Open-access colleges manage the gap between students' ambitions and their chances by steering the unsuccessful gradually towards lesser goals rather than failing them outright.
Clark described it in 1960 from a study of a California junior college, borrowing the phrase from Goffman's account of how confidence men calm a victim so that he goes away quietly. Counselling, testing and probation redirected students on the transfer track towards vocational programmes, so that failure was experienced as a choice. The college kept its promise of access while rationing the degrees it led to.
In practice
- A student told each term that a certificate might suit her better than transfer takes the certificate, and remembers deciding.
- A company that never dismisses anyone offers its weakest performers a series of sideways moves until they resign.
- Standing
- Later research also finds colleges that raise students' ambitions, and disputes how deliberate the steering is. Compare maximally maintained inequality.
- Subject
- Learning & Education
- Essay
- Theories of teaching, and what schools are for