In this day and age, kids grow up hearing talk of college and higher education. For most of us it's the logical first step after graduating high school, and though we've been told for years that the process is lengthy and difficult, I think most of us are excited to begin looking at schools and applying there.
As if making sure the SAT scores are high enough, the extracurricular lists are full enough, and the letters of recommendation are strong enough isn't panic-inducing on its own. Now high school kids have to worry about being bombarded by websites that "mislead students by advertising for one college and steering them towards another."
When I was searching for colleges online, there were many times that I was directed to sites with these "for-profit" schools, for example the University of Phoenix was a logo I came to know very well in my college investigations. It's annoying and very obnoxious. But I knew that I wasn't interested in anything like that and took the initiative to ignore those unpleasant ads and find my way to the legitimate websites of schools that truly interested me.
However, as Mark J. Rosenberg pointed out at the end of the article, "With the Internet, people are lazy, and if they get to the wrong site, and it's good enough, they don't leave." In my personal opinion, though I don't agree with the tactics these "for-profit" schools employ to garner attention, any student that would add something to a college community would not stop at a website because they are too lazy to find the right one. Essentially, maybe the students that are being drawn in by these fake ads because of laziness aren't students that private institutions want amongst their student populations.
Absolutely false advertising is wrong, especially in this area. Searching for colleges is stressful enough without this added hurtle, but I have to question whether or not this is being used as an excuse. If college is something a person really wants, I believe he or she will take the initiative to find a school that suits them, and no false ad or redirection to the University of Phoenix website will get in his or her way.
I understand why the universities are angry, and they have every right to be. Collegiate reputations are being threatened and many schools have potentially lost applicants. No higher education institution likes to think that the next Einstein won't one day be an alumnus because a "for-profit" recruiting method got in the way.
But I think it's time to give these applicants some credit, or perhaps make them take responsibility for their futures from the beginning of the college search process.
Times are changing, and from now on, I would bet that almost all future college applicants will have grown up with the Internet, and will arguably be more fluent in its workings than the professors employed by the various colleges they're applying to. To that end, doesn't it mean that those applicants should know the difference between a college's endorsed advertisement, and a false ad placed by the "for-profit" schools? Some officials already believe that, as stated in the article: "Internet users are sensitive to the difference between information and advertising."
I think that as a society, in this case we're giving the Internet too much credit, whether it is because we truly believe it's at fault or because we don't want to face how truly lazy today's youth has become. I'm not disputing Josh Keller's ideas that false advertising is wrong, and in fact I support those points completely. However, when are the college applicants supposed to take responsibility for themselves, for their futures? Why shouldn't it start from the very beginning, from the moment they open Google or Yahoo! or Bing and begin the search?
In the workforce, when something goes wrong, employees cannot cite the Internet as the reason for the glitch, and in a few years when these applicants are members of the workforce, they shouldn't be able to, either. That's essentially what I'm getting from this article, that we're allowing applicants to blame the Internet for their laziness or utter lack of dedication to the college search. If universities are going to fight anything, I think that is the battle they should choose. However, I also don't think it would be wrong for these universities to wait a while before going in with guns blazing. Pick your battles as they say. I believe any student worth having on any university campus won't be distracted by "for-profit" sites, will ignore them and find their way to a legitimate site, and inadvertently find their way to responsible futures.
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