Hot Chicks & Minorities

Over 75% of college catalogs are fraudulent. Evidence is found in the photos.

Look carefully at the catalogs you get in your mailbox. How many include photos of black and Asian students? Nearly all of them.

A recent study reveals some embarrassing information that has caught colleges with their pants, well, in the lower regions of fiction. A few examples...

1. Although 7.9% of college students are black, college catalogs convey a 12.4% impression.

2. Colleges are defining diversity - brace yourself - with photographs of students with a different skin color. And you thought diversity of thought was the standard. Always with colleges, appearances trump substance. Because colleges are superb marketing machines, they truly believe that your perceptions are more important than their reality. If photos make you conclude their college is "diverse," then it's true.

3. Colleges justify their misrepresentations as, "What we're really saying is that you're welcome here." Cynics would add, "...although you don't qualify to be here."

4. The old 80/20 rule probably applies: 80% of the truth-in-advertising lies with a little more than 20% of the college catalogs. Translation: to find the truth you have some real digging to do.

A student who helped put this study together concluded that the catalogs portray nothing more than "hot chicks and minorities." Colleges want you to believe they want more male students (who are more apt to drop out, thereby being an economic liability) and minorities (7.9% is a dismal representation of blacks, but it's a reality colleges accepted a long time ago).

Also, attorneys general in more than 40 states last year investigated colleges for their highly questionable relationships with private loan companies, where exotic trips and kick-backs to financial aid officers were commonplace. In effect students ended up paying higher interest rates on their loans.

The catalog photos are now the indicting visuals of college fraud.

Parents are rightfully being forced into this mindset: Buyer beware.