Wanted: A few odd ducks. (Brilliant and talented ones preferred.)

Homogenized milk came into fashion when I was a kid. No longer did the cream rise to the top of the bottle. No longer could I sneak into the kitchen and take a quick swig of the wonderful rich dense stuff that was floating above the thinner less-flavorful liquid.

Homogenization was part of the transformation of the food industry. First milk, then tomatoes: now they are all the same size and shape as if formed in a mold. Breakfast cereals are punched out in perfect circles, triangles, or whatever shape you’d like. Eggs are sized and sold in matched sets. Consistency became a virtue, and today that is often equated with reliability. When you open the package, you know what you’ll find. Surprises are not considered to be assets.

Now let’s transition to college admissions. For the past 50 years, we’ve seen a reverse...

I observed the other day that there was a growing movement by colleges to stop using the SAT scores as one of their criteria of admission. I now see that Stanford Law School is changing its grading practices, abandoning letters, and substituting “levels of achievement.” One has a sense of deja vu all over again.

For almost four decades, I have been reading transcripts from colleges and universities. I remember years ago observing that Sarah Lawrence College did not use grades but rather faculty wrote short paragraphs describing the work of the students. Once you read 10 transcripts from Sara Lawrence, you discovered that there was an “A” paragraph — “The best student of my professional experience;” and a “B” paragraph — “The best student in 20 years;” and a “C” paragraph — “The finest student in a decade.” The direction is abundantly clear.

Yale Law School, if memory serves me, ...

Jonathan Daube (photo from MCC site) President, I I’ve just returned from Connecticut where I had the honor and opportunity to speak at the retirement tribute for Dr. Jonathan M. Daube, who has just concluded two decades as president of Manchester Community College, the largest of the state’s community colleges. This is more than twice the average tenure of a university president these days and a very significant accomplishment. It is particularly noteworthy not so much for the length of Daube’s tenure, but more so for his accomplishments. In the 20 years he served, MCC went from being a modest local resource to being a robust regional force that truly matters in Connecticut and throughout New England.

In 1963, MCC was newly created, a fledgling institution, and today it has been transformed into an important state educational resource. Daube deserves much of the credit for its...

More and more colleges seem to be making the SAT or ACT examinations optional. This, of course, has the effect of raising their average SAT or ACT scores, since only students who have high scores will send them in with their applications for admission. And this leads to looking a little better in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. But, never mind. When I read that Smith College and Wake Forest University were no longer going to demand that applicants submit achievement-test scores, I wondered what would come next.

High-school transcripts, perhaps? We all know that many grades are highly inflated and may not be a genuinely accurate reflection of a secondary-school student’s accomplishments. And surely, different schools have different standards. An “A” at most schools is probably not the same grade as it would be at the Bronx High School of Science. And what are we to do with AP ...

Which television news program provides, more than any other, the most frequent media outlet for academics? If you reply, The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer on PBS, then your hunch agrees with mine. I admit this is unscientific speculation but nonetheless it could still be true. Five nights a week, leading academics from colleges and universities around the country, along with many other professionals, share their expertise with the public addressing complicated and timely issues on topics ranging from astronomy to Zimbabwe.

For over 30 years, in various incarnations — from the 1975 The Robert MacNeil Report to The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, to the present day The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, in-depth coverage has been this program’s trademark. In 1983, it became the first nightly newscast to expand from 30 minutes to an hour, allowing for the coverage of more subjects with greater...

The Ivies, the elite liberal-arts schools, and boutiques like Julliard will undoubtedly have no shortage of applicants in the years to come, but everyone else will feel the pinch of the decreasing universe of 18-year olds, the age of a traditional college applicant. While the number of students applying to college will be going down in the next two decades, so too will the socio-economic background of the student pool. There will be a rise in the number who will be seeking financial aid. The census will include more African-Americans and Hispanics. Even with the expanded aid programs recently introduced at the well-endowed colleges and universities, there will be considerable unmet need.

As our population continues to shift geographically toward the south and west, and new Americans begin to send their children to schools of higher education, a greater number of students will be...

The question people kept asking me in Colorado the other day was, “Why are you out here? How do you come to be giving the commencement address for the class of 2008 of Conifer High School?” The answer was simple, really. Friendship.

Some years ago, as I was working my way down Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon, with a small group of associates, I lost my footing, stumbled toward the edge of the path, and one of my fellow travelers, Jesse King, instantly grabbed my backpack and righted me. As we continued, I said, “I owe you one, pal.” “Sure,” he said, smiling. Six months ago, he rang up and called in his chit. “Stephen,” he said, “my daughter is about to graduate from high school and I’ve been charged with lining up the speaker. How would you like to come out and do the job?” I was glad to accommodate.

On the day of the ceremony, the sun was shining brightly, the sky was...

For middle-class families, the college admissions process is an industry that begins 15 years before the first application is filled out. It starts when children are in preschool. Parents organize lessons to develop talents their children didn’t know they had. By the time they reach high school students have honed specialty skills designed to make them go to the head of the class. The beneficiaries of this long, involved training are not only the children — sure, it is nice to know how to “do things” — but are also the coaches, teachers, artists, musicians, camp directors, travel agents, and the like, who get paid to provide the appropriate services. This ancillary education support network has been growing exponentially over the years and in some communities not providing “outside” lessons or experiences is seen as a mild form of child abuse.

By the teenage years, the formal classes...

Are applicants feeling newly empowered? (Image via Molly Bewigged at Flickr.com/creativecommons) For a college admissions officer, demography is destiny. All but a handful of colleges and universities are deeply affected by the size of the applicant pool available to matriculate each fall. And, with a look at the birth records, we know today how many high school seniors will graduate over each of the next 18 years, and we know that that figure is going down beginning next year.

Electronic applications, however, play havoc with demography. Knowing how many potential applicants are out there does not tell the admissions officers how many schools each of those students will apply to. Now that the common application is available online, a student types in her name and ID number, pushes a few buttons, and, in an instant, applies to countless schools, hedging her bets with applications ...

A few weeks ago, my assistant came into my office and said that the White House was on the line. I picked up the phone anticipating that my friend Gerry Sigal was calling about lunch. But, to my astonishment, it was an inquiry asking if I’d be available to serve as a member of the official U.S. delegation to accompany President Bush on the then-upcoming trip to Israel to participate in celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state. I couldn’t imagine how I had come to receive this invitation. Well, I confess, minority representation crossed my mind: I figured they wanted at least one Democrat. The last Republican I voted for was U.S. Senator Kenneth Keating.

I said “yes,” and so for the last few days I’ve been abroad. There were several notable parts to the splendid adventure: receptions hosted by Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, and by President Bush; and an...