A TFA for College Counseling?

I spent a few hours today at the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance hearings, and overall was encouraged by some of the ideas, and the bipartisan support for simplifying the financial aid process. But, the second session I sat in on, which focused on the University of Virginia College Guide program, was especially interesting.

UVA’s College Guide program places recent UVA graduates in low-income Virginia communities, where they act as college counselors at a local high school. Prior to their placement, the ‘guides’ receive intense training in financial aid, and visit colleges across the state. The program, which is showing signs of success, is in its second year and is now expanding to ten other college sites.

Of course, the big question—which was asked by one of the advisory committee members—is whether the program can be scaled up. Sure, this program can help students in the handful of high schools it reaches, but what about the hundreds of high schools that remain in need of good, intense college counseling?

UVA’s program does a lot to address the quality side of the problem. Much like Teach for America, it relies on getting smart, motivated young people into these schools, where they can make an immediate impact on students. In fact, there was talk of ramping up the UVA program under a TFA-like model. But, even if it reached the scale of TFA, it still wouldn’t be able to address the quantity side of the problem, and reach all of the students who need it.

Instead, more fundamental problems of training and on-the-job expectations need to be addressed. A successful program like UVA’s will probably see the largest, national-level impacts by showing what can happen when students receive individual, high-quality counseling, and by focusing national attention on the need to improve the training of guidance counselors. The college counselor can be an important link in the high school-to-college pipeline, and hopefully the success of UVA’s program will shine the light on the need for both more quantity and more quality in college counseling.