Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blueprint brought to you by Brilliant Pathways. I'm your host, Manny Tejeda. In this forward thinking podcast, we explore the evolving challenges and opportunities in preparing students for college and career success, offering expert insights, actionable strategies and real life stories to help listeners better support young people as they draw their future.
Welcome, everyone. Today's conversation is going to be quite simple but urgent idea of preparing students for college, career and life. It's going to take more than one program, one counselor, one institution. It's going to take shared commitment to opportunity and support. Our guest today is Dr. Angel Paris, the CEO of NACAC, national leader in higher education, who has focused on expanding access, championing student success, and building empower leadership across the profession. Since becoming CEO in 2020, he has helped NACAC redefine its mission, strengthen its policy and research work, and create new programs that support the future of college admissions. He also brings deeply personal commitment to educational opportunity shaped by his own experiences, which we're going to hear a little bit about it. Being a first year college, first generation college graduate from the South Bronx, that lived experience makes his perspective especially meaningful for educators who are trying to close opportunity gaps and build stronger student pathways. Angel, welcome to the Blueprint and it's an honor to have you here.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Oh, it's an honor to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
So, angel, before we jump right on, can you share a little bit about your personal story, your pathway to. To where you are today? Who was angel back in. In the Bronx, to where he is now?
[00:01:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Well, that actually all started in Puerto Rico. I was born in Puerto Rico and when I was 5, I, like many Puerto Ricans, moved to New York. My parents were in search of a better life, more opportunity. And so we ended up in the South Bronx. And I grew up low income in the projects of the South Bronx. Very loving household, but lots of challenges. And lots of challenges in the neighborhood that I grew up and ended up going to high school in Manhattan.
I went to Martin Luther King high school on 66th street in Amsterdam and enjoyed my experience, even though it was a very challenging time. It was the early 90s there. Lots of gang activity, lots of challenges. But, you know, I had this transformative experience when I was there that a high school counselor who had about 700 kids in her caseload literally tapped me on the shoulder and said, young man, have you ever thought about going to college? And I don't know how old you are, Manny, but like back then we were watching the Cosby show like, that was the only show that I saw students of color going to college. Right. Theo on the Cosby show went to nyu. And so she just fundamentally shifted my thinking. And I felt so fortunate that I had a tap on the shoulder. And I know that millions of students across this country don't get that tap on the shoulder. So I ended up at a small liberal arts college. I went to Skidmore in upstate New York on a full scholarship. I was a HEOP student in New York State, which means the Higher Education Opportunity Program. And my life went in a totally different direction. You know, was exposed to so much. I fell in love with even just this concept of college because it was so transformative. And when I graduated, I remember walking across the stage and saying, like, I need to pay this back somehow. I don't know how I'm going to pay this back, this opportunity back. And then there was an opportunity for me to actually work in the admissions office where I graduated. And I thought I was going to do that for a year until I got a real job, because I didn't think people that worked on college campuses had real jobs. Come to find out they're real jobs. And so, to make a very long story short, 28 years later, here I am as NACAC CEO. You know, we are the association for the professionals who do college access work across the globe. So I've just been extremely fortunate. And, you know, the reason I do this work is deeply personal. I want to make sure that, you know, the story that that I inhabit is not an anomaly, that more people have access to opportunity in this country and across the globe.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: The vice chair of our board at Burling Pathways, Bob. Can you just say hello and a quick intro by yourself?
[00:04:30] Speaker C: Hello, Angel. I'm delighted to meet you and be here on this podcast.
The world of higher education is extraordinarily challenging in today's world.
But like you, I was first generation.
Like you, I went to a small liberal arts school upstate, to Colgate.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Oh, you went to Colgate.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: And I also was involved in starting the first HEOP program at the State University of Oswego many moons ago. And so my work on the board of Brilliant Pathways for me is going back to where I began after a long career in wealth management. And it's an opportunity, as you said, to see that all of our stories are not anomalies.
I thought the way you put it was great, and I'm looking forward to your insights on what's going on today. And we were just discussing Mattie and I Hampshire College is closing St. Michael saying that it's desperately trying to hang on. And that's being replicated especially in the Northeast and the Midwest, where the smaller liberal arts oriented colleges have been. And so your perspective, having come out of that world and now dealing with all of the counselors, both in high school and in colleges, who are preparing students, what do you do now? How do you tell them where the opportunities are in a world that seems to be devaluing college? And also that the old proposition of cost value seems to be breaking down.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Yes, to all of that. Can't wait to dig in because it's quite complicated and I'm not sure we'll have all of the solutions. But I'm so passionate and glad that folks like us are in the fight. In some ways, people say, oh, it must be so challenging to do this work at this moment. Yes. And it's also a privilege to be able to do it at this particular moment in our history.
Right.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: That is so true. So, angel, obviously you have a very unique view of this landscape, giving kind of your role. What do you see the most urgent gaps right now in preparing students for college and career?
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Wow. It's a tough question because there's a lot of gaps.
I think first and foremost, we disinvest just in education in the country. I think oftentimes those of us in our profession, we start talking about equity gaps in high school, but the reality is the equity gaps are starting in preschool and K through 12. And so how we fund education in this country is fundamentally broken. And, you know, if I had my magic wand, I'd love to see an entire overhaul of how we fund higher education, how we Fund K through 12, so that we can give students an opportunity from the minute they move into the school system, as opposed to having this conversation in their junior and senior year of high school. But I will say from our perspective here at nacac, we work primarily with, you know, high schools and colleges.
One of the biggest gaps, and something I'm clearly very passionate about because of my own personal story, is, you know, lack of investment in high school counseling in this country. And we still live in a country where there are about 500 students to one counselor. In some states, it's 7, 800. We do a lot of work here at NAC, act to advocate at the state level, to lower those numbers, to invest in school counseling. But we all know that young people's lives are more complicated than ever, and we need as many school counselors in the building supporting students not Just with mental health and crisis, but also with post secondary planning. And so I would say that's one of the biggest challenges that we are fac policing. Some of the other challenges, obviously Bob, teed us up very nicely just the. Our political landscape right now. This anti higher education rhetoric, which I fundamentally believe is dangerous for this country and for the world, and if I could be a little bit more controversial, is also incredibly hypocritical because the same people that are saying to the media who are getting on cameras to say we don't need college are the same people that are going to tell their children that they should be going to college. Right. And so let's not be fooled about the fact that those that have a lot of privilege in this country are still sending their children to college. And so we need to fight back around that and fight back hard. And then the other thing, I think higher education, you know, is at this really pivotal inflection point, just incredible challenges. Meeting enrollment goals. We talked a little bit about, you know, Bob shared that yesterday the news came out that Hampshire College is going to be closing a place that I love. And so we really are at this interesting moment where we're struggling with, like, how do we finance higher education? It is a very expensive model, and there's lots of reasons for that. I worked in higher ed, I was a dean of admission and a vice president on campuses for many years. So I'm happy to talk about the why, but we need to figure out how we sustain this sector financially while also trying to give as much access as possible to young people. And those two things sometimes can be in tension.
So the struggles are real and public perception, we certainly can talk about that. That's also a really big challenge right now. But I'm also inspired by the fact that there are still hundreds of thousands of people in this sector who are doing the work and are getting up every day despite the extraordinary challenges. It's why I wrote my book, which I think we're going to be talking about in a little bit. I'm in awe of the people who still get up and fight this fight every day. It really is inspiring.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Bob, you had a question?
[00:10:15] Speaker C: No, I was just, you know, I love your view about both sustaining, on the one hand, what's going on in access and. And so as the twin challenges that are there. And I also think with all of the challenges you talked about, the high school counselors and clearly the need for greater investment there.
What about how do you support the counselors in colleges doing admissions work In a world that's been turned upside down politically, the things you cannot say, along with the expectations and the demands on admissions counselors to identify students and bring them in because of the need in a declining demographic, if you will, of college age students, I imagine that's a great part of what you and your staff help to work on is to, you know, give them insights and, and the ability to. To not only keep going, but also to plow new ground, if you will.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
So, you know, in the association, I always say when I send out emails when I am interviewed about the work that we do here.
If I were to summarize it in one sentence, we are the profession's chief advocate. And so particularly not just with high school counselors and community based organizations and independent counselors, but also for admission professionals. And I have found that now more than ever, admission professionals need an extraordinary amount of advocacy. They need advocacy in Washington, D.C. which we provide. They need advocacy with Congress. An example I'll share right now is the extraordinary amount of data that the federal government is asking for from admission officers. We have fought back hard around that. We also have fought for extension of deadlines. And so there's the work that we do sort of at the federal level and sometimes at the state level. For example, if there is a policy that we believe is anti our values or anti the mission of NACAC at a state level, we might work with state governments to do some advocacy to move them away from dangerous legislation, for example.
But another thing that we do is we provide a lot of education and training. You know, there's lots of certificate programs that you can now be a part of here at NACAC if you're a new admission counselor, to learn the field. We are also going deep into how we prepare the next generation of leaders in the field. You know, you may be aware of this, but the running joke in admission for admission professionals in terms of how you got into it, is, oh, I just fell into it. I was a tour guide and then I did this thing for a year, like me, and then I learned it was like a real job. We're trying to turn that model on its head. At nacac, we want to create a model where college seniors are actually thinking about this as a career trajectory and teaching people what a meaningful, beautiful, impactful career this can be.
One of the things that I feel very strongly about, and again, one of the many reasons I wrote a book about the profession and leadership and the profession is because I realized that the people who do this work Admission officers, they are the agents of opportunity in this country. Right. Without their work, without their shepherding young people through the admissions process into their institutions, working with financial aid professionals to get those HEOP packages out and making sure that people have scholarships, young people wouldn't be going to college, and they would not be on the pipeline into the workforce. Right. And so I saw, not just through my own personal experience, but especially now that I'm in this role, and I speak to many enrollment professionals, a profession that was in crisis. And I saw professionals who were extremely undervalued and also who were kind of being thrown into these roles without proper preparation. And so that is the role that we are taking at NACAC to support these professionals, to create pride in the field, but also to give them the tools they need during very, very challenging moment in history. You know, even before we moved into this presidential, not like things were great. We had many, many enrollment challenges, and now they've just gotten a lot bigger. But that's what we're here to do, is to support the profession.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: That's awesome. If I might just chime in in terms of that professional development for new staff members or for those thinking about the profession, I think that's awesome. Obviously, I didn't share this earlier, but my background also is in admissions, and that was my story, too. I fell into it, and not by choice, but really by design. You know, being in as a college student, wanting to help out, I went to a predominantly white institution who was trying and doing great efforts into diversifying the campus. So I was just, you know, drawn into that work. And on the programming side, that's how I got started. And then as I graduated, that was not my plan. I went on and wanted to do business because that was my. What I went to school for. And then I realized there's a lot of parallels with business and admissions, and I wanted to look at it from that angle. And, you know, I stayed there for 10 years, so I. That really.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Where did you go to college? I'm curious.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: University of Vermont.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Vermont. All right. Go uvm. Yes. Beautiful place. I could see why you stayed there a long time.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: I mean, place to live.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. I mean, and it's just, I really felt when you mentioned your story about that counselor who said, would you consider this? That's how I felt every day. It wasn't like, you know, people telling, well, you got to do X, Y, and C. It's, are you considering certain things? And you make the choice that's best for yourself. We'll be here to support you along.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: That's beautiful.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: So to bring it back to our conversation, thinking about what we do as an organization at Burling Pathways, it's really integrate kind of our core practices like the mentoring, the pathways to college and career, and developing essential skills. Can you share a little bit about what do you think admissions leaders should be doing better to connect with, you know, CBOs or school based organizations that are doing this kind of work to bring a different pipeline or quite frankly, to just enhance the pipeline of students that they're seeing in their colleges?
[00:17:02] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I guess I'll start by saying because I always like giving credit where credit is due. You know, institutions are doing a lot more than they used to. I mean, I, you know, I've been in the profession about 28 years and I still remember when CBOs were not NACAC members. And so, you know, the world has fundamentally shifted around the visibility of CBOs. I think there's also been so much research done around the millions of students that CBOs serve in this country. And I think we have woken up to the fact, especially in a landscape where so many students don't have access to their high school counselor, not because the counselor doesn't want to, but because they have so many kids in their caseload that after school programs, all kinds of college access programs, can give them the tools that they need to succeed. So I've been inspired by, you know, informal and formal partnerships that admission officers are creating with community based organizations. I've seen even a lot more of that post Supreme Court case, the SFFA case, knowing that community based organizations serve primarily marginalized students in this country. So I've been inspired by that. And there's still a lot more work to do. Right. I think thinking a little bit outside of the traditional recruitment model where you go and you visit four to five high schools a day in a particular city, but I think, you know, making that admission officers are delving deep and doing the research. What are the CBOs in the area? Who could I be visiting after school? Is there a Saturday Upward Bound program down the street that I could also be tapping into and expand that? You know, I mean, CBOs that the definition of community based organizations is so wide. One of the things that I have seen some of my colleagues at some of the big public state institutions do is they are now recruiting in the black church and they are going into, you know, Latinx communities and going to the festival on the weekends and putting up a table to talk about. Are you interested in going to college. And let me tell you a little bit more. These are such creative, different ways to get to students. And you know, to Bob's point earlier, where there's so much backlash and pushback and skepticism around higher education, I think the way that we are going to push back on that, one of the many ways is to show up in people's communities and become a part of those communities, become trusting in those communities. A side quick, tangential story that I'll share because it's so inspiring. A friend of mine, Rick Clark, he's the VP of enrollment at Georgia Tech, he spent some time in a different role before he moved into the VP ship recently going to rural communities in Georgia that do not apply and send kids to Georgia Tech and literally sat in diners and restaurants with people to ask why. And I thought that is the future. Right. Like that is how we are going to build trust. That is how we're going to close gaps. And he learned so much. And my guess is he is now recruiting and thinking very differently in his new role as vice president for enrollment around how he is going to get into communities that he wasn't able to have access to before. So I would say the same thing for CBOs. Like, admission officers need to get into local communities as much as they can to build trust. And not just in the senior year. Right. Imagine if families are seeing you in the 9th grade and 10th grade and 11th grade. They're going to remember you when it's time to apply. So it's a long term strategy and a long term commitment.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Commitment, yeah. That's awesome. Can you share a little bit? What would a strong partnership with a K through 12 system focus on? Kind of those early grades in higher ed would look like if you had that magic wand that you talked about earlier.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, oh, gosh, I wish I had a magic wand because I would be. I would be swinging that thing so hard. I think one would be seamless transitions. Right. I. I still think every time students move through this system, there are so many barriers, like transcripts don't go where they need to go and data doesn't follow the student. And there isn't the storytelling about the student that goes into the next school. And I think it's happening a little bit better from high school to college right now. But goodness, what if we had this nationwide system where everyone had access to the same data, the same information, the same testing, and also even financial information? Like, I'm still baffled by the fact that as a nation, even though we require People to fill out taxes that we cannot figure out a way to simplify and make it really easy to figure out how much money a student has. You know, One of the AHAs that I had as a VP for enrollment at several institutions is the loops that we put students through just to apply for financial aid every year, right? Not just their first year, every year, particularly the lowest income students. Several students said to me, and this was where the AHA came, You just want to remind me that I'm poor over and over and over again, like that is what you're doing. Because guess what? My income hasn't changed, right? I'm still poor. I was poor in my freshman year. I'm poor in my senior year. We have access to so much data in this country, but the data systems don't talk to each other.
There is not this natural planning of succession, if you will. And it would be amazing, for example, if the kind of counseling and advising that CBOs and high school counselors did with young people, those stories followed them. So then their first year advisor on the campus has information. It's like picking up right where I left off. I think we're not there yet, but if I had a magic wand, that's what I would do.
[00:22:53] Speaker C: Now that's great about the disconnections that exist, you know, and the inability to get FAFSA right and out in a timely manner, and that it cannot even integrate all of the tax information that we have, you know, that's a. That's an enormous failure. I loved your phrase, though, agents of opportunity. And I think I actually feel it fits the high school counselors as well as the admissions counselors in colleges and community colleges. And in a way, it's what the folks at Brilliant Pathways are trying to do in those, in the interstices between the professional jobs and when you think about an AI world now and the importance more than ever of social skills and a number of states like New York beginning to do things like the portrait of the graduate.
In what ways? I mean, we keep adding things on, if you will, to the responsibilities of our educators, our counselors. How do we get this to work? Because there's a lot about those portraits of graduates in different states that fit the whole idea of the importance of social skills in an AI world.
And how can the counselors, both at high schools and admissions work and help here without overwhelming them with their other caseloads?
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Well, I actually have a little bit of hope around AI, you know, once we learn how to actually use it. And I'm not saying I know how to use it. I'm just saying once we all learn how to really figure out AI, because, you know, I can envision a world, and it's already starting to happen, where high school counselors, CBO counselors, anyone working with young people is teaching them how to use AI effectively to get some of the things that are.
That took up so much of our time before done very quickly. And as a result of that, high school counselors can now spend much more time doing the work that AI is never going to replace. Having the conversation about the family, having the conversation about the complexity of your financial situation and how that's going to impact where you're going to apply. AI is not going to solve those challenges for you. A human being having those conversations, you know, dealing with all of the complexities of a human life, I think is going to be great. So an example I will use is, you know, I have some counselor friends who have said, look, I no longer talk to kids about SAT deadlines or ACT deadlines or putting together charts with all the different college admission deadlines and making sure AI will do that for them. I just need to teach them what questions to ask in order to have AI do that. So now when we sit down together, we're just talking about their lives and we're talking about what a good fit is, because AI is not going to tell you what a good fit for college, culturally and socially and academically is going to be for you. So I actually have a lot of hope around this area. But we're in this messy, murky period where I think, one, the AI is evolving so quickly. You know, even I try to use AI, and last year my goal was, like, lean into AI. So I'm using it to, like, create my PowerPoints and things like that. But I noticed that, you know, I'll use it one month, and the next month it's, like, already advanced so much that now I need to relearn and retool. And so we need to teach our young people how to do that. But I know that both on the high school side and the college side, there's a lot of work happening there. So I'm actually quite hopeful in this space. My.
My fear, if you will, is, I think the fear we all have, which is that young people will just use this and not think right, because AI is never going to replace the brain. And so we've got to figure out a way to raise a generation of people that are still going to value thinking and processing and writing and all the human skills, creativity that we all grew up with, to make sure that we can preserve that.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: That's really key. We've been having some conversations in other episodes about the importance of what we call the essential skills. These are six skills that really, based on our research with companies and other partners and alumni that continue to raise up, and I think in an AI world, even more, because they're the relationships that you're building with one another, the teamwork, the leadership, the perseverance, and so on and so forth that really are elevating as we are faced with these, you know, great opportunities with AI. That also creates some kind of challenges. To your point on are students going to forget to think critically for themselves, have unique or authentic thoughts about where they are and where they have that reflective piece of who they are and what they want to be? I think that will continue to be kind of that, that key piece.
Bob, any other questions as we wrap up?
[00:27:55] Speaker C: Just one last one. If you had to use one sentence to describe your book.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:28:02] Speaker C: What would it be?
[00:28:03] Speaker B: Oh, that's really hard.
Besides the title, the Hottest Thing on Campus, I would say it's a leadership blueprint for leaders in higher education, but much more than that. So I'll leave it mysterious. But if you gave me a little bit more wiggle room, you know, the feedback I've been getting while I wrote it as a leadership guide, you know, giving people the tools for how to succeed in the role of the admission deanship, and, you know, a preview here is a lot of the work. This is not a book about how you learn enrollment management or how you do financial aid modeling. This is really a book about how you lead yourself and how you learn the nuances of the politics of higher education and so on and so forth. I've gotten a lot of feedback from college presidents and others who are not in. In that role and said if you took out the word dean of admission, this book is really just a book about leadership and how to become a stronger leader. So I hope lots of people in different sectors will read it.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Angel, Now I gotta ask you, can you share the title of the book?
[00:29:10] Speaker B: Yes. It's called the Hottest Seat on Campus. And not that I happen to have it on my desk, but of course I do. So there it is. It's the hot seat. Yeah. Roadmap for Mastering Leadership in College Admission.
So it's. I've been actually quite surprised and humbled by the response of the book. It's resonated during a really, really difficult time for higher Ed, and lots of people are reading it, and I'm getting lots of great feedback, so I'm excited about it. I'm. I call it my gift to the profession.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: Well, I want to take an opportunity to publicly thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat with Bob and I. And Bob, thank you so much for also joining us and chiming in with questions and your thoughts. You know, this is the Blueprint, and every conversation brings us closer to preparing the next generation for not just success, but significance. And I think we heard it really well from Angel Story.
And again, thank you for spending the time. I'm Manny Tejeda, your host. See you next time.
Support for this podcast comes from Brilliant Pathways, an organization that had spent over 30 years helping students make opportunities happen.
Connect with us wherever you get your podcast. And thank you for joining us on the Blueprint. I'm Manny Tejeda, your host, and I'll see you next time.
