Universities are so good at marketing that they have to pay contractor to help them give away the product

by philg

“Venture Capitalists Help Connect Low-Income Students With Elite Colleges” is a WSJ article about a Silicon Valley startup that gets paid by elite universities with lavish marketing budgets to find low-income high school students to whom the schools can give away the product. (To call the university experience an “education” is a stretch for a lot of majors, as noted in Academically Adrift.)

Here are some choice quotes:

… QuestBridge, conceived in 2003 to connect disadvantaged students with elite colleges that pay a recruiting fee for the services.

“It seemed too good to be true and I thought it was a scam,” Francisco Guzman, who grew up in a low-income household in Elizabeth, N.J., said of when he first received a QuestBridge application by email. He landed a full scholarship to Stanford, and the 25-year-old is now a senior product designer for an Internet startup in San Francisco.

Students fill out online applications, and finalists are chosen by QuestBridge based on factors including academic performance, financial need and personal experiences such as having to work while attending school to help support their families. The list of finalists is sent electronically to participating colleges for their selections.

Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., accepted 22 QuestBridge applicants in 2008; last fall, that number increased to 70, representing 10% of its freshman class, said Art D. Rodriguez, dean of admission and financial aid.

If this QuestBridge startup is so much better than the (presumably vastly more expensive) college’s full-time staff, why not outsource all of the recruitment, not just recruiting for low-income students?

3 thoughts on “Universities are so good at marketing that they have to pay contractor to help them give away the product”

  1. For the same reason most corporations outsource COBRA administration. It is a chore required to keep tax breaks, not a heartfelt effort.

  2. Not entirely on-topic, but QuestBridge supplied Princeton with a student who was later expelled and charged with kidnapping and aggravated assault. Not sure if he was ever convicted.

  3. Colleges are desperate to recruit qualified non-Asian minorities. In the entire US, under 1,000 black students per year score over 700 on the math SAT. http://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html

    All of the Ivies and other top schools have to compete for those same 1,000 students so anything that gives them a leg up is worth it. And there is a comparable effect all up and down the line for all other colleges.

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