Thread by @JonBoeckenstedt

Thread: OK, a few thoughts about the NACAC issue. Of course, I AM NOT A LAWYER so if you want a lawyer's take on it ask a lawyer.

First, I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner. The Overlap Group (which, from my non-legal-perspective was clearly price fixing) got some attention

At the time the DOJ thought that fixing EFC meant the members were saying, "If you want to go to one of these colleges, this is what you're going to pay. We're not going to cut each other's throats." MIT held out, and the case was dismissed, but practice changed. #568Group

Now, to our code: We called it the SPGP, which is now the CEPP. They are presumably ethical guidelines designed to guide practice. In the past 15 years, competition has heated up among colleges and universities....

This has caused lots of people, I've noticed, to call on NACAC to be an enforcer of business restraints on colleges, in the genuine hope of making the process better for students. The SCEA/ED/earliest application deadlines stuff are all good examples of this.

If I had a dime every time I heard someone say, "NACAC should make a rule that colleges can't...." I'd have a lot of dimes.

We like to think that our policies are designed to take the welfare of students into consideration. They don't. They're mostly college-centric, designed to reduce competition among colleges in certain areas.

People have asked why May 1 deadlines are not under attack. Simple (I think): May 1 is a consumer protection, designed to keep an offer of admission open for a reasonable time to allow consumers to make a choice.

(Of course, May 1 is really designed to benefit a certain subset of colleges at the top of the food chain, since 95% of colleges don't take months to carefully weigh and debate each application on its merits.)

So why are the three provisions being rescinded in order to keep NACAC from going out of business? Let's take a look at them. Warning: Crass, imperfect consumer analogies ahead.

If I'm a college and I want to say, "In exchange for your early commitment, you can get full need met in grant" why shouldn't I be able to do that? Would you think it fair of phone manufacturers to prohibit each other from offering special pre-order prices on the newest model?

You agree to buy a Subaru, and shake the dealer's hand pending all the paperwork. You may give the dealer $100 deposit. The auto dealers association of America now prohibits your Chevy dealer from calling you and cutting price on the car you really wanted all along by $1000

Ditto

And ditto

Is this bad? I don't know. Will it shake things up? Almost certainly. Enrollment people won't have any excuse to deflect aggressive business tactics that are suggested by trustees or other senior administrators, even if we find them distasteful.

But it will almost certainly result in better prices for students who are willing to ride the wave of competition. The downside, of course, is that the people with resources will be able to surf--or hire surf consultants--to help them get the edge up.

Throw your enrollment projection models out. Or at least don't put as much faith in them as you might have otherwise. It's going to be a wild one, I think.

This might be really good news for colleges down the food chain who are willing to be a low/price, high volume dealer.

Let's step back: We are where we are because the admissions process has not changed much while society and technology all around it have. It's like Aunt Agnes's house, with the rotary phone connected to a wall; just out of place.

If we were designing this process from scratch, it wouldn't look anything like it does now.

Throw out all your assumptions. Join the @HackTheGates movement. Incremental change won't make the differences we want to see. Only re-invention will.

Carpe diem.

Oh, and #TalkingAboutEM