Mission: College Access and Success

If you've ever wondered why the guidance department seems to be less than helpful in counseling during the college access process, there's a reason. According to Mandy Savitz-Romer and Suzanne Bouffard in Ready, Willing, and Able: A Developmental Approach to College Access and Success (2014), that reason is the following:

"...[S]chool counselors, who typically hold master's degrees in counseling and licenses provided by state departments of education, rarely obtain training in college counseling...In fact, according to the National Association of College Admissions and Counseling, out of the more than four hundred counselor education programs in graduate schools, only about forty include a credit bearing course specific to college counseling, and even those courses are not necessarily required" (p. 35).

While not the main argument of the book, I found this bit of information very interesting because it certainly helped me understand why, from personal experience, guidance has been one the least effective departments in the high school setting. This isn't to say that all guidance counselors are not hardworking or doing the best they can.

In Ready, Willing, and Able, Savitz-Romer and Bouffard (one of whom is a former guidance counselor), argue that there needs to be a paradigm shift in practitioners' approach to the college access process. That approach should include a developmental one that takes into account the social, emotional, and cognitive aspects of youth, and should "complement and build a foundation for the academic, informational, aspirational, and financial supports that make up current college access practices" (p. 8).  The developmental approach to college access, they assert, is critical because "Attaining a college degree today is a challenging and complex process that starts long before you apply to college and continues after they enter" (p.9).

In their book, they present five principles that address taking on a developmental approach to college access and success, which include:

1. Envisioning: Forming an Identity That Includes College-Going
2. Believing: Seeing College as Possible and Probable
3. Aiming: Setting Goals That Set Up Success
4. Organizing: Realizing College Dreams Through Self-Regulation
5. Connecting: Marshaling the Support of Peers and Families

In all, Reading, Willing, and Able is a practical text with some strong points about the current limitations of college access programs and offers some sensical and meaningful solutions to practitioners for ensuring success (in the form of a college degree) in that process. While there is repetition of ideas within the text, their call for a paradigm shift in the approach to college access and success is straight-forward. Anyone involved in that process (parents, teachers, counselors, program directors, etc.) would benefit from reading the book.