Guidance counselors lack guidance

Most of us have suffered the unhelpful guidance of guidance counselors in high school to decide which post-secondary institution to go to, so why is it surprising to see that students give poor ratings to guidance counselors? Are they unfairly unappreciated?

As a former high school student, I have to agree with the American students that guidance counselors do not provide substantial nor effective advice to help us choose schools. 40% of American students believe that the guidance these counselors provided were only poor or fair for helping them think about their future careers.

The problem lies in the counselor's job description, which the name of the job conceals pretty well. Counselors are responsible for administrative tasks, discipline issues, crisis counseling, scheduling (former and present high school students know this all too well), lunchroom duties, study hall duties, standardized testing (I have not seen much of this in Toronto), attendance, truancy, and substitute teaching. This list alone has already taken up an entire paragraph. However, in Toronto, our guidance counselors do not handle standardized testing, attendance or truancy unless it is somehow linked to deviant student behaviour. With such a list, it is easy to see why guidance counselors receive such poor ratings for post-secondary institution decisions.

Guidance counselors should not be deemed responsible for some of the tasks, such as scheduling, lunchroom/study hall duties, attendance and truancy. Although we are past the stage of elementary school, where the school office handled the above duties except lunchroom/study hall duties, guidance counselors are staff who counsel students and provide them guidance, whether in their life or in school. They should not be handling school office tasks such as attendance and truancy, and teachers themselves should be the ones monitoring lunchrooms and study halls. Schools can hire school psychologists, or hire more administrative staff, but with budget cuts, this is probably not going to happen. Having guidance counselors be responsible in almost all fields is too much to ask for; as a result, they are not masters in any field. They only know a little bit of each, and that does not provide enough information for students.

Aside from the elaborate job description, another problem is that counselors are not taught university and college information in graduate school. Counselors earn a Master's degree, but they were never taught about financial aid or the university/college admission process. They learn on the job and many students suffer as a by-product. It is rather reasonable why they were not taught such dynamic concepts: each year, many schools change their admissions and scholarships, government financial aid is subject to change without notice. Changing the curriculum of graduate schools to suit the needs of separate colleges and separate financial aid may seem too much work for process that change annually. However, graduate schools can still teach about the general university/college admission process, and self-help school decisions books should definitely be included in the textbook lists.

With budget cuts on the rise (pardon the irony), guidance counselors are seen less important as time progresses. The processes would most likely remain as they are because of lesser funding, and partnered with poor ratings, job cuts would also be the common trend in schools, hence increasing the ratio, which will only produce worse effects than the present. Perhaps people should be hired for the jobs they are supposed to do instead of lumping everything into one.