I’m in HR at a company and just interviewed an international student who emigrated to the U.S. from Bolivia. “Sarah” came here to get an education and start a new life with a job in America. She went to one of the top 50 business schools in the country, finished her degree in 3 years and even got 3.9 gpa. I asked Sarah what she was involved in on campus and she said she never got involved on campus because she took as many hours as possible and didn’t have time for anything else.

Now, six months after graduation she cannot find a job; and from my conversation with her she sounds completely clueless to how the real-world of business works. I seriously doubt any company will hire her.

Now I don’t know for certain but I would guess these two assumptions are true.

1. Colleges are actively recruiting international students (to increase their revenues)
2. “Sarah” from Bosnia won’t get any of her money back that she paid for her education

Colleges take students into thousands of dollars of debt, just to receive mediocre teaching, from an outdated, bureaucratic system of irrelevant text books and professors that can’t be held accountable for their teaching. Top that all off with sub-par career services which do very little to help students navigate the new job market.

Colleges are trying to make a buck and so are these Higher Ed. Companies. In the end they might end be truly serving their end user properly. What else is new?
At least these companies will go bankrupt eventually (when someone creates a better product) but this won’t (or at least hasn’t) happened to colleges.

Take a look at the rankings of the top 100 colleges and the top Fortune 100 companies in the past decade. The fortune 100 list has changed considerably, the list of colleges, has not.

Higher Ed. changes slowly, meanwhile the outside world is evolving at an exponential pace. I’ve learned more from Wikipedia, TED.com and random “expert” bloggers than I did from my classroom education.

I would recommend students to stand up and demand a better education but most are clueless a better one even exists. Instead students are rewarded to sit down, be silent and follow directions. Ironically this is the just like the people that work at these higher ed. companies who are “not providing fair information to students”.

I agree companies aren’t providing “fair” information, but I don’t think colleges are any better. What if colleges had innovative real world programs that promoted creativity, philanthropy and entrepreneurship? Perhaps if colleges trained better citizens they could go out and change the current structure that is in place.

I’m all for changing the system, but which system needs to lead first?

I should note that this was the evidence with regards to college search. The college selection process was more about in-person networks and exchanges. Additionally, the more traditional in-person networking for information was also the over riding mechanism used by all students in the search process as well so the internet has just become one more source of information in the mix and not the over riding winner as a source of information for students. It seems to be gaining in use but is not the primary source as viewed by current students.

I hope this has in some way added to your thoughts Mark. Thanks for posting.

Hobsons has been in the game perhaps longer than anyone. That they have only 15% of the market may say a lot about the degree to which these companies (that present a list of colleges to prospective high school students) will gain users. They are really an online version of college guidebooks (magazines) that list colleges who are paid advertisers. These models are essentially middlemen in the college search process in a market where students can get the information on their own on the Internet. Their models are successful to the degree to which they can get students (and high schools) to use their service. I just think there are too many other ways students can search for colleges; and that of course is the challenge for these companies. In the early days of web 1.0, as a chief enrollment/marketing officer, I think our college used Hobsons. Then with a limited advertising budget, we declined to do so and put our resources into our website and direct mail pointing our prospects to our site.

In terms of underrepresented students, your concerns are worth reflection. I am not familiar with all of these companies, but I think these students will be negatively impacted by these services only if high school counseling offices use only one of these services, if these students do not have access to the internet, and if colleges are not reaching them in other ways. Colleges for years now have been segmenting their markets with name purchases and direct mail, focusing on some students, ignoring others. But both direct mail and online search services will fail to be successful with underrepresented students if that’s all the colleges are doing to reach those communities. Just getting your name in front of these students is not enough. However, if online presence is the subject, I might point to colleges largely ignoring MySpace as a more serious concern than these proprietary online companies.