I think professionals like yourself with specialized knowledge should be able to contribute and share your expertise for free. CC can vet professionals.
The premium service is for those who want to tap into this expertise.
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I think CC should vet any professionals who are offering chance me/match me advice to folks who are paying. In my opinion, if one is paying, they should get first hand advice from those IN those professions. Or at the very least, have long term relationships with folks with valuable info. For example, my DH was a VP in an engineering company. I post things after asking his opinion. One of my kids is a professional freelance musician. And I ask him questions too. Plus, we are very well connected with many musicians.
I don’t post about things I know nothing about.
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Same here. It is a little frustrating when people who DON’T have the same level of expertise in a certain area offer contradictory advice.
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Yes, we do have an issue with some people providing uninformed opinions, but there are many people with knowledge and first hand experience that provide valuable feedback. Some things are easier to vet (for example someone claiming to be a doctor, and therefore qualified to speak about med schools) than someone saying their kid went to med school or they know school X very well because their niece goes there, etc. Vetting the latter probably requires violating more privacy than these contributors might be willing to tolerate, therefore turning them away.
Maybe we could have a peer generated trust level system. If a poster’s advice is voted up consistently by senior members they have a higher trust value vs others. Maybe only those who’ve established a certain (high) trust level get to advice premium subscribers.
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Put simply, for many fields, there are no licensing or experiential requirements. And the world has changed. Many people speak of the not so recent past - and that’s fine too - we all have different life experiences.
People are able to decide what advice to take and not to take.
And they can use the thumbs up … or not…to guide themselves.
There is some great info out there from many people. There are some people others never agree with but that’s not to say their advice is good or not so good.
It’s an open forum.
If someone wants to close it - it’s fine - but it will be locked off from the masses.
When you start charging $$, you are taking access away and perspectives away. Just because somebody served in a field or knows somebody who does, doesn’t make their guidance the one and only. Or necessarily right for a kid who is in a different situation or who has different needs. I often read (yes from me too) that my kid did this…ok, that was your kid but maybe not relevant to the student’s situation. Maybe it is. Each one of us is not the only one with what someone may see as helpful advice.
I’m not saying the website can’t survive with paid options and maybe it could, but I do think things like private counselor referrals (like a Charles Schwab can set you up with a financial advisor) or robo advising or other things removes all the access, etc.
I’d rather see schools like Agnes Scott or Macalester, that maybe are looking for students, pay a referral fee if someone a student can be linked to them and apply.
In essence, many unheralded but fine schools get a lot of free press on here. Tulsa takes advantage and talks directly to students. Maybe there should be a cost for that?
If the website name is strong enough (I don’t know that it is), maybe it becomes the “trusted” source for all free college ideas and info.
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And colleges can do this for no charge on other platforms. And they do!
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My H and I have been discussing this in the car this morning. In the end we also came out thinking it would be best if the schools are asked to pay, rather than the individual contributors. CC has a model very similar to Wikipedia in that the content comes from the population of users. Wikipedia survives through donations, but we understand that won’t work for CC, which has a corporate structure. I’m not sure exactly how you would do this, but if the schools can be persuaded to support CC through some sort of fee or subscription, an amount that wouldn’t be very big for them might make a huge difference. You’d have to be careful not to offer the schools anything in exchange that would create an impression of bias, but if CC really is, or can be, “the trusted source for all free college ideas and info,” the schools should have an incentive to ensure it continues to prosper.
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People can’t always discern that though on a forum like CC.
Sure. What there is not room for is uninformed opinions, I think that’s what some posters are saying.
Uninformed opinions can potentially harm CC as well, or certainly cause some posters to not come back.
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What would schools pay for? You mean if they want to have a vetted AO or President account? There doesn’t seem to be a big market for that at least on CC, many more college reps are on Reddit. Dean J from UVA would be a good one to get feedback from as she completely abandoned CC for Reddit.
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And especially if members are paying.
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It seems like many message boards are the free arm of another business. For example, a magazine. Or a podcast.
ETA, what about the Patreon model? You don’t have to be a nonprofit.
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They might - but then it becomes - how strong is your brand?
I don’t know how strong the CC brand is - could it command this?
One thing is for sure, there are many brands out there that the CC team can study - that have gone from free to a freemium model.
What was their brand strength like when they made this change? And how did this change impact their stability?
I get this part -if the site isn’t making money and it has to - then it has to take chances. Those chances may include the reality that at some point the site is unable to exist.
I don’t know enough about the site or its metrics to know - if it has the strength to add premium content without reducing the audience.
Nor do I know how other sites - same College Vine as an example - how they do from a financial aspect. They do offer things like essay review at a cost. Are they successful - don’t know.
There is a big difference though, between providing diverse opinions and providing uninformed advice.
If I say paying $85k/year is justified for some schools if you can afford it, and someone else says it’s never worth paying more than what your in state school costs, those are two differing but equally valid viewpoints.
But if I advise someone on this site about law school admissions, speech pathology career options or the vibe on the Virginia Tech campus - none of which I have direct experience with - it’s not simply a matter of opinion. I am in fact providing potentially misleading/inaccurate information, and that’s what we should try and avoid, especially if we ask people to pay for receiving advice.
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But again, what is uninformed to some may not be uninformed at all.
And when there’s a factually incorrect statement (the other day someone said Davidson had an engineering major), it can be corrected as I did.
What isn’t right is when people take opinion - and that’s what most of what’s on here is - and slam it.
But that’s getting off topic.
While you may not agree - uninformed doesn’t necessarily make it wrong. And many people have formed opinions (myself included) on what they’ve learned from others on here).
Bottom line - If you start muting the audience, then even the free part of the CC dies off.
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Stop parsing situations.
Read dadofjerseygirl’s last post, that’s the type of uninformed advice people are talking about.
People giving uninformed advice on CC have no business doing so, that is not the same as having differing opinions. But you know that.
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And in this case, someone will offer a counter point.
If you are paying, then yes - I agree.
But if that person is paying, 99% of them will never get to ask the question because they’re not going to pay.
Many HS kids come on here without their parents knowing - or parents come on, often with no resources.
If you become a “resourced” website it’s great - but then you change the entire tone/dynamic of the business.
That may be needed for survival - but it diminishes, even the free content, that would still be there.
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I think adults should be able to check themselves.
Hopefully wikipedia is not the goal for CC. Regardless, there are no CC police, and plenty of uninformed advice is never countered.
Thanks for saying ‘nicely’ , I do try. 
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A few of us suggested above that there could be two tiers - a free version where people can post one chance me thread like they do today, and a premium version where they can confidentially disclose more private information (like on the essay review platform) or do multiple, targeted chance-mes.
but it is more likely to be wrong.
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As fascinating as this recent exchange is, perhaps you can start a thread on what should be considered an appropriate contribution. Let’s get this one back on topic for Mike so he’s not reading through posts that are not valuable or related to his question. Thanks.
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