Recently I found out that some admissions people at some schools are paid partly on commission.  I wrote a bit about it here, but I wanted to open this one up for discussion.  What do people think about that practice?  It is the worst thing ever?  Is it totally irrelevant to you?  What do you think?

-=Steve=-

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B.S., Info Sys, Charter Oak State College
M.A., Educational Tech Leadership, George Washington University
Doctor of Health Education, A.T. Still University, in progress

Even if commissions were forbidden, workarounds abound.  For example, top performers could be promoted to higher-paying 'team leader' positions that they kept only so long as they remained top performers, and the bottom 10-25% could get the axe every fiscal quarter.  In some contexts, getting to keep your job is indistinguishable from a bonus or a commission.

While I fully recognize the potential for corruption in admissions with an outright commission structure, academic departments and the executive suite bear some responsibility, as well.  If Admissions is signing up students who are not ready, willing, and able to fulfill the requirements of their programs, then Academics should dismiss those students.  If Academics fears the wrath of Administration and waters down programs in order to keep attrition rates low, then the problem originates in the executive suite and not in the admissions representatives' compensation structure.

 CWE

I do not think its the worst thing ever, since these are for profit schools.  Even some of the nonprofit universities, have an incentive bonus plan in place.  A friend of mine works for a local, private, liberal arts school in NC.  She said that every 6 months they go through a performance review and if you have met certain recruitment and retention goals, then you are given a bonus.  She also said that after a certain amount of time, if you are not meeting your goals, then you could quite possibly end up out of admissions.  So I think the pressure is on all over, just that some universities are more specific than others, when it comes to enrollment.