Philosophically Informed: Exploring the Ethic of Help

Journal of College Admission, Summer 2007 by Patterson, Sam

While students are the center of the college admission process, the individual student is transient within the process, involved for a short amount of time, trying to get a spot in the freshman class of university X. Counselors and admission officers are the stewards of the process, the keepers of the code and the architects of the maze. In this position, we have a unique perspective, the long view. The universities can engage the process on both levels of focus, the short view is finding the best freshman for their class next year, and the long view works to preserve the integrity of the application process. Part of our responsibility to the application process and our profession is to evaluate our context, to ask critical questions of the process and use this examination to continue to craft local and national policy.

Attempting to digest this process in pieces, we writers find ourselves concentrating on the ethics involved in helping with the application essay. This conversation, not to be had with students and parents, must take place within the community of college counselors, teachers and private essay coaches. Together, we must look at the needs of our students and the universities to which we help them apply. The way we construct this ethic of help will shape the college application process of the future.

Trapped in the present, we often look at this task from a limited point of view particular to our professions. When we are in the midst of responding to an essay, we don't have time to develop an understanding of the philosophical basis of helping any particular student, but as stewards of the application process, we have to occasionally step back and consider the roles and values of the stakeholders in the application essay process. Perhaps we should ask ourselves, what would John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, or Alan Watts do?

Utilitarianism

If John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) weighed in on the process of assisting students with their application essays, he would undoubtedly draw upon his foundation in Utilitarianism and ask what action will provide the greatest benefits-measured in happiness-for the greatest number of people.

Students, Parents, Happiness, and the Application Essay

For those of us within this process, the adjacent placement of the words "happiness" and "college application essay" may seem openly laughable. Students and parents often view the application essay as a means to an end; their happiness will be achieved once the student is admitted to some prestigious institution. Their individual happiness in this respect may be great. On the surface, it could provide for many hours worth of happiness, dropping the name of the fine university at key social moments. Going deeper, it could be a keystone in a lifetime of achievement and status for the student. This happiness is the happiness of a plan realized. This focus on the end product, serves as a caution to us within the process.

The Happiness of Helpfulness

On the flipside, a tutor or teacher is typically happy about a job well done and the check that will help ensure his or her financial security. Ultimately, the greatest happiness occurs when a tutor sees the student learn something about him or herself, as this does not happen during every, or even most tutoring sessions.

In order to preserve this happiness, the tutor must be working in a way that develops and draws out the student's ability, instead of allowing the student to lean too heavily on the tutor. Without these types of safeguards, the tutor may be working for the student's happiness, but compromising the validity of the overall process and his or her position, which in turn could interfere with the "happiness" of the whole system.

An Effective Bureaucracy is a Happy Bureaucracy

If the tutor manages to help the student showcase his or her talents in such a way that the school can recognize a good fit to their program, the school will be happy with the choice made to admit the student, Later in life the student will be counted among the celebrated alumni and asked each spring to contribute to the fund to preserve the program... However, if the tutor has managed to assist the student in creating a false notion in the application, the real student may not be able to fulfill expectations, causing unhappiness for all parties.

If the admission process is designed to find and admit the students most qualified for those programs, then improperly helping students through that process could directly undermine the primary purpose of the process. The gamble might result in even money, if this is where the chain of unhappiness stopped. The top school in the U.S. cannot accept even 10 percent of its applicants. This one misplaced student means a missed opportunity for another student. It boggles the mind to think what the world might miss if qualified students are not admitted because unqualified students were able to submit stronger applications.

Categorical Imperative

If one asked Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) for his opinion on the issue of assisting students with the college application essay, he would answer with the categorical imperative, "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (in Rachels 1986, 115).