The Education of Lloyd Thacker

They have come to hear Lloyd Thacker, the prophet in the tweed jacket. The room bulges with college admissions deans and high- school guidance counselors, who sit in the aisles and squeeze against the walls. Today's talk is called "College Unranked -- as if Education Matters." Right now, nothing else does.

Mr. Thacker begins: "May I quickly see the hands of those people who had enjoyable and rewarding college experiences?" It's unanimous. "Now, may I see the hands of those who realize they could have had similarly rewarding experiences attending a different college?" When the arms go up again, he asks, "What does that say?"

He could end the lesson there, letting the question hover like a blimp, and make his point: There is no such thing as the one perfect college. But he is just warming up, and for that his audience here in September at the annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, known as Nacac, is grateful. After all, they believe that Lloyd Thacker is the man who can save their world.

Mr. Thacker, who had been a guidance counselor since 1987, quit his job in February to found the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit group based in Portland, Ore. Its mission: to help students, colleges, and high schools overcome "commercial interference" in higher education and to promote ethical admissions practices.

He argues that colleges have perpetuated the myth of the perfect- fit campus through self-serving marketing strategies, including early decision, that compel high-school students to search for a glass slipper instead of thinking about what they want from a college. He believes that the popular U.S. News & World Report college rankings have warped academe's mission. He is not the first to make such arguments, but he is the first to start an organization designed, as he says, "to give conscience to a market dominated by fear and hype."

His first project was to commission, edit, and publish College Unranked: Affirming Educational Values in College Admissions (Education Conservancy, 2004), a collection of essays by counselors, deans, and college presidents about what ails the admissions system. The book assails the status quo, combining critiques of the College Board, a vivid portrait of nausea-inducing hysteria among students at a college-recruitment...