Someone Else's Angel

THREE WEEKS AGO I wrote a Swail Letter called College Admissions, Selectivity, and Grit. The article focused on how many of our colleges and universities were selective enough to make the admissions process majorly complex. My conclusion was that there were a lot more moderately selective institutions than I thought. Thus, the admissions game is complex and difficult for hundreds, and arguably thousands, of institutions in the US. Less than a week later after posting that article, the University of Chicago, an uber-selective institution, announced that it would not use the SAT in their admissions process. Typically, this comes with some misguided fanfare by those who fight for equity in the college-going arena.

The Swail Letter

The SAT, ACT, and College Admissions

Fear seems to be ruling the world right now, especially within the United States. The population has bought into fear-mongering, 85 years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt uttered this phrase:

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Many people today assume Roosevelt was talking about Hitler and the ramping up of World War II, but this quote came seven years before Pearl Harbor. Instead, the President was talking about the devastation left by the 1929 Stock Market Crash which ushered in the Great Depression. The newly-coined President was asserting to people that they shouldn’t be afraid of doing the right thing and should be mindful, if not careful, of doing the wrong thing, which in this case was taking money out of the banks. People were running scared, aided in large part by the newspapers and radio broadcasts. Roosevelt new he had to put a stop to it to save the economy and the nation. Interesting enough, though Roosevelt was talking about domestic politics in his address, it was the 1929 stock market crash that helped bring Hitler and his party to power a few years later. Perhaps the President should have been talking about Hitler after all, since America helped create him. Funny, we seem to have a history of creating world leaders of the worst kind.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear

I am an educational researcher, policy analyst, and somewhat provocateur on education and politics. I am the President & CEO of the US-based Educational Policy Institute and am an expert on public policy, program evaluation, and more specifically, college access and success.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear

The Swail Letter

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