A group formed to study the role of counseling in helping students select suitable colleges is now sending more than 60 field researchers to high schools nationwide in search of model programs.
The National College Counseling Project intends to complete a monograph by the summer of 1986 on developing effective college-counseling programs.
“The programs we’re looking for are not necessarily those that send the most students to college, but those that do the most and best with the resources they have,” said Herbert F. Dalton Jr., an admissions officer at Middlebury College and one of the founders of the project.
The organization, which completed a national survey on the status of college counseling nationwide in 1984 (See Education Week, Aug. 29, 1984), recently received a $25,000 grant from the National Association of College Admissions Counselors and an additional $15,000 from the Teagle Foundation.
Where do counselors fit into the excellence movement? Some answers are contained in a new publication of the American Association for Counseling and Development.
The report--which is actually the published proceedings of a meeting on the subject--says that most studies on school excellence have treated counseling as a “fringe” activity.
Robert Wood, Henry R. Luce professor at Wesleyan University, said that counseling was overlooked by the numerous task forces because few have understood the complex influences on learning. The reports, he said, tend to overemphasize the classroom teacher, are unrealistic about students, and have a naive approach to school management.
But some speakers said that counseling has been overlooked by the reform movement largely because counselors tend to keep a low profile, preferring one-on-one relationships with students to involvement in school operations and politics.
Roger Aubrey, a professor at Vanderbilt University, urged that counselors develop ways to monitor students’ academic, personal, and social progress; become more active consultants to teachers, parents, and administrators; and become more involved in curriculum planning.
The Association of Independent Colleges and Schools, the organization representing 600 proprietary schools nationwide, has launched a national public-service campaign called “Tell Me Where the Jobs Are.”
The campaign is designed to help students and adults identify rapidly growing job categories and opportunities in these fields, according to an aics spokesman.
The campaign’s promotion packet includes a brochure that lists the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ predictions of the 40 fastest growing occupations between 1984 and 1985.
Because research indicates that 80 percent of new jobs in the next 15 years will demand training beyond high school and only 20 percent of new jobs will require a traditional college degree, aics institutions are a good option for students, according to the brochure.--sr
