They have come to hear Lloyd Thacker, the prophet in the tweed jacket. The room bulges with college admissions deans and high-school guidance counselors, who sit in the aisles and squeeze against the walls. Today’s talk is called “College Unranked -- as if Education Matters.” Right now, nothing else does.
Mr. Thacker begins: “May I quickly see the hands of those people who had enjoyable and rewarding college experiences?” It’s unanimous. “Now, may I see the hands of those who realize they could have had similarly rewarding experiences attending a different college?” When the arms go up again, he asks, “What does that say?”
He could end the lesson there, letting the question hover like a blimp, and make his point: There is no such thing as the one perfect college. But he is just warming up, and for that his audience here in September at the annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, known as Nacac, is grateful. After all, they believe that Lloyd Thacker is the man who can save their world.
Mr. Thacker, who had been a guidance counselor since 1987, quit his job in February to found the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit group based in Portland, Ore. Its mission: to help students, colleges, and high schools overcome “commercial interference” in higher education and to promote ethical admissions practices.
He argues that colleges have perpetuated the myth of the perfect-fit campus through self-serving marketing strategies, including early decision, that compel high-school students to search for a glass slipper instead of thinking about what they want from a college. He believes that the popular U.S. News & World Report college rankings have warped academe’s mission. He is not the first to make such arguments, but he is the first to start an organization designed, as he says, “to give conscience to a market dominated by fear and hype.”
His first project was to commission, edit, and publish College Unranked: Affirming Educational Values in College Admissions (Education Conservancy, 2004), a collection of essays by counselors, deans, and college presidents about what ails the admissions system. The book assails the status quo, combining critiques of the College Board, a vivid portrait of nausea-inducing hysteria among students at a college-recruitment session, and recommendations for easing pressures on applicants.
Mr. Thacker does not envision a return to some golden age of admissions. He has no secret blueprint for reform. Instead, he hopes to build a stage for what he calls the “voices of discontent,” a vehicle for “a collective conscience” that would catalyze more student-friendly admissions policies.
In his speeches he romanticizes learning and accentuates its immeasurable qualities. He deflates higher-education hype with wit. When he describes the anxiety he’s seen in “the eyes of students,” his own eyes water.
His supporters have called him a Jeremiah, a hero, a savior. They have embraced his recommendations for putting students first in admissions. They have even lined up to embrace him.
After Mr. Thacker’s session at the admissions conference, spectators rush the podium. Later a guidance counselor from Boulder, Colo., shakes his hand and says, “You gave me my life back.”
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While his ears ring with praise, however, doubts stalk him. At age 50, when many men start to eye the green fairway of retirement, he has flung himself into the professional unknown. Over the past year he lost 20 pounds, weeks of sleep, and much of his confidence.
He has also lost his routine. Mr. Thacker used to come to work at 7:30 and leave at 3:30. He spent his weekends building furniture, strumming his Martin D18 guitar, and camping in Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains with his wife and two sons. Now there are no school bells to mark his hours, and he has given up his hobbies. A one-man force, he works out of a borrowed office in downtown Portland, never quite sure what he’ll be doing from one hour to the next.
As strongly as he believes in his message, Mr. Thacker sometimes wonders about his ability to deliver it. Even as he rails against the market influences in academe, he must learn, like any salesman, to hone his pitch.
How does an idealist with no business background sell his ideas without selling out? How does he turn his fledgling organization, for which there is no model, into a self-sustaining venture?
Those are the questions Lloyd Thacker lugs around. He has no choice but to find the answers, and fast. Even prophets have to pay the bills.
‘What Is It You Want?’
Whatever his doubts, Mr. Thacker has faith in his imagination. Long before he dreamed up his midlife mission, he was inventing things to do.
As a boy in Canoga Park, Calif., he and his three sisters made up their own words. They read their way through shelves of books. They built kites out of bamboo and newspaper. When he was about 8, his parents finally got their first television; when it broke, though, nobody bothered to call a repairman.
In 1972 he enrolled in Revelle College, at the University of California at San Diego, where he studied ocean samples in a laboratory and surfed the Pacific. Later he switched his major from biology to political science. He was caught up, blissfully, in a four-year whirl of learning.
After graduating, in 1976, he was admitted to the University of San Diego’s law school but skipped registration day. That fall he picked up his guitar and started practicing. For three years he played regular gigs in San Diego nightclubs, cranking out covers of Paul Simon and Cat Stevens, and songs of his own.
Then academe tugged at him once more. In 1979 he enrolled in a master’s-degree program at Davis, where he was a teaching assistant in the political-science department. After earning his M.A., in 1982, he became an assistant director of admissions at the University of Southern California.
At the time, projected drops in enrollments, increasing costs, and decreasing federal support were alarming college officials. One of Mr. Thacker’s tasks was to develop a strategic-marketing plan that would help USC keep its classes full.
Marketing to prospective students had once seemed out of place, even inappropriate. But packaging and selling a liberal education was becoming the norm. Admissions staffers were becoming recruiters. In one of his first staff meetings at Southern California, the admissions director handed Mr. Thacker a copy of John T. Molloy’s Dress for Success (P.H. Wyden, 1975), the seminal how-to-impress manual.
“I could smell something wasn’t quite right,” he says. “People were starting to think about students as consumers. It was, ‘What is it you want? We’ll give it to you,’ rather than, ‘This is what we have, and here’s why you need it.’”
Mr. Thacker left after a year, seeking a change of scenery.
For three years he worked as associate director of admissions at the much-smaller Pacific University, in Oregon. Then, in 1987, he took a job at Jesuit High School, in Portland, where he became college-counseling coordinator. He sat side by side with the students he counseled. Nearly all of them were motivated, talented. Each year a vast majority reported acceptances at their first-choice colleges.
But there were things that worried Mr. Thacker. As colleges came to resemble businesses, more students and parents were treating admissions as if it were a contest. He saw party invitations that listed the colleges to which a student had been accepted. He listened to a worried junior who said she would end up “stupid” if she had to attend a public university. He stammered when two parents asked him what sport their 9-year-old daughter should play to improve her chances of getting into an Ivy League college.
He recalls trying “to calm the frenzy” among students who fretted about their first-choice colleges. He wrote students many glowing letters of recommendation but generally declined to lobby admissions offices on their behalf. He believed that his job was to prepare kids for college -- not sell them. Some parents did not like that, and their expectations weighed like lead on his shoulders.
Talking about those expectations, and the forces behind them, earned him a reputation as a dynamic speaker. At Nacac’s 1998 conference he moderated a session called “College Admission: Profession or Industry” that dazzled admissions deans and counselors.
Four years later, flying home from Nacac’s conference in Salt Lake City, he found himself sitting across from Jennifer Delahunty Britz, editor of the Lawlor Review, an education-marketing journal, who had heard him speak. “Thacker, you need to write a book,” she told him. Then she pulled out a legal pad and took notes as he spoke. Miles above the Western landscape, his book was born.
The following year Ms. Britz would became dean of admissions and financial aid at Kenyon College. She would tell Mr. Thacker that he had, in part, inspired her career change. She would also tell him something else: “Admissions is a Corvair, and you’re Ralph Nader.”
A Tough Sell
Mr. Thacker’s crusade began with an e-mail message. In the fall of 2002 he asked 12 college officials to write essays for a book on how colleges could change their admissions practices to better serve students. Within three days he had received a “yes” from 10 of the officials, among them Karl M. Furstenberg, dean of admissions and financial aid at Dartmouth College, and Theodore O’Neill, dean of admissions at the University of Chicago.
In the fall of 2002 he told The New York Times about his plan for the book. Literary agents started calling. He told them he did not want to create a how-to guide on getting into college, but rather a “how-not-to book,” a straight-talk antidote to number-heavy college guides.
Mr. Thacker spent months drafting a proposal, which eventually grew to 90 pages. At first, there were no takers. Then, last fall he and his literary agent, Kim Goldstein, met with representatives of HarperCollins in New York. Editors at the publishing company raved about his idea, but the marketing staff concluded that the book would not make cash registers ring. Mr. Thacker and his agent shopped it elsewhere, to no avail.
“It’s a complete uphill battle because the books that sell are the ones that promise to get you into the best colleges,” says Ms. Goldstein, of the Susan Golomb Literary Agency, in New York. “Readers want to know what to expect when they plop down their $15.”
She told him that to get a contract, he would have to write a book on how beat the admissions system, trimming the essays down to bullet-point bits of advice. He considered a compromise. But as he tinkered with his proposal, his message lost its purity. How could he tell his contributors, “I have to chop up all your essays?”
His colleagues were clamoring for the book. When, they asked, was it coming out? The question tolled even in his sleep. The project had become his passion -- and his albatross.
Mr. Thacker decided that he would have to publish the book himself. He asked his supervisor at Jesuit High if he could work a reduced schedule for the rest of the school year; she said no. By then his mind had veered to a new possibility: What if he left his job and founded his own nonprofit group?
One day the name “Education Conservancy” just sprang into Mr. Thacker’s head. He discussed his idea with an acquaintance, James H. Wolfston Jr., president of Collegenet.com, a Portland-based company that provides online services for colleges and their applicants. Mr. Wolfston told Mr. Thacker he was a visionary and agreed to lend the group an undisclosed sum, to be paid back once it was solvent.
The money would allow Mr. Thacker to draw an income that was slightly less than what he made at Jesuit -- but for only a year, at most. The book would have to sell.
Mr. Thacker worried that he was pinning not only his professional future but also his family’s financial security on a daydream. Yet his wife, Lori, encouraged him. The couple sat down to discuss how they would handle mortgage payments and college expenses for their sons, 22 and 12. They nixed their plans for remodeling their kitchen and visiting Costa Rica.
A low point came one night last winter. After dinner with two of Mr. Thacker’s admissions colleagues, Ms. Thacker asked them about her husband’s plan. “It sounds like a good idea,” she said, “but is there a job in it?”
For a long moment, there was silence.
Building a Stage
Nobody who knew him doubted Mr. Thacker’s convictions. But they worried about his stepping into what one friend calls “a solo life.”
After his last day at Jesuit High, in February, he spent his days and nights typing his own essays for the book and editing the submissions. He skipped meals and stopped jogging. He woke up at 3 a.m. and paced. He was moody. His son Sam told him, “I want my old dad back.”
Mr. Thacker invited the eight members of the Education Conservancy’s advisory board, all college deans, to Portland in July for their first planning session. The all-day meeting was also a pep talk for Mr. Thacker, who was reluctant to ask colleges for donations.
“In making this practical, he was somewhat embarrassed, or shy, that this also had to be a financial reality,” says one board member, Philip Ballinger, director of admissions at the University of Washington. “We said, ‘Lloyd, you have to learn how to ask.’”
They made him stand up and rehearse his pitch. They also made him promise to send each of them letters asking for contributions.
Mr. Thacker had found a local printer for the book and invested $16,000 in it. After delays, 5,000 copies of College Unranked arrived in late September, just in time for Nacac’s annual conference.
The book tapped into a vein. Mr. Thacker filled about 300 orders in Milwaukee, and nearly 600 more by early November, at $19.95. Earlham College alone purchased 100 copies for students and counselors.
High-school counselors snatched up Mr. Thacker’s posters, which list advice for students (“College selectivity is no guarantee of quality;” “Education is a process, not a commodity”). Alice Kleeman, a counselor from Atherton, Calif., sent e-mail messages to parents of high-school students, urging them to read College Unranked. Some counselors say the book has already helped them reduce application-season stress among parents.
At the conference, Robert J. Massa, vice president for enrollment, student life, and college relations at Dickinson College, raved about Mr. Thacker. Later he called to ask how much money he should send as a donation. When Mr. Thacker named a figure, Mr. Massa said, “I was thinking double that.” So far, Dickinson and eight other colleges have joined the Education Conservancy, each paying a $500 membership fee.
Mr. Thacker has lined up speeches at four regional admissions conferences and at five high schools. He plans to hold a national conference next year to formally introduce his organization.
As described by its creator, the Education Conservancy is to become part consumer advocate, part think tank. Mr. Thacker hopes to provide admissions information and advice to parents, students, and high schools, to ease pre-application anxiety. His Web site is one tool in that effort.
There is also a plan to generate research: Mr. Thacker would like his group to conduct studies on how admissions practices, like early decision, affect students’ behaviors and opinions. “Colleges want to do a better job,” he says, “but they don’t have the data.”
Like any guru, Mr. Thacker has developed his own catch words. He rails against “ranksters” and preaches the importance of “studenthood,” which he defines as immeasurable qualities, like curiosity and imagination, that allow young people to learn.
Some of his supporters concede that the term does not translate easily into a sound bite, and that it is easier to criticize than to create alternatives.
Daniel M. Lundquist, vice president for admissions, financial aid, and communications at Union College, in New York, says Mr. Thacker’s success will depend on his ability to translate abstract ideas into concrete plans. “As the initial ideas get out there, a lot of people will salute it,” Mr. Lundquist says. “It’s very righteous, but it will plateau.”
He believes, though, that it can move the admissions debate and inspire college officials to discuss ways of improving their practices. “We want to get away from running our worry beads through our fingers and wishing all by our lonesome that things are going to get better,” says Mr. Lundquist, whose college is a member of the group. “This is a new approach.”
David A. Hawkins, director of public policy for Nacac, believes that the Education Conservancy can complement his association, which, with its many constituents, must take all members’ views into account. “He’s very passionate that students don’t have a voice,” Mr. Hawkins says. “His challenge is coming up with ... some other way to evaluate colleges from the student’s perspective.”
Mr. Thacker wins praise even from the man behind his favorite target, the U.S. News rankings. Robert J. Morse, director of data research for magazine, calls Mr. Thacker’s message “inspiring.” He, too, ordered a copy of the book.
Mr. Morse doubts, though, whether one man, or one book, can sway college administrators to drop early-decision policies or stop requiring the SAT. Some of the book’s essayists, after all, work for colleges that have pioneered some of the practices Mr. Thacker criticizes. And, naturally, Mr. Morse denies that college rankings are the root of all competition among colleges, and that rankings themselves harm students. “People want this kind of information to help them make a choice,” he says, “because everybody doesn’t have a Lloyd Thacker helping them.”
Mr. Thacker has responded that just because rankings are big sellers does not mean they are educationally sound. And his wariness of profitability extends to his own organization. By design, proceeds from College Unranked go to the Education Conservancy, not into his pockets.
Some agents have told him that once the book’s momentum peaks, it will need high-powered promotion and distribution. But he worries about becoming a part of the marketing machinery that he despises. For now, he will sell the book himself. “I hope there’s enough momentum by word of mouth,” he says. “I want conscience to deliver the message.”
A Midnight Sermon
On a Wednesday morning in October, conscience and a little self-promotion have delivered nine more book orders to Mr. Thacker’s Web site. They await him when he arrives at his temporary office, in Collegenet.com’s airy suite in Portland.
At his desk he fills the orders, signs some of the books, and returns several e-mail messages. Later it’s off to lunch with his friend and advisor Michael B. Sexton, dean of admissions at nearby Lewis & Clark College. Over burritos, Mr. Sexton, a member of the Education Conservancy’s advisory board, tells Mr. Thacker that he must strengthen his Web site’s presence on the Internet -- his “Google weight” -- by getting more colleges to link to it. Mr. Thacker writes down the suggestion.
Mr. Sexton has also urged Mr. Thacker to raise his speaking fees, which range from $500 to $1,500. The dean daydreams about getting Mr. Thacker on television talk shows, about prompting a national discussion of admissions reform. “Schmoozing the right people, that’s his learning curve,” Mr. Sexton says.
To that end, he walks Mr. Thacker across the campus to meet Peter W. Cookson Jr., dean of the Graduate School of Education, who had inquired about College Unranked. When a secretary informs them that the dean is at lunch, they wait for him in the parking lot.
After 10 minutes Mr. Cookson pulls up in a silver BMW. Mr. Thacker introduces himself and hands him a book and a business card. Maybe one day students in Mr. Cookson’s program might seek internships with the Education Conservancy, he says, hopefully. The dean agrees, shakes Mr. Thacker’s hand, and darts off to a meeting.
Later that night, as Mr. Thacker sits watching a baseball game in his living room, his gaze goes right through the television. He is thinking about his work. His group’s funds are running low. The responses to his efforts encourage him, but sometimes he wonders whether his mission is selfish, a campaign to validate his own beliefs. “I’m proving myself to myself,” he says. “I want to believe it’s more than that.”
Slowly, his self-doubt is fading, though. Close to midnight, with his family asleep down the hall, Mr. Thacker sits at his dining-room table, beaming. Before him are stacks of folders, each containing hundreds of pages of scrawled notes, letters to college officials, and news clippings about admissions. He thumbs through them from time to time, for inspiration.
Before an audience of one, he rolls through an improvised sermon on studenthood, quoting from the looseleaf pages as if they contained poems. Riffing on the SAT, early decision, and the misuse of merit aid, he paraphrases a line from a recent speech by Andrew Delbanco, a humanities professor at Columbia University: “How far can we go in protecting the bottom line before the institution we are protecting loses its soul?”
In the morning Mr. Thacker will drive to work, proofread his pitch letter, and work on a grant proposal. He will worry that a draft of his “brag sheet” is too boastful. He will wonder if he can ever convince enough people to buy into his vision.
But as he goes through another day, he will know at least one thing. He has already made his toughest sell of all.
THACKER AND COMPANY
Following are excerpts from College Unranked: Affirming Educational Values in College Admissions (Education Conservancy, 2004), a collection of essays about the college-selection process, edited by Lloyd Thacker, executive director of the Education Conservancy.
“The current crisis in college admissions reflects a troubling disconnect between educational purposes and market-driven practices. In a society whose culture is increasingly being determined and defined by private-sector commercial norms, educational leaders have a unique obligation to resist inappropriate commercial influences and to defend and champion the unique role of higher education in shaping our culture. Unfortunately, in college admissions, it seems we have lost sight of that calling. While we can feel and fear the disconnect, we too often seem immobilized in pursuing education’s call.”
-- from “Summary and Discussion: Seeking Educational Clarity and Inspiration,” by Mr. Thacker
“The more we institutionalize exam results as the measure of the intelligence, diligence, the worth of a child (and the value of teachers and schools and communities), the more we invite the creation of a hierarchy in America [and] ... the more we violate our abhorrence of imposed official distinctions amongst our people.”
-- from “You Must Re-member This,” by Theodore O’Neill, dean of admissions at the University of Chicago
“The room is resonant with hype and hope, and with a sizzling electric fear, for the stakes for everyone are very high. Suddenly, a young man bolts past me for the rear door. Halfway across the carpeted arena, he clutches his throat and vomits in the dark. ... “
-- from “College Recruitment Night,” by Kim Stafford, director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College
http://chronicle.com Section: Students Volume 51, Issue 13, Page A36
