Chapter 5 Admissions Office Scams

From what I have read so far in this book about college programs and how it functions, I have concluded that college is a business and admissions has transformed into a sales campaign involving clever scams. “Colleges [and universities]…are business enterprises competing for a limited clientele: the students… They pump so much money into… promotional material that becomes a blizzard of hard-to-distinguish hype” The marketing strategies used by big time universities use their sport programs to their advantage arranging “fun weekends” for potential students, which includes free football or basketball tickets. College institutions believe they can clinch the application-and-enrollment deals if they could “get the buyer inside the store,” which is considered the campus. A lot of colleges create false advertisement to people on tours, through brochures and in other advertisement.

Many people fell into the admissions trap set by a majority of institutions who created a false sense of college atmosphere. During tours students and their parents learn about festive occasions at the schools, but not who teaches the undergraduate classes. The tour visited the student union but not the library. Visitors heard about “keg parties,” not about concerts and lectures. It is assumed people would have had the impression that a college campus was a place with an abundant social life and education was ignored.

This book is revealing how college campuses in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s advertised college as a big party. Learning and educating people seemed to be the last thing on administrations mind when they realized sports attract thousands of people and is a way to promote the school. It seems like it wasn’t a smart thing to do. Colleges and universities show the exterior part of the campus but never go into detail about what the school is really like. The outside of a building is beautiful but the inside is empty and has nothing to educate the students, just rooms to sit in.

It is interesting to notice some of the same things when I was going on college tours and even now to go to a large university and see how sports is a big influence and the student life is completely different because of it. College is supposed to be about learning and maturing into an educated person. I feel by attending ECSU I am obtaining my desires of a student without all of the sport activities that big universities offer.