For some reason, this is what I suspect an Alumni Interviewer from that the Ivy League Institution, U Penn, would look like.

For some reason, this is what I suspect an Alumni Interviewer from that prestigious Ivy League Institution, U Penn, would look like.

Oh, how I love it when Popular Culture meets College Admissions.  It doesn’t happen often enough as far as I’m concerned–probably because I can’t digest most of the WB’s teenage-angst dramas.  (In their depictions of the college admissions process, they get everything wrong.)  So, you can only imagine my thrill when watching an episode of  The Office recently and Michael Scott was called out by some high school seniors on a promise he had made a decade earlier about paying for their college educations if they graduated.  For me, it was the usual cringe-worthy moment that I’ve grown to love.  But for an education policy analyst waaay smarter than me, it was a perfect illustration of appropriate incentivizing.  And he makes a heck of an argument in a post on the best-named blog in my world, The Quick and the Ed.

Says Ben Miller: “What Scott’s promise did is cut through the confusion and complexity with a straightforward pledge—graduate on time and your college will be covered. Students do not understand “your award will be your cost of attendance less expected family contribution”—the formula for a Pell Grant—but they do understand free, or even a specific dollar amount. By removing the guesswork and beginning at a young age, the promise created an incentive for students to work hard at their elementary and secondary schooling with the understanding that a payoff awaited at the end.”

It’s a great point.  I’m not sure you want to have loads of people out there making false promises ala Mr. Scott but it does highlight the problem of affordability often not being discussed in clear terms and certainly not early enough.  Yet more proof for my belief that preparation for college begins in grade school. Or, as Mr. Miller so succinctly puts it:

“A combination of promises and better information could go a long way toward reducing the application and aspirational barriers that block many students from applying or going to college. It could also save us from incredibly awkward nights of television.”