A Report on Bottom Line—What Does It Mean for School Counselors?

By:  Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

Social media has been abuzz this past month with the results of a new study on college counseling by

Andrew Barr and Benjamin Castleman. The study looks at the work of Bottom Line, an organization that offers individualized college counseling to high school students, then follows up that counseling with assistance and mentoring during the college years. Bottom Line reports that the college completion rate of their students is impressive—a whopping 80% of the last three cohorts have earned a college degree in six years or less.

The new study looks behind the curtain of Bottom Line’s success, suggesting that some of the keys to the success of the program lie in the ability of counselors to match students with colleges that will meet their individual needs, all without requiring the student to take on extraordinary debt.  Since cost and persistence have long been recognized as two key elements in earning a four-year degree, it should come as no surprise that a college counseling program that helps students keep costs low, and gives students the tools to keep going in college, will lead to greater student success.

This success is worth celebrating, and it leads to a logical question—if Bottom Line can realize this kind of success with its students, can the program be replicated with more students?  Barr and Castelman see the program as highly scalable, and social media commentators feel the key elements to Bottom Line’s success lies in three key areas:

• Counselors work with very small caseloads
• Counselors stay focused on the goal of matching students with affordable colleges that have high completion rates
• Counselors are deeply familiar with the colleges in their local area that meet these criteria

Since Bottom Line is a program that is not school based, it’s easy to see the challenges school-based counselors could face if they were asked to replicate Bottom Line’s model.  The bugaboo of high ratios is the easiest challenge to recognize.  With an average of nearly 500 students per school counselor in the US, it’s easy to see how Bottom Line’s level of service might be hard to match without a significant investment in more school counseling positions.

Beyond that, the nature of a school counselor’s work might also prevent replication of Bottom Line’s achievements.  College counseling is all Bottom Line’s counselors do, while college counseling is one of myriad official duties assigned to most school counselors.  In addition, most counselors are charged with duties that have little, if anything, to do with their counseling expertise—duties like scheduling, standardized test administration, and supervision of individualized learning programs for students with special needs.  While the counselor’s voice is important in all of these activities, putting them in charge of them gives the work more of a feeling of an administrative burden that prevents them from utilizing their counseling skills.  

Finally, it’s important to recognize that some of the lack of success in college counseling is due to the lack of sufficient training counselors receive on the subject in graduate school.  Of the 12-15 course common to most counselor graduate programs, only one focuses on postsecondary counseling—and that course typically has a split focus between college and career counseling.

With less than 3 dozen graduate programs offering focused training in college counseling, it’s no wonder most counselors begin their work with students with background and insight that make it impossible to replicate the efforts of Bottom Line.  Logistical challenges may abound, but too many students see their counselors as lacking important information that can make a difference in college selection.  That’s the right place to begin to impact their own bottom line.