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A MOOC That Would Make a Real Difference

An online format could help low-income students learn how to apply to college

By JERMAINE TAYLOR

M
UCH has been written re- But lost in the increasingly vitriolic some consultants charging families in a
cently about the advent of debate is any discussion of those people position to afford it as much as $40,000
massive open online cours- who are locked out of higher education’s for their supposed expertise, “those ap-
es, or MOOCs, and what land of milk and honey altogether: low- plicants who might benefit from supple-
role, if any, they should play in disrupt- income youths all across the country mental counseling—like those at urban
ing centuries-old models of pedagogical who have neither the wherewithal nor high schools with overworked counsel-
practices specifically and the higher- the knowledge of how to fully share in ors—are often among the least able to
education landscape more broadly. the benefits of either an online course afford such services.”
Proponents argue that MOOCs can or a traditional college. That prompts a critical question: If
lower the skyrocketing costs of a college If we want to truly re-engineer the vast majority of low-income stu-
degree and usher in a new age of equal American higher education to meet the dents in cities like New York will be the
access for students and prosperity for evolving needs of the 21st century and first in their families to attend college,
institutions. an increasingly diverse America, I sug- whom do they turn to for help in decod-
These supporters argue that the online gest a different kind of MOOC: massive ing the often confounding college-ad-
courses can fundamentally democratize open online counseling sessions for low- missions process?
higher education by putting the have- income students. Sadly, the answer to that question
nots on equal footing with the haves. According to a 2009 New York Times most often is, “No one.”
Opponents argue that the true pur- article, “Before College, Costly Advice At the average American high
pose of MOOCs is to usurp the notion Just on Getting In,” “admissions of- school, the student-to-guidance-
of higher education entirely, relegating ficers say that, for many high-school counselor ratio is more than 400 to
more than 100 years of scholarship and students, the advice of their high-school 1, according to the American School
carefully honed teaching to the scrap counselors should suffice.” But as a Counselor Association, which recom-
heap in favor of a modem and high- booming industry of independent col- mends a ratio of 250 to 1. At larger
speed Internet connection. lege consultants continues to grow, with urban schools that serve large numbers

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of low-income students, that disparity
is even greater.
services young people so desperately
need would go a long way toward
across continental borders, can’t it also
help us plug the gaping hole of need for
Massive open online
Gwyeth Smith, a nationally recog- equipping underserved students with counseling in our most underresourced counseling could
nized speaker on college advising and the knowledge and resources they schools?
the subject of the book Acceptance: A need to make their college-going After all, all we need is a modem and usefully disrupt
Legendary Guidance Counselor Helps dreams a reality. high-speed Internet connection.
Seven Kids Find the Right Colleges—and The dearth of resources available the traditional
Find Themselves (2010), told me in an
interview that private-school students,
to such students is disturbing in itself;
even more troubling, though, is that
Jermaine Taylor is the founder of Sponsor-
ing Young People, a college-access advocacy
model of guidance
teachers, and administrators are no
better than their public-school peers,
this problem is within our scope to
solve.
group for low-income students in New York
City. He is a former seventh- and eighth-
in understaffed
by and large. Where they differ is that
chronically understaffed public high
If technology can enable learning
and the globalized exchange of ideas
grade language-arts teacher and high-
school counselor.
high schools.
schools simply don’t have the resources
or can’t afford to place a high-enough
premium on college counseling and
admissions.
Public schools just can’t compete
with private schools in terms of the im-
portance they place on getting students
into college, Smith told me. In other
words, we are not so much failing our
students in the classroom as we are fail-
ing them in the guidance office.

I
RECENTLY asked a friend, a teach-
er at a public high school in New
York City, how many guidance
counselors his school dedicated
to college admissions. He said that
one guidance counselor, on top of his
regular counseling duties for the entire
school, was responsible for helping
some 200 seniors try to cut their way
through the dense college-admissions
process.
At my alma mater, Chelsea High
School, also in New York, the situation
was even bleaker. Our “college adviser,”
Mr. Gupta, was a sweet, affable man,
but his primary role at Chelsea was as
a full-time math teacher. He simply
moonlighted as a college counselor
during his off periods. He had no train-
ing as a counselor and was responsible
for the college preparation of the entire
senior class.
And in Philadelphia, where steep
budget cuts nearly prevented the pub-
lic schools from opening on time this
year—a standstill that was averted only
at the 11th hour by a $50-million emer-
gency loan from the city—students
are finding guidance offices either
unstaffed or understaffed when they go
looking for help with college applica-
tions.
An article published in September
in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
quoted Janice Palmer, the parent of a
Philadelphia high-school student, who
said: “I’m going to be honest, I don’t
know much about these Fafsa forms
and stuff like that, so I can’t be all that
helpful to my son as I want to be. You
look to the schools to help you with
these things, but they keep telling me,
there ain’t no money. I just don’t un-
derstand it.”
So why not harness the power of
MOOCs to disrupt the traditional
model of counseling in poor communi-
ties? It’s clear that the current model
is woefully dependent on shrinking
resources and scarce manpower.
There is seemingly another article
written every day about the income or
achievement gap. Massive open on-
line courses providing the counseling

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