Access, Equity, and the Privatization of College Counseling

Patricia M. McDonough, Jessica Korn, and Erika Yamasaki

Tables

Introduction

College choice is the process by which college aspirants prepare for and apply to colleges. College access is the process whereby educators, policy makers, and administrators attempt to ensure a college education for all who aspire to that goal. Researchers in these domains have made significant contributions to our understanding of the transition from secondary to postsecondary schooling--e.g., social psychological analyses of choice stages (Hossler, Braxton, & Coopersmith, 1989), aggregate analyses of the socioeconomic differentials in college access and attainment (Hearn, 1984, 1991), and marketing and policy analyses of student enrollments (Litten, 1982; Wenglinsky, 1996). Often this individual- and institutional-matching process has been treated empirically as a technical fit between an individual and a particular postsecondary institution.

We believe that college choice is a more complex social and organizational reality. Recent shifts in institutional responsibilities for helping students make their college choices (McDonough & Robertson, 1995), the [End Page 297] growth of admissions management practices (McDonough, 1994), and the selective access to these advantageous practices by predominantly high-socioeconomic status students have strengthened the contribution this perspective can make to understanding the processes of college choice and college access.

This paper focuses on the phenomenon of private college counselors, otherwise known as independent educational consultants (IECs), one of the more interesting sectors of the growth industry of admissions. We document who these counselors are, who the IEC users (IECUs) are, and begin to question the impact of this privatization of college counseling on admissions and equity considerations. Some background information on the recent changes in college admissions will set the stage for our study.

Overview of Problem

College admissions, formerly the professional purview of high school counselors and college admissions officers, is now a growing entrepreneurial sector of substantial investment and profit. We believe that four environmental factors are closely linked to the rise of the entrepreneurial advising sector: colleges' foci on admissions marketing and enrollment management in response to anticipated enrollment declines, an increased competition for college seats, public high schools' virtual divestment of the college advisement function, and a commodification of college knowledge.

The admissions institutional sectors of high schools and colleges have changed dramatically over the last 30 years, raising questions about who students today can turn to for help. Traditionally, students have relied on high school counselors and college admissions officers. Today, counselors are more plentiful than ever before, given the improvement in the ratio of secondary school guidance counselors-to-students: from 1:2,403 in 1960 to 1:509 in 1990 (National Center, 1992). Yet simultaneously, the profile of a high school counselor's appropriate activities has dramatically changed. As part of a larger phenomenon of turning to schools to handle social ills, today's school counselors spend substantial effort on the prevention of dropout, drug abuse, pregnancy, and suicide, as well as counseling about sexuality and personal crisis management.

After these needs have been met, public high school counselors may have time for college choice advising. A decade ago, researchers found that counselors devoted only 20% of their time to college guidance (Chapman & De Masi, 1985). Today, 10 of the largest urban public high schools have effectively divested themselves of college advisement with average high school counselor-to-student ratios of 1:740 (Fitzsimmons, 1991). Some states, notably California where the counselor-to-student ratio is 1:1,040 students, offer even less advisement than Fitzsimmons's inner-city schools. However, [End Page 298] most American high schools offer college counseling, although students apparently find it less than overwhelmingly useful. According to one survey of undergraduates' college decision-making processes, 60% of 1993 freshman said that the advice of their high school counselor was not very important to them (Astin, Korn, & Riggs, 1993).

Concomitantly, the number of college admissions officers has grown exponentially, but their training and task orientations have a pronounced marketing emphasis, downplaying their former role of educator dedicated to assisting students making the transition from high school to college. Because of exigencies born of maintaining a steady and fiscally healthy freshman class, admissions officers are far more oriented to their recruitment, selection, and enrollment management task functions. Moreover, in identifying characteristics desirable in admissions staff members, chief admissions officers identified marketing as the premier course background and said they sought staff who were friendly, poised, and willing to travel over staff who possessed strong educational beliefs or previous teaching or counseling experience (McDonough & Robertson, 1995). Thus, college admissions officers, the other institutional resource formerly available to help students in choosing a college that would enhance their personal and intellectual development, are otherwise occupied with the marketing tasks necessary to help colleges secure needed monetary resources. College applicants are consequently left on their own to navigate the often turbulent waters of this American rite of passage, the college choice process.

Students, mostly upper-middle class college applicants, have been engaging in a whole new range of admissions management behaviors to maintain a competitive edge and deal with anxiety about getting into what they consider to be a "good" college. A quarter century ago, 50% of all students filed one application and only 8% of students felt the need to cover their bases by filing five or more applications (Dey, Astin, & Korn, 1991). In contrast, 29% of students in 1993 had filed one application, and the number filing five or more had grown to 22% (Astin, Korn, & Riggs, 1993). Among educationally privileged students, those figures are higher: 50% of all students at elite institutions and 70% of all students whose fathers have at least a bachelor's degree filed six or more applications (Horvat & McDonough, 1994).

Publishers and software designers capitalizing on the lack of institutional support have tackled the information gap with a commodification of college knowledge. Some examples include: (a) a three-fold increase in books on college choice listed in Books in Print--up from 100 in 1967 to 336 in 1991, (b) college choice software, (c) computerized viewbooks, and (d) interactive media. These last three inventions, none of which existed earlier than 1980, allow students to visit any U.S. campus in virtual reality using their computer terminal. This commodification of college knowledge also [End Page 299] extends to knowledge that will enhance a student's college entrance exam performance. In 1993, SAT exam coachings' gate receipts topped $100 million, with the industry leader, the Stanley Kaplan Educational Centers (owned by the Washington Post Corporation), garnering between 60-80% of this profit. However, this phenomenon is not limited to economically advantaged students since close to half (44%) of all first-time freshmen take some kind of SAT preparation course (Astin, Korn, & Riggs, 1993).

College choice decision making is more than a problem of information. Advising is crucial. Different groups of students have different strategies for dealing with this gap. Some low-income, first-generation, and minority students have advocacy programs like Upward Bound available to them which provide students with the support structures to prepare for and apply to college. Admittedly these programs are meagerly funded and serve a tiny proportion of the students in need. Many other students look to private avenues, often their own families, for college advice. Another solution is for families with the requisite resources to enroll their children in private high schools where college counseling is a priority.

Another private remedy is a counselor-for-hire who assists students through the college choice process and provides them with: (a) specialized knowledge and assistance, (b) uninterrupted time with a counselor, (c) organization and management of the college choice process, and (d) the cooling out of unreasonable aspirations with viable, personalized alternatives (McDonough, 1994). We believe that these consultants and the students they assist are collectively changing the taken-for-granted process of college application behavior in the 1990s and are another example of the privatization of college choice assistance. Independent educational consultants fill in some of the gap created by insufficient college counseling in high schools.

Theoretical Framework

This research is part of a larger research project using a Bourdieuian field analysis which documents how the interinstitutional transition from high school to college can be better understood by simultaneously viewing changes in applicant behavior, high schools, colleges, and the entrepreneurial sector. This integrated analysis accounts for the reciprocal influence of individuals and institutions and illuminates the dynamic interactions of student behavior and admissions professionals' practices.

According to Pierre Bourdieu, fields are definable areas in which people struggle over capital (economic, social, cultural, and symbolic) (Bourdieu, 1984). Fields are structured by their own histories, internal logics, and patterns of recruitment and reward, as well as by external demands. Fields are constantly transformed by their participants because, once a large number of actors gains a large amount of capital, those actors influence and eventually [End Page 300] change the structures. Bourdieu's field framework suggests that, as the numbers and types of people attending college increase, competition increases, the means that economically advantaged students use to gain access to college change, and the impact of those new means changes the terms of competition, especially at the most selective colleges. In other words, the terms of interaction and competition for the scarce resource of a college education, or particular type of college education, are constantly being redefined.

Cultural capital is one of the most important forms and can often transform aspirations into more valued educational credentials. For example, from childhood, students from high socioeconomic status backgrounds focus on maximizing their schooling opportunities and on using all of their available capital resources to help in that status maximization (Lareau, 1989). Individuals are "optimizers" who strategize about how to maximize cultural capital (DiMaggio, 1979) using their habitus, a social-class-based set of subjective perceptions that shapes expectations, attitudes and aspirations; it also generates: (a) common aspirations about good college choice outcomes and (b) social-class-based strategies about how to secure desired outcomes, in this case, admission into a "good" college. In today's upper-middle-class world, students' habiti include: (a) being focused on making a good college choice because their undergraduate experience will position them for good graduate school and job opportunities, (b) hiring a private counselor, (c) supplementing that counselor's advice with the advice of the high school counselor and teachers, (d) spending considerable time in clubs and student organizations because of their potential in filling out admissions profiles, (e) taking SAT coaching courses, and (f) getting remedial help in academic areas of relative weakness, etc. These activities constitute the norms, expected patterns, or tastes of this social class around this issue; collectively, they constitute an example of habitus.

The overriding importance of a field analysis is in directing our concurrent attention to many sectors--high schools, colleges, and the entrepreneurial arena--and then asking if and how equality of access has been affected as the available cultural resources used in the college admissions process have changed. This paper builds on what other researchers have found regarding changes in high schools and colleges, then empirically focuses on the entrepreneurial sector. Specifically, we are asking why IECs have developed, for whom IECs provide their services, how the use of IECs varies by social class or ethnicity, and how IECs have affected students' college application behaviors.

Research Questions

This study documents independent educational consultants' demographic and professional backgrounds, the scope of their services and practices, [End Page 301] and how they view the students who use their services. This study also details the characteristics of students who use independent educational consultants and explores the predictors of this behavior. The two primary questions guiding this study are: (a) Who are the independent educational consultants? and (b) Who are the students who seek their services? A primary concern undergirding this research project is how the privatization of college counseling affects college access and equity in general.

Prior to this study, IECs have been a relatively unstudied occupational group, and information about the students who use private counselors' services was anecdotal and unkind (Krugman & Fuller, 1989; Tyson, 1988). To supplement our data on IECs and IEC users, we conducted an exhaustive review of the periodical and professional literatures. This review disclosed the belief that IECs can be found mostly in large U.S. cities, near prestigious colleges, in more affluent suburbs, and some international locations. Popular newspaper and magazine articles describe consultants as offering students help with essay writing and SAT coaching ("Alma Mater," 1989; Bernstein, 1996; "Private Counselors," 1988; Schurenburg, 1989; Stickney, 1988). Students who use private counselors' services are believed to be academically marginal and to come disproportionately from private preparatory schools; one knowledgeable source estimated that, out of the annual freshmen class in the U.S., perhaps 10,000 students used IECs (M. Spence, private communication).

Methodology

To understand the interrelated needs of both students and counselors and to capture comprehensively and feasibly the requisite information, we drew our data from two national surveys: (a) We developed, piloted, and disseminated the Consultant Survey, the first national survey of independent educational consultants, and (b) We drew the Student Survey data from the 1993 annual freshman survey of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP). This survey, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, is the longest on-going study of first-time freshmen in the nation.

Consultant Survey

Using the membership lists of the two predominant professional associations (the National Association of College Admissions Counselors and the Independent Educational Consultants Association), regional admissions associations, word-of-mouth referrals, and snowball techniques, we surveyed all of the independent educational consultants we could identify throughout the country. We distributed an eight-page, 53-question survey instrument to 317 self-identified independent educational consultants in April 1993. After a second mailing to nonrespondents and postcard reminders, [End Page 302] we received responses from 55% of the original sample. The analytical sample used in this portion of the study consists of 157 independent educational consultants.

Respondents reported on their backgrounds, their practices, and their clients. Questions on the IECs' race, gender, and region in which they practice yielded demographic data. Questions about IECs' education and prior work experiences provided data on their training and backgrounds. Questions about the services they offered, why students used those services, how the IECs charged for their services, and the size of their operation supplied data about the nature and scope of their practices. Items on the race, gender, and family income of their clients provided additional data.

Student Survey

By adding a single question to the CIRP annual freshman survey to determine how many and which students used the services of a private counselor, we subsequently were able to access a wide spectrum of demographic, attitudinal, cognitive, and affective outcomes associated with college attendance. In addition to students' self-reported information, we obtained their SAT scores and institutional data directly from the participating institutions.

The total sample for the 1993 survey is 296,828 freshmen from over 600 institutions of higher education. We used all freshmen for the frequency analyses. Nearly 3% of the total sample (n = 8,029) actually used private counselors in planning for college, but we examined both students who used private counselors (IEC-users or IECUs) and those who did not (non-IECUs) to provide a comparison. Accordingly, data used for the cross-tabulation and regression analyses come from all students ¹ who responded to each survey item corresponding to the variables under investigation in each procedure.

Given the magnitude of the CIRP database, the results reported here are preliminary. Utilizing our Bourdieuian framework, we profiled both IECUs and non-IECUs through frequency analysis of students' cultural capital, family status, high school activities, college application behaviors, demographic variable, and high IEC-density states.

For multivariate analyses, we employed logistic regression to model the dichotomous outcome of students' use and non-use of IECs. Next, we used blocked stepwise linear regression to examine the effect of IEC use on the number of college applications filed. (See Figure 1 for variables used in analysis.) Finally, to examine interaction effects on the number of applications filed, we divided the sample into IECUs and non-IECUs and ran separate regression equations for each subsample. [End Page 303] [Begin Page 305]

Results

Consultant Survey

We compiled a preliminary profile of the independent educational consultants, their practices, and the services they provide from the results of means, frequencies, and cross-tabulations. Table 1 presents the detailed profiles, including gender comparisons.

Professional Issues. Independent educational consulting is a white, female-dominated occupation: 98% of all IECs are white and 76% are women. Our sample contained only one Asian American, one African American, and one Latino IEC. The modal educational attainment (61%) of IECs is a master's degree; another fifth have a bachelor's degree, and 17% have doctorates. Although IECs come from varied educational and mental health work backgrounds, more IECs have worked in high school than in college. Slightly over a third have been high school counselors; slightly under a third (32%) have high school teaching experience, and 19% have been high school administrators. Only 15% report having any previous college admissions experience, and this figure includes the 6% of all IECs who concurrently work in a college admissions office.

While IECs are drawn to their profession for various reasons, the most frequently cited are, in this order: (a) the potential of helping clients, (b) the use of specialized knowledge, (c) autonomy, (d) freedom to work at home, and (e) money. Over four-fifths of all IECs reported that the potential of helping clients and the use of specialized knowledge were very important to their becoming an IEC. Thirteen percent cited money as a very important reason for becoming an IEC.

Most IECs belong to professional associations: 61% belong to the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC), 70% belong to Regional ACACs, and 44% of the sample belong to the Independent Educational Consultant Association (IECA). The lower participation rate in IECA may be a result of its more stringent membership; it is also newer than NACAC, and NACAC includes college admissions officers and high school counselors. Two-thirds of all IECs report that they attend the NACAC and/or IECA conferences, while just under half report that they attend regional ACAC conferences. IECs belong to these associations primarily for information and resource sharing (84%), contact with others in the field (81%), insight into improving their practice (67%), and legitimacy (61%).

Operations. Consulting practices vary; and although a few IECs have been in business since 1972, the majority of practices have sprung up since 1983. Only one-fifth of all IECs are legally incorporated, and only 3% of those are incorporated as nonprofits. IECs are clustered in three areas: almost a third [End Page 305] [Begin Page 307] are in the Northeast, 27% in California, and 14% in the Midwest. The rest of the sample is distributed almost evenly throughout the United States. IECs visit a college campus approximately every six days (61 visits per year) and generally do not bring students with them.

IECs conduct almost three-quarters of their work in the college advising arena, while the rest of their practice is devoted to pre-high school and other [End Page 307] types of counseling. One-fifth of all IECs are exclusively engaged in college counseling; and those IECs are four times more likely to be incorporated, tend to have home offices, and are more highly involved with regional admissions professional organizations rather than national groups.

IECs charge their clients by varying units of service. Over 76% of all IECs offer a college counseling package, with an average charge of $950. The average hourly charge is $86, while the average per visit charge is $150. The average caseload is 41 college-bound students. Parents make two-thirds of the first contacts with an IEC; most parents find the IEC by word-of-mouth references. IECs report that 95% of clients hear about their services from current or former clients. IECs who do advertise use the yellow pages of the phone book (46%), fliers (37%), newspapers (33%), magazines (13%), and television or radio (4%).

Forty percent of IECs report that they are in a solo practice, and three-quarters work by themselves or with no more than two other professionals. Four-fifths do some pro bono work--67% with low-income students, and 44% with underrepresented minorities.

Types and Utility of IEC Services. IECs, by any measure, are more available and spend more time with college-bound students than any type of high school counselor. The majority of IECs spend between 11 to 14 hours with a client; and 91% of IECs report that they are available, both by phone and in person, to clients during evenings or weekends.

When asked what services their clients found most useful, they reported that the top services are compiling a list of possible colleges, narrowing a list of schools, alleviating anxiety about the college choice process, helping with special circumstances (such as learning disabilities), helping meet deadlines, and helping to manage peer pressure. Over 85% of IECs do not view SAT coaching as a significant service, and 57% do not even offer it.

Gender Differences. Women IECs are clustered at the lower end of degree attainment; almost three times more women than men have bachelors' degrees as their highest degree; men hold 7% more of the doctorates. Male IECs are more than twice as likely to be incorporated. IECs. More women than men have home offices, perhaps because men find it more important to separate the personal and public spheres while women prefer the mixture of home and business or deliberately provide a more nurturing atmosphere for their clients (Anderson, 1988, p. 410).

Women IECs charge more than men, see fewer clients, and spend more time with their clients. This client contact profile may be why women charge more for their services. Women IECs do more pro bono work than men and are more focused on its emotional components; more women than men felt that alleviating pressures from the college selection process was important, and women were twice as likely as their male peers to think that the managing peer pressure was important. [End Page 308]

Student Survey Results

Of our first-time full-time freshman sample, 2.7% used independent educational consultants. Given that the national, first-time full-time population numbers 1.5 million, this figure indicates that 40,500 students use private counselors--four times higher than any previous estimate of the scope of this phenomenon. This unexpected finding is important because IECUs are assumed to be mostly full-tuition payers (M. Spence, private communication) and are therefore an extremely desirable student population in an era where need-blind admission is disappearing.

Table 2 indicates comparative findings of IECUs versus non-IECUs. Initial frequency results point to an IECU population comprised of academically above-average students with moderate testing ability (60% with B+ grade point averages or better and 78% with SAT scores above 1000). These students are seeking to make themselves more marketable in the highly competitive process of selective college admissions.

IEC use (just like IEC professionals) is an overwhelmingly Caucasian phenomenon (83.6%) with a slightly higher occurrence among females (52%). IECUs are predominantly from the East and West coasts with home states of New York (13.9%), California (13%), New Jersey (10.3%) and Massachusetts (6.6%) being most prevalent. Although the largest percentage of IECUs come from public high schools, IECUs do attend private schools more often than non-IECUs. They also attend private, nondenominational high schools (13.0%) at more than twice the rate of non-IECUs (5.7%), among them preparatory schools which currently set the standard for college advising; the counselor-to-student ratio at these schools is 1:65 (Cookson & Persell, 1985). Clearly, those who currently have the most college guidance feel they need more advice and are seeking it.

Three primary trends emerge from initial frequency results.

1. IECUs are advice seekers. IECUs have higher rates than the average freshman of seeking their high school and private counselor's advice, taking SAT prep classes, doing remedial work in math, and finding their teachers' and counselors' advice helpful.

2. They are from privileged families. Both parents have higher rates of having graduate degrees and much higher incomes (than non-IECUs) from which they provide higher amounts of college financial assistance to their offspring.

3. Their college application behaviors differ from those of other first-time full-time freshmen. IECUs file higher numbers of college applications, attend college far from home, attend private colleges, and are less influenced in their college choices by tuition or financial aid.

Having established IECUs as advice seekers, we examined one facet of this profile and addressed the issue of whether this behavior varied by type of high school attended. Looking at IECUs who also sought their high school [End Page 309] [Begin Page 311] counselor's advice in planning for college made it clear that this behavior transcends institutional type and control. Of IECUs at public high schools, 69% also sought their high school counselor's advice; at private denominational and nondenominational high schools, the figures are 73% and 83% respectively. Not only does this behavior transcend high school type, but it is common among these students.

Cross-tabulations of IEC use by parental income revealed a positive, rapidly increasing relationship; over 10% of the students with annual parental income greater than or equal to $200,000 used IECs. We controlled for the effects of parental income on these students' SAT composite scores and high school GPAs by establishing that, at parental income levels of $50,000 and above, a higher percentage of IECUs report SAT scores over 1000 (mean difference is +3.7%). However, a higher percentage of IECUs than non-IECUs have GPAs of B- or lower (mean difference is +3%). Nonetheless, almost 80% of IECUs are B students or better, and their SATs are slightly higher than those of their counterparts at every income strata. Through these comparisons, a more accurate profile of IECUs' academic ability, above and beyond the effects of parental income, becomes clear. IECUs are not the mythical "rich, dumb kids." Rather, while they are from economically advantaged families, they are, academically, quite strong.

Finally as indicated by earlier frequency data, 29% more IECUs filed five or more applications than did non-IECUs. This trend is still evident even after controlling for parental income. In fact, of students who file six or more applications, IECUs surpass their non-IECU counterparts by a 24% margin. Keeping in mind that IECUs tend to be admitted to their first choice institutions less often, it seems likely that they might be aiming higher and seeking to gain admission to more selective colleges than non-IECUs.

Having empirically established the general characteristics of IEC users, we attempted to determine what explains students' use and nonuse of private counselors. For logistic regression analysis of the dichotomous outcome variable of students' use and non-use of IECs, we selected independent variables for entry into the equation based on the frequency data. These initial results indicated differences between IECUs and non-IECUs. We divided the variables into two blocks and subsequently entered them into the equation in a stepwise manner: 22 student background variables in Block 1 and 17 high school experience variables in Block 2 emerged as predictive. (See Figure 1.)

Several powerful predictors of this phenomenon--namely SES variables, living in high IEC-density areas, and doing remedial work in math--were identified through logistic regression (N = 128,554). Table 3 depicts the percentage change in the odds of students using IECs based on the independent variables that entered the regression. Column 1 indicates the raw effect of the independent variables on the likelihood of using an IEC. Column 2 [End Page 311] indicates the scoring range of each of the independent variables, and Column 3 is the product of Columns 1 and 2. Therefore, Column 3 displays the relative power of each predictor, taking into account the unstandardized nature of those independent variables.

In Column 3, the top six background characteristics predicting IEC use are: parental income, living in California, father's occupations of lawyer and doctor, living in New Jersey, and mother's educational level. Clearly, the most powerful predictor of IEC use is socioeconomic status as measured by parental income (213.2%). Of particular note is the tremendous effect living in California has (138.5%) on students' use of IECs. We believe this characteristic is directly related to the proliferation of IECs in California, the extremely high student-to-counselor ratio in the public high schools, [End Page 312] and what has become the taken-for-granted habitus of using private counseling among a certain strata of college-bound students in California. Other variables, like having fathers in high status careers and mother's educational level, also suggest the enormous influence of socioeconomic status. Clearly, those students who already have educational and economic advantages are leveraging that capital for enhanced college choice assistance.

While the results reported up to this point have carefully established a profile of IEC users, the fundamental concerns regarding privatization and equity in the college admissions process require answers to the question, "What difference does IEC use make?" We looked at the number of college applications filed as an outcome variable to determine the impact of IEC use on one critical aspect of the college admissions process.

To examine the effect, we utilized stepwise linear regression analysis by blocking the independent variables, including a dummy variable of whether students used an IEC, according to the same criteria stated above. Of the variables which we examined through the stepwise regression, 41 actually entered the equation with a final R² of .13. (See Table 4.) Student background variables account for 8% of the total variance, with the father's education entering as a positive predictor at the first step. Most germane to our question is the fact that IEC use entered as a positive predictor at step 21. Therefore, even after controlling for the effects of parental education, income, and occupation, IEC use tends to increase the number of college applications filed by students.

Since the IEC-use variable entered the regression equation, we conducted further analyses to address the issue of interaction effects. We facilitated [End Page 313] this step by dividing the sample into IECUs and non-IECUs, running separate regression analyses for each sub-sample. We employed blocked, forced entry of all independent variables entering the initial regression model which predicted the number of applications filed into these two secondary regression equations. Results indicate minimal significant differences (p < .001) in variables predicting the outcome for the two separate groups. Therefore, the most salient finding is the strong, positive influence that IEC use actually bears on the number of applications filed.

Discussion

Limitations

Because of the demands of regression analysis, a meaningful but constraining temporal order was forced on a college choice process which is free-flowing in real life. We believe that our blocking of variables represents a process that is consistent with our Bourdieuian theoretical framework and is also consistent with accepted college choice models.

Privatization and Access

The results of our study indicate that socioeconomic status is the overriding influence on using an independent educational consultant, causing us to reflect on fundamental questions about the privatization of a college access resource. There has been very little discussion of privatization in the postsecondary arena, partly because we have long had a dual system of private and public colleges; and unlike the precollegiate sector, federal financial aid belongs to the student, not the institution. However, an important privatization phenomenon is occurring in college admissions.

Privatization can take four forms, only one of which applies to the privatization of college counseling: "the entry by private producers into markets that were formerly public monopolies" (Goodman & Loveman, 1991, p. 28). ² Under the privatization of college access, trusted public servants (high school guidance counselors) are replaced by private entrepreneurs (independent educational consultants) who are driven by bottom-line financial considerations. IECs serve those students who know about them and are able and willing to pay for private counseling.

The privatization of college counseling is a serious organizational change because of its long-term impact and consequences. With a national average of one guidance counselor per 527 students, high schools have divested themselves of any real responsibility for college counseling, but private service providers have picked up the slack. In privatization debates, ownership of a [End Page 314] service per se is not as important as accountability to the public's goals, which go beyond fiscal considerations. In the arena of college access, the public's goals include fair access to social goods, optimal deployment of human talent, and distributive justice. The 97% of college students who did not use private counselors still had limited access to school counselors, posing a serious concern, particularly for students who are the first in their families to plan on attending college. The implication of this pattern is that resources, information, and cultural capital are accumulated further by those who already have it. In other words, it takes economic capital to buy IEC time and to gain the cultural capital of a college education.

Another issue is how private counselors behave and are monitored. Nine out of ten IECs surveyed desire a required minimum credential; they obviously want some kind of monitoring or regulation. However, credentialing speaks only to the monitoring process and not to the accountability issues. In other domains where privatization has occurred, the best way to encourage private managers to serve the public interest is through competition among potential providers, governmental entities and private entrepreneurs alike (Goodman & Loveman, 1991). We believe that the focus of the privatization of college counseling debate should be on the nature of the organizational changes in the entire field of college access and on how to ensure accountability and consonance with the public's interests.

Three percent of the college-bound high school students in America today have their access to college enhanced by the use of a private resource. Most often, these are students who already have other private resources--parents who are college educated, SAT coaching, other remedial assistance, etc. Although 3% is not a large percentage, it is meaningful if these students have disproportionate access to better, more elite colleges. Elite colleges themselves have enormous influence over the postsecondary and secondary systems even though they enroll only 2% of all college students. Finally, it is interesting to note that IEC use closely parallels Japanese shadow education--a set of educational activities outside the formal schooling structure that is used by high-SES students and that greatly facilitates access to elite education (Stevenson & Baker, 1992).

Furthermore, given the precarious future of need-blind admissions and the current financial pressures facing higher education (Graham, 1994), IECUs are becoming increasingly important to colleges and universities as they often are full-tuition-paying students. Therefore, the students' college choice behaviors which form the basis for this study are increasingly important to investigate.

Future Research

One question that we currently cannot answer is: What actual impact do these independent educational consultants have on the admissions outcomes [End Page 315] of the students who use them? Do the students get into schools to which they otherwise might not have gained access? Although we currently cannot answer these questions as framed, we are now engaged in additional analyses based on the selectivity of college attended to assess the impact of IEC use on college access.

This research offers a number of implications for practice. Dialogues in the high school counseling and admissions professional communities are needed and should be focused on whose responsibility it is to assist students in making the transition from high school to college. Private counselors are providing a needed service; the fact that this phenomenon exists attests to this need. Those scholars and policy-makers interested in maintaining equal access to college need to ask additional questions about how we can assure all students of the assistance they need in applying to college, especially those who are first-generation college-bound students and/or are underrepresented minorities.

Patricia M. McDonough is Associate Professor, Jessica S. Korn is Postdoctoral Fellow at Higher Education Research Institute, and Erika Yamasaki is Doctoral Candidate, all at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

Notes

1. We included only data for students attending four-year institutions, because previous results indicated that few IECUs attend two-year colleges. Given our theoretical framework, we expected that IECUs would seek admission to four-year colleges--specifically, more prestigious institutions.

2. The other privatization forms are: "the sale of public assets to private owners, the simple cessation of government programs, [and] the contracting out of services formerly provided by state organizations to private producers."

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