<p>I read that article and didn’t take it that Oberlin was being singled out as being any different from the rest of America’s colleges on this point. The writer needed actual, specific examples and interviews to support the contentions she was making…and she happened to use Oberlin. And Oberlin was in some good company, I should add.</p>
<p>Why was Oberlin called out? Well, maybe it’s because only Oberlin and the other eight colleges mentioned share this dynamic. But if that was so, the interest level would be so narrow that the article would have been killed before the first interview. More likely, the reporter’s neighbor has a child at Oberlin. So, from that, people are suggesting that this “closed out” problem is a particular concern for Obies and prospective Obies?</p>
<p>I’m not exaggerating the amazing leap that’s going on by those who think that prospective Obies need to be cautioned by this article and that current students should be alarmed by their plight. I once was interviewed for a segment on “Nightline” and then appeared for all of 20 seconds on “This Week” because the guy filling in for Ted Koppel on “Nightline” was desperate for a live source and his production assistant overheard at an “Au Bon Pain” on K Street in Washington that I was in the specialized field they needed a source for who could get over to make-up within two hours. Those two appearances then created a false impression that I had something unique to say and that I was an “expert” or in some way distinguished from my colleagues on the topic…when the truth was that I was totally fungible, filler material! (I sometimes think I could have built a career on such appearances because CNN called me a few weeks later to provide quotes for another story…all because someone there saw my ABC appearances for all of 2 minutes, 12 seconds. Why not? I see any number of people who did just that. Greta Van Susteren anyone?)</p>
<p>If singling out Oberlin was intentional on the part of the writer, Ms. Paul, I still don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that she believes that Oberlin is any more guilty than any other college. If she consciously called out Oberlin, she also consciously called out Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Vermont, NYU, Northwestern and Tufts…and it seems to me that the point is not that Oberlin has a distinctly awful track record as much as to drive home the point that this is a dynamic that occurs at America’s finest institutions of higher learning. (Well, and to be fair, the point is also that it occurs America’s priciest institutions of higher learning. But I am going to assume all the parents are already fully cognizant of the pricey-ness of their child’s favorite colleges.) The only reasonable Oberlin-specific takeaway from its inclusion in this article is that Pamela Paul has the impression that her readership will recognize Oberlin as a great school where they wouldn’t expect this sort of thing to occur. (“Dear readers, this can happen anywhere!”)</p>
<p>For me, the big overall takeaway from that article was not that this happens. Every tour and info session I’ve attended has the “closed out of classes” question come up at some point. What I realized was that students (or parents) need to ask the question that the article really didn’t nail…and that’s because the answer can’t be generalized across the collegiate landscape as broadly as the problem can.</p>
<p>The colleges distinguish themselves in terms of how they address and redress the close out problem that they all have to deal with. They all establish a pecking order for how to get into classes. And part of that pecking order sometimes includes a component for those who have been closed out in the past. Often, there’s even variation within each college, depending on the course level, frequency of offering, size, etc. No article can do justice to a survey of the answers that America’s colleges have for this dynamic because they’re so unique and specific. To get those answers, prospective students applying to colleges across the nation need to ask the question that this article steers them to ask.</p>
<p>It would be a mistake to read that article and think that it doesn’t apply with full force to Kenyon, Amherst, Grinnell, LSU, Pomona, etc…just as it would be a mistake to read that article and think that it applies specifically to Oberlin.</p>