Criticism
There was much debate over the value of the book. Although it does not cost any money to be listed, it is often categorized as a scam since it is an attempt by a private company to make money through proud parents and students who purchase the book and various memorabilia (such as a "commemorative keychain") associated with the publication in attempt at recognition. There have been concerns about how students are nominated as well as whether the listing's entries are fact-checked and accurate
The focus of another criticism was the fact of some students being excluded, apparently based on highly random or subjective factors, while others were included. In contrast to such things as academic, athletic, artistic or citizenship awards, which are based at least partly on demonstrable merit, these vanity publications seemed highly influenced by biased recommendations or even imaginary achievements.
Students consent to being listed in Who's Who in the hope that this listing will be seen by college admissions offices as a significant recognition of a student's academic and extracurricular involvement. However, most admissions officers believe that the recognition has no such value and in fact some consider the "honor" to be a joke. For instance, according to the admissions vice president of Hamline University, "It's honestly something that an admissions officer typically wouldn't consider or wouldn't play into an admissions decision," adding that Who's Who... is just trying to sell books.
In the late 1970s the Fairfax High School (Fairfax VA) newspaper staff notified the school administration that they were submitting a false nomination to "Who's Who". They requested that if the publication contacted the school, it should be stated that the nomination was fake, and submitted as a joke. The fake student's listing appeared in that year's "Who's Who", without any attempt to verify the biography. The story was covered in the student newspaper that spring.
Read more about this topic: Who's Who Among American High School Students
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)