Admissions payola?

Captain's Quarters links to an interesting article about the length that colleges are going to attract guidance counselors so they can get them to recommend those colleges to their students.

I'm kind of surprised about this, mostly because I avoided my high school guidance department as much as possible. I looked at colleges on my own based on books, fairs, and stuff I got in the mail, filled out my forms, and only dealt with them for the obligatory letters and transcripts. I didn't even report what colleges accepted me, which meant that the graduation program didn't list me as being accepted anywhere - something that my parents were quite irked about.

I have to wonder how effective guidance counselors are - I would think most students have some idea where they want to go, or at least what type of school they want to go to. It seems to me that it is the most marginal students, the ones who have no clue what they want to do in life and have no desire to try to figure it out themselves, who are going to be most influenced by a guidance counselor. And if you are a college, is that really the kind of person you want to recruit?