In Your College Search, Should You Go to College Referral Service?

Have you ever seen that ad for Education Connection on TV where that waitress makes her way up from what looks like a fast food job to something far better? She says that she found that Education Connection helped her with her college search so that she could zero in on the right college for her needs. It's a fun commercial. Is going to a college referral service really fun though?

Do they really help you in your college search? The thing is, no referral service has every college out there on its database. They only have a select few - ones that pay them a listing fee. In the education matching industry, such listing fees are common. They even charge additional fees for each new referral - about $20 for each new student they sent to the colleges. Each time a student signs up to a referral service for their college search, a representative sits down with the student, tries to learn what they really need (hopefully), and sends information about that student to all the colleges that he can think of.

Mostly, any referral service these days counts the for-profit universities among its best clients. For-profit colleges are pretty much booming these days. And referral services are making so much money off matching students with these for-profit universities that one of the most successful examples, QuinStreet, has even gone public.

The problem is, there is so much money in this that some referral services will break the law to make an extra buck. There was a case recently where whistleblowers alleged that the University of Phoenix was paying incentives to get recruiters to recommend their college to potential students. That's against the law. And then, there is the matter of how the representatives from these referral services can really be aggressive in the way they interview candidates. They tend to recommend universities that promise far more than they can actually accomplish.

And then of course, since the recruiters get paid commissions for every successful referral that they make, there is the possibility that they will try to use any means possible to get a student to accept a college they have in mind. College is something that involves a lot of money. Getting students to make the wrong choice can cost them a great deal. Students just don't need a high-pressure sales pitch at this point in their lives. And often, going to a college referral service means exactly that.