Since my last post about levers and dashboards, I’ve heard from a few individuals who wanted to share their experiences with different levers meant to improve their college/university counseling program in some way. As such, what I thought would be a good idea would be to go through a couple of them to deconstruct them as a way to explore the complexity of college counseling and also to support the use of the dashboard approach, which I will get to down the line, eventually. 

I wanted to begin with the concept of student-to-counselor ratio. Often this is seen as a panacea for all that might ail college counseling offices; however, as with so many such “levers,” there is a complexity hidden not too far (or subtly) beneath the surface. 

To begin, I’ll share the experience of one colleague who reached out after my last post. She shared that one end-of-year survey instrument that her school uses revealed a concern in the student and parent feedback about counselor availability. It seems some students and parents felt that the college counselors were not available as readily as students/parents wanted. She explained that the comments on the survey suggested an expectation by some of the parents that the college counselors be available for immediate meetings, whereas the student feedback revealed that sometimes students had to wait several days before being able to get in to see their counselor. This feedback elicited the desire for the administration to respond. Our colleague reports that there was great sympathy expressed given that the administration was aware of “how hard” the counselors were working, but there was no substantive investigation or discussion into the root causes. As such, the admin carved out an additional FTE and added a college counselor to the team for the following year. Of course, no counselor resists the idea of adding an additional teammate to help shoulder the counseling caseload, and so a new person was hired, thereby dividing what had been about 100 students per graduating class split evenly between two college counselors (50:1 student:counselor) to a three-counselor model (~33:1). (It should be noted that this was a “split” counseling model where there was a college counseling office and a social-emotional counseling office.) However, the following year, the same feedback persisted with some more frustrated comments ostensibly since the addition of the third counselor had been trumpeted so broadly. This time, however, the response from the administration reflected disappointment, and they sought further investigation to understand the problem in order to apply behavioral modifications directed at the counselors to remedy their lack of availability. It seemed that the cure-all of “improving” student-to-counselor ratios did not have the intended effect and, consequently, the counselors -- three of them now! -- found themselves under fire. 

Put more simply, pulling on the lever of student-to-counselor ratios did not lead to the desired outcome of greater availability by the counselors. In this case, our colleague pointed out that this solution was destined to fail for a number of reasons endemic within the job descriptions of the counselors and arguably within the school culture itself. 

Here are some of the points:

• Our colleague shared with great frustration that she felt the administration was conflating counselor availability with responsiveness. She shared that her office had a rule that all emails needed to be responded to within 24 hours, and she reflected that she and the rest of the office felt no challenges in meeting this. As such, when a student or a parent would reach out to meet, the counselors would reply within the set timeframe, but that it was not always easy to carve time out right away for either party. 

• (Additionally, it is worth noting that this counselor and indeed her whole office, subscribe to the “there is no such thing as an emergency” in the college counseling world. Some may disagree with this take, of course, but in adhering to it, she still maintained that no one would need to wait longer than three days for a meeting anyway.)

• It is also worth pointing out that in this school’s model, there was no dedicated college counseling classroom time. As such, the counselors were forced to meet individually with each student during students’ free periods, and, consequently, their schedules were chock-full of 1v1 student meetings. 

• Student availability was also a contributing factor here. At an IB school with a fairly traditional schedule of 8 class periods including all 6 IB courses and a seventh course for TOK, Extended Essay, and CAS, students in the Diploma Program (grades 11 and 12) were only available for individual meetings during their one free period. As a relatively small school, most students had similar free periods, thereby increasing the demand of the counselors during those limited times, putting pressure outside of the academic day. (The same held true with students in grades 6-10 in that they were fully booked with no free periods, leaving them free only before school, during lunch, or after school.)

• In regards to the before school, during lunch, and after school availability, the counselors at this school were asked to contribute to the various shared duties that so many schools require of faculty: campus supervision before and after school, lunch duty, detention (though they didn’t call it that) duty, coaching responsibilities, faculty meetings, parent coffees, PTA meetings, Extended Essay or Personal Project mentoring, advising, etc. Though none of these responsibilities individually amounted to a significant imposition, their impact was felt on the aggregate. 

• Further complicating the question of availability, each of the three counselors contributed to “the life of the school” (a common refrain at independent schools) in unique ways. One taught an English class, one taught TOK, one was testing coordinator, and two were head coaches of sports teams. The impact here, again, was to limit the availability of the counselors during these times when they might be with students or parents. 

• Another point that might be disputed by some was, as reported, the prevalence of standing meetings to which the counselors were always invited. From admin to counseling to wellness to academic team meetings, there were a slew of dedicated times that impinged on the counselors’ availability during the academic day on a weekly basis. 

• A final point our colleague made that sits heavily with me was the social-emotional counseling load. Although the college counselors were not necessarily trained nor specifically responsible for social-emotional support of the students, there was only 1 “personal” counselor and 1 psychologist for the high school of roughly 400 students. As a result, it was reported, as is often the case, that students would naturally gravitate toward the college counselors because of the lack of availability -- usually due to triage and crisis management -- by the social-emotional staff and (ironically) the relative availability of the college counselors. This dynamic thereby again occupied the time, usually in a somewhat urgent way, of the college counselors as a student struggling with social-emotional challenges leaps to the top of any of our workloads.

To be clear, none of this is even to address the issue of student ownership over their own college application processes and planning in advance to avoid the need for last-minute attention. It also does not address whether parents ever actually need immediate attention for college counseling related topics. However, it all does go to support the reality that at this school -- and at many others -- they chose to address counselor availability by decreasing the student-counselor ratio, and this was unsuccessful for lots of reasons. Ultimately, they pulled on the lever of caseloads but did not achieve the desired outcome. 

Ultimately, in the case shared, our colleague reports that the administration was able to eventually see the challenges within the situation and eventually added college counseling classes and all but eliminated duties external to the college counseling role. While no scenario is perfect, it seems that the concerns about availability have since abated.

Before concluding, I would not want to be perceived as not recognizing the privilege of working in schools with such minuscule caseloads. We work in enormously privileged places when compared to so many across the globe with soaring student-counselor ratios and an absence of college-specific supports. At the same time, I would not want to be perceived as suggesting that counseling loads don’t matter! They do! I have long encouraged admin to think of the perspective of the counselor letter burden and to consider how many intimate, well-written letters they feel they can place on a counselor at their school and in their specific context without compromising quality. There are many other ways in which a smaller student-counselor ratio can positively impact the work and culture of a school, but, in this case, lowering it did not positively impact the perception of availability. 

In closing, the suggestion I want to return to and to emphasize is that singular indicators within the college counseling world often mistakenly lead to the perception that single levers may lead to specific results. After examining a few more such levers and situations, I plan to return to this concept of the dashboard, whereby college counseling offices are examined according to a host of indicators unique and germane to their particular school culture and context. More soon, but I’d love to hear from others with thoughts or perspectives or additional stories of such metrics being misleading!