College Consultant ThinkTank Guarantees Admission for Hefty Price - Businessweek:
"Some 10,000 students—sixth graders to junior-college grads—use ThinkTank’s services now, generating annual revenue of more than $18 million. Nearly all are Asian immigrants like Ma, 36, who moved to Northern California from Taiwan when he was 11. He reels them in at free seminars, held in Holiday Inn ballrooms on Saturday afternoons. The standing-room-only events, advertised in Bay Area Chinese media, include a raffle of free SAT prep classes and a pep talk for the college-obsessed. Ma reassures the bewildered, multigenerational audiences that top-ranked American universities aren’t nearly as capricious as they seem, once you know their formula. ThinkTank boasts that 85 percent of its applicants get into a top-40 college, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. “Our model knows more about how to get into many colleges than their own admissions officers know,” he says."
The answer? Stop feeding the beast. Stop student loans. Stop giving money to corrupt institutions which have strayed so far from their original mission and purpose as to be almost unrecognizable. Federal funding for education should be strictly for Pre-K through Community College (2 year degrees). Public education through a 2 year degree at a community college should be free, with strict standards of accreditation, accountability, and transparency, in order to qualify for federal funding. Beyond a 2 year degree only scholarships should be available for qualified students.
