing, too). So, not only do they have to pay for the right to be tested, but they also have to give up the right to control who sees their scores? And give up the right to not be sent a bunch of physical spam by a bunch of shitty liberal arts colleges clinging to some archaic notion of the value of their education?
These are kids!
Can someone help me understand why there is almost zero outcry about any of these practices? These college marketing departments are more aggressive, more data invasive, more calculating than many major brands, but we’re just cool with that because they’re institutions of higher learning, or some nonsense? They’re mostly private institutions throwing off profit and employing a lot of well-compensated professionals. They hold no moral high ground that I can see.
While the United States seems especially slow to come around to the scam that is “higher education,” could we at least all agree at some point that maybe having giant institutions behaviorally target emotionally and intellectually vulnerable 16 year olds so that they can sell them $200,000 vaporware is a really bad idea? Maybe?