That’s the thrust of a new study from Public Agenda, financed by the Gates Foundation. Inside Higher Ed has a piece on it today. IHE writes, “high school counselors may be a weak link in the chain needed to get more students into college.”

The findings of the report are that high-school counselors often do a rather poor job of assisting students. I’m not surprised. Counselors don’t suffer any loss if they don’t give excellent service.

What seems amiss here is the assumption that these counselors are doing a good job if they manage to persuade more and more students to enroll in college. They trouble as I see it is that too often they fail to persuade students that college would be a costly mistake.