An Excellent Book on Getting a College Education You Won’t Read

Welcome to my review of Prof. Andrew Roberts’s excellent book, The Thinking Student’s Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education. Calmly, sanely, and intelligently, Prof. Roberts dissects the various elements of choosing a college, choosing your classes once you’re there, how to interact with professors, learning outside the classroom, and then going to graduate school. Here you will find no breathless descriptions of residence halls, no hints on positioning yourself for admission to “top” colleges, no guide to the “fast track” to med school or your MBA. Instead you will be beguiled by sober and clearly written ideas related to the collegiate experience. Unfortunately, these very wonderful qualities will make it a book loved only by those of us who would like to see our students fully engaged in their academic work, striving to become mature, thoughtful adults who might have a shot at running the world properly.

Prof. Roberts is an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. He has also written a book entitled The Quality of Democracy in Eastern Europe. In other words, he didn’t have to write this book–he’s got two jobs and plenty to think about already, yet he took the time to give us the benefit of his observations in a way that neither insults our intelligence nor talks down to us from the ivory tower. And who’s going to read anything like that?

In a world full of “getting into college” drivel, there’s very little room for the basic message of “work hard, do your best, and think.” People want easy answers, the “secrets” of admission to “prestigious colleges,” and shortcuts that enable students to avoid actually studying. The books range from the particularly egregious, such as What High Schools Don’t Tell You (And Other Parents Don’t Want You to Know): Create a Long-Term Plan for Your 7th to 10th Grader for Getting into the Top Colleges to the bearable, of which there are several, to the very good such as Colleges That Change Lives and College Admissions Together: It Takes a Family.

What sets Roberts’s book apart is that he actually considers a college education, a liberal arts education in particular, as worthwhile in itself: Tip #38 is “Don’t Worry Too Much about the Job Prospects of the Major” will cause most parents, at least, to throw the book down right there (if they manage to get past Tip #1: “You Can Get an Equivalent Classroom Education at Most Reasonably Selective Colleges and Universities.”) The point is to learn things, kids, not simply to credential yourself.

In my six years on the high school side of the college process, I still remember one visiting college representative vividly. He was a PhD student at Cornell, and he spent most of his session with my students talking about the work he was doing and how exciting it was to have the resources of a major university at his disposal. He didn’t talk about social life or residence halls or how to get to med school in three years; he communicated the pleasures of the life of the mind. In the same vein, Tip #14 is “Take Classes with Heavy Writing Requirements,” the first two sentences of which are, “While college is not primarily a place to learn practical skills, there is at least one skill that you need to pick up as part of your education. That is the skill to write quickly and well.” It’s not for nothing that Tips #69-75 are about graduate school, not jobs.

Although the book is mostly about how to behave in college, early chapters touch on what colleges want and how to choose one. Although the standard answer to the former (which a lot like Freud’s remark about women) is “a well-rounded class,” Roberts’s answer is more unconventional. He writes,

The one aim that drives most colleges and universities,…, is a desire to increase their prestige. Universities wish to be viewed as the best in their line of work. They want to achieve the highest esteem among the general public and their peers as they can. To put it bluntly, everyone wants to be Harvard, and Harvard wants to make sure that no one else is Harvard.

Suddenly the groves of academe look more like a gym full of ninth graders at their new high school. Basically, it’s not about you, college applicant. That in itself makes this book required reading.

Following soon after this takedown are several tips that smooth over the usual panicky bunk about micro-researching everything to come to the perfect “fit.” Even as someone who advocates the “match/fit” idea to a great extent, I appreciate Tip #9: “Don’t Worry; Most Students Are Happy with Their Choice.” Heresy! And yet most students really are happy after a few weeks at their college, even if it wasn’t their first choice. (One college recently did a survey of incoming freshmen, the majority of whom said it was NOT their first choice. Surveyed again at the end of their freshman year, a majority said it WAS their first choice.) Rather sweetly, Prof. Roberts writes, “I feel a little bad about this tip…While I don’t want to say that your choice of college is insignificant, I do want to take some of the anxiety out of it.”

Well, good luck with that, but it’s really true. Many of us in the college access business (of a certain age, perhaps) joke that we picked our colleges randomly, or nearly so, and we’ve managed fairly well. So while there’s no reason not to do all the research before putting a list together, it’s not a life or death decision, either. And Roberts isn’t just making nice; he means what he says:

Within a few weeks of showing up at a college, any college, you will learn a whole new way of living…You will not only learn a new way of life, but you will identify with it. You will wear sweatshirts with your college’s insignia, root for your football team, and defend your college against its rivals. In short, you will feel that you belong there. And this applies to just about any college you choose. In a New York Times survey of recent college graduates, 54 percent viewed their undergraduate experience as excellent, 39 percent as good, and only 7 percent as fair or poor.

I’ve had students (and parents, for that matter) sit on my sofa and weep because they can’t decide between Tufts and Brown or because they might have to choose one of several excellent non-Ivy League colleges. My counselor self is making sympathetic noises but in my head I’m thinking, “Boo-hoo! Just pick one!” If we were to adopt Prof. Roberts’ outlook, a whole industry would topple–in the long run, most people turn out just fine.

And that, of course, is why this admirable book is doomed to be unread. It’s too hard to accept many of its rules and observations and too much in it challenges the reader’s need to panic about getting into college and the colleges’ pleasantly constructed view of life once there. It advises the reader to “Write a Senior Thesis” (#43) and to “Learn the Rules of Critical Thinking and Apply Them Constantly” (#50). Seriously?? Well, yes. (In the immortal words of Monty Python, “My brain hurts!”)

The Thinking Student’s Guide to College strips away the blather of most pre-college admission books and gently takes us beyond the viewbook images of effortless existence in a sylvan glade. College is work, really, terrific work that expands your mind and puts you in touch with all kinds of greatness, but only if you let it. Andrew Roberts’ 75 Tips can help you get there. But, aside from my colleagues, you probably won’t read it, will you?

Too Fast, Too Furious

As long ago as the 90s I began to worry that colleges were asking applicants to be more like graduate students than high school students. As an admission officer at Amherst College, I found myself looking for evidence that a student had done original research in a university or corporate laboratory, or had founded and run an international aid organization. Rather than see these things as extraordinary, I and my colleagues began to expect them from our applicants. Students who simply did well in high school began to look like slackers. (I called them the “merely wonderful.”)

I often compared these applicants to my own high school self–top of my class, but without an extensive curriculum vitae or resume to bolster my college candidacy. I was accepted to and attended Amherst, and I felt, as many alumni do, that I would no longer be admissible; I simply had done a good job in high school, and the admission dean thought I’d do well in college. (I thank Joyce Carol Oates for that–my interview with the dean was mostly a conversation we have about The Wheel of Love, which I didn’t even like very much.)

These expectations didn’t originate from the admission office, but from professors, who wanted to see more students with credentials that indicated they’d already done college-level work. As the extraordinary became common, expectations kept being ratcheted upwards, until the “merely wonderful” seemed more like the dregs. Any recommendation that contained the word “diligent” was the kiss of death for a candidate. We didn’t want students who simply followed instructions and did well, who were “normal;” we wanted those who had gone beyond, who were mini-prodigies.

We got many of them, of course; they are wonderful and out there, seemingly sui generis, ready to take on the major questions and problems of our time and beyond. Yet what accounts for two major cultural facts that must inevitably collide? We (let’s stipulate here that “we” means primarily the worried middle and upper-middle classes) try to produce geniuses from the time of conception, overstimulating them, driving them insanely from one enrichment activity to another, and forcing them to prepare for college from the cradle, while at the same time lamenting not only that our system of public education is a massive failure, but also that our colleges aren’t really educating that system’s graduates?

These phenomena seem usually to be treated as separate but I see them as intricately entwined. We rush our children toward a goal that is meant to be approached gradually, then we are astonished to find out that the results are hollow. It’s one thing if a three-year old wants to read at a sixth-grade level and can; it’s another to try to make him do it, skipping over all the developmental steps that should happen there. It’s one thing to help a high school student run an interesting science experiment that she’s thought up on her own; it’s another to make her do it so it’ll look good to college.

It’s also about expecting schools to teach at levels that don’t always make sense, working above the capacity of students to please parents and outside agencies. I think we don’t even realize that’s what we’re doing. So of course more kids do poorly, more schools fail, and it all turns into a vicious cycle. Kindergarten isn’t about playing and storytelling and naps, it’s about learning what first and second graders used to learn; from there it just gets worse. What are the limits of children’s capacities to learn at a given age? We seem to be up against them without wanting to admit it because we need to get those kids… somewhere.

There’s no shortage of books about how lousy American college education is these days. For the most part I find them far too simplistic, laying the blame on one party or another, usually the colleges. For some real answers, I think we need to examine how we jam our children through childhood so they’ll come out the other side in a college that will (supposedly) set them up for successful lives. (There’s no shortage of books about how to program your children for the Ivy League, either.) By the time they get there, they are often burned out husks, for whom the freedom of college life is far too compelling to resist when placed against the restrictions of more classes and more expectations.

I arrived at Amherst a decent kid from New Jersey who hadn’t even heard of it before going through the college application process. I thought doing well in school was about following directions and doing your best. One of my first English papers was returned with the comment, “This will do, but you can do better.” It stung so much I resolved to do better and I did. Amherst made me, I didn’t make myself. I didn’t come to college knowing what Amherst taught or should teach me; I hadn’t been pressured to overperform in high school to get there. I got there because they saw enough in me to make it worthwhile to teach me, and I had learned the basics well enough in high school to build on them once I was there.

Expecting high school students to be fully-formed human beings when they apply to college then complaining about them or their colleges when they don’t fulfill expectations is symptomatic of a schizophrenic attitude about childhood and education. Expecting colleges to provide flawless educations while not providing them with appropriately educated students simply makes no sense. Until we coordinate these two conflicting expectations, they will continue to make us all dysfunctional.

Final note: The most recent Amherst alumni magazine notes that the College awarded honorary degrees to several alumni who enlisted in World War II and never completed their BAs. One returned and earned an MBA from Harvard, another earned his JD, also from Harvard. Of course times have changed, but consider that, even without their undergraduate degrees, these men went on to distinguished careers, not to mention their heroism in war. Were they extraordinary or simply good decent men who did what needed to be done? Can anyone do that today? Maybe it’s time to step back and consider how we’ve let the whole enterprise of childrearing and education run recklessly awry and see if we can bring these competing expectations into some kind of harmony.

 

Attitude Adjustment

These days I usually write about college admission from the high school side. This week, however, I moderated a panel at IACAC about working with students in an urban setting. My colleagues and I talked about ways to reach first-generation, low-income kids and their parents to inspire them to work hard and go to college.

In the Q & A at the end of the session, one audience member asked how those on the college side could help high schools in those efforts, which I thought was a great question. We had talked a little about cultivating college/high school partnerships, but the question seemed to come from an individual, not an institutional, perspective, and it widened our perspective on the topic.

I recalled a very humbling moment in my experience as an admission officer at Amherst College. I had just begun to visit Chicago high schools, one of which was Providence-St. Mel’s, an all-black high school on the west side. I knew about it because its founder, Paul Adams, had been given an honorary degree by the College for his efforts to provide a strong and college-oriented curriculum to his students. (This was before the charter school movement had taken hold in Chicago.) I decided to visit.

Most of my visits were to high schools already familiar with Amherst–the New Triers, the Latin Schools, and so on–well-equipped, wealthy, and ambitious, with exceptional track records for getting their kids into “elite” colleges and universities. Providence-St. Mel was a new experience. I walked in assuming that I’d see the top students and spend some time narrating the wonders of Amherst to a rapt and select group.

Instead, I was ushered to a junior English class. I was embarrassed to be interrupting class time, but the teacher graciously gave up his spot and I proceeded to blather on and on about Amherst, the liberal arts, the beauties of the Pioneer Valley, and so on. I unfurled the fall-leaves-and-liquid-sunshine poster to dazzle my audience.

As I continued with my spiel, however, I began to notice that the students, while trying to pay attention, were increasingly puzzled. I just kept talking until I had covered all the points I needed to cover, then paused for questions.

“Where’s your school again?” one student asked. I was irritated. I’d already told them, and besides, didn’t everyone know where the top liberal arts college in the country was? I patiently replied, “It’s about 90 miles outside of Boston.”

Looking even more confused, one young man said, “Oh, we thought it was outside of Chicago.” It turned out that the whole time they’d thought I was talking about Elmhurst College, located in the suburbs. We all had a good laugh, but I was disappointed not only that I hadn’t made an impression but that they hadn’t known anything about Amherst in the first place. I was blaming them for something that I should have thought more about.

That visit proved to be a revelation that changed the way I did things  when I visited high schools outside of the “usual suspects.” I was humbled by these students and realized that Amherst had to be a bit humble as well. When I got back, I looked at the poster and realized that although it said “Amherst” it nowhere said “Massachusetts.” We were confidently assuming that everyone knew where Amherst was.

Even more, though, I realized that in some cases, I might need to talk more about college and higher education in general than about Amherst in particular. At some schools I visited after Providence-St. Mel, I began to spend more time explaining terms like “liberal arts” and “university/college” than I did waxing poetic about the glories of Memorial Hill.

At first, I thought maybe I wasn’t doing enough to spread the word about Amherst, but then I realized that in my talks with non-mainstream kids I could probably do more good by putting my own Amherst College liberal arts education to work than by just “selling” the College. I would let students ask questions not just about the College, but about “college” and everything that went with it. I started to listen more than talk; I encouraged students to ask me anything they wanted about college, whether it was about Amherst or not.

In the process, I learned a lot. I realized I couldn’t just blab on and on about an institution far from their real and imagined lives; I realized I could perhaps inspire them by letting them know what going to college could help them do; I started to come to high schools not simply to tell them how wonderful Amherst was, but how wonderful they could be, no matter where they eventually went.

So my response to the questioner at my session was, “You can help by listening to their questions about college; by being open to their concerns; by putting into practice the things you learned about communicating with others while you were in college. When you talk about your institution, you can put yourself in those students’ places, and realize that their worries can be several orders of magnitude greater than those of the ‘usual suspects.’”

I’ve seen many presenters go through their scripts regardless of the reactions of their audience. I’ve learned that sometimes it’s far better to abandon the script and talk to kids at whatever level they happen to be. Otherwise, you’re just hail on a tin roof. In the process of listening and understanding, though, you will do yourself and your institution proud.

It’s Easy Being Hard

Crabby finally comes out of his den…

In one of the many nun-themed theater pieces Crabby has seen over the years, a lapsed and frustrated former Catholic school boy asks the be-wimpled main character why God never seems to answer his prayers. “Sometimes,” the good sister replies, “the answer is ‘No.’” And so it is with college admission.

Crabby can’t help but laugh bitterly when he reads about students who, having gone through the college admission process and received admission to schools they claimed to desire, now find them undesirable. One recent posting on his professional website relates that one counselor’s student, a “synchronized skater” who insisted upon applying to colleges that would allow her to skate, and with two acceptances to such institutions in hand, now has decided she wants to attend a college where it’s warm. This situation thus forces her counselor either to say, “No, you made your bed, now lie in it,” which would be the sane and proper response, or to exhume what she can of this girl’s process and find a place where she can skate (synchronously) on water.

This situation is the tip of a larger iceberg, however. Put simply, it’s too easy to apply to college. Any schmoe can do it and, given the absurdly growing application pools at colleges far and wide, evidently does. Many people blame the Common Application, which recently added 46 new colleges, bringing the number of members to 460 (out of 2-3,000 total in the U.S.). Crabby thinks maybe that’s part of it, but there are many more factors: Colleges market themselves like crazy, offering “Fast Apps” with student names already filled in; magazines and newspapers and the internet report on plunging college acceptance rates the way Perez Hilton dishes about Katy Perry (“Ooooh!!! Dartmouth is only accepting 9.2% this year!! That’s sooooo hot!!!”); and in general there is more and more anxiety about a perceived shortage of spots that is totally fictional.

Colleges claim to be overwhelmed by and concerned about the numbers, but Crabby happens to know that application numbers are treated like production numbers in a widget factory: The more, the better. (They should not be treated that way, but that’s another column.) This “success” has a downside, which is that colleges no longer know who are bona fide candidates and who have just thrown their hats into the ring “to see if I can get in.” (The University of Chicago used to have an”Uncommon Application” with essay questions like, “What do you think about Wednesdays?” that would keep the riff-raff out, but no more. Crabby still mourns it.) That is why the wait list has been getting more and more play, causing more and more anxiety among everyone.

In order to lessen all this anxiety and gamesmanship, which lead to further anxiety and gamesmanship ad infinitum, Crabby suggests the following:

1. Application fees should be set according to the popularity of the institution times the wealth of the applicant. A student applying to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford from New Trier H.S. on the North Shore in Illinois (a very wealthy zip code) would pay $100 x 10, or $1,000. A student applying to Harvard from a poor community on Chicago’s South Side would pay $100 x $0, or $00.00. This is based on a scale of $100 as the most popular, with no lower limit, and 0-10 in terms of wealth. (Crabby supposes that could mean colleges might pay some people to apply, but so be it.) Let’s see who’s serious now!

2. In addition to the regular application, applicants should have to take three proctored, two-hour essay tests for each college to which they aspire, evaluated by a committee of professors from  the institution to which they are applying. They should be asked to address substantively some pertinent questions about social, political, literary, and scientific issues. Some limited pooling would be permissible: Schools could agree to a set of questions and provide the faculty members and spaces around the country. Far from being an innovation, this would actually be a reversion to an earlier time when colleges required applicants to explicate passages from the Greek or Latin epics, or to expound upon passages of poetry or literature. You want to be an Eli? Cough up some smarty-pants prose, pal! (This would also solve the problem of essay doctoring and purchase.)

3. Standardized tests are simply lazy ways to quantify something that can’t really be quantified anyway. Do away with them. This would make things easier for applicants, actually, but harder for admission officers, who would no longer have the simplicity of a number to rely on. They would have to read everything and make judgments that way. Fear of being totally overwhelmed would result either in larger staffs or rebellious ones, neither of which could be tolerated for long. Admission officers would then have an incentive to limit their recruitment to those students they could really see as members of their community.

4. To help out with #3, Crabby suggests a return to having members of each college’s faculty serve on admissions committees. Before college admission was professionalized, professors did just that. Since faculty members always complain about how ignorant and slovenly the incoming class is anyway, this would give them a chance to voice their objections where they count and maybe get what they want, and they’d only have themselves to blame in the end. It would also strike fear into the hearts of applicants to know that their claims of having played with Legos since they were womb-bound will only make a particle physicist howl derisively.

5. Colleges should return to paper applications exclusively, and print them on heavy stock paper to ensure maximum expense when an applicant returns them. Insist that applicants use fountain pen or typewriter for maximum braking effect. Everyone will think twice about applying to 18 colleges, that’s for sure. Crabby has considered using clay tablets but that would require knowledge of cuneiform writing, which just doesn’t seem practical.

6. The Common Application should require all applicants to answer one of its own essays before they can proceed to any college’s application. Possible topics: “Who said you could apply to an Ivy League school, and what makes you think you can get in? Really.” “Convince us you’re serious about applying to the schools you’ve listed.” “If you were to receive an electric shock every time you applied to a school after five applications, would you still do it? Why?” And so on.

7. Subject every 10th application to a campus-wide “American Idol”-style vote. Alternatively, throw 10 applications into a “Survivor”-like situation and let current students vote them on or off the island.

8. Require every applicant to produce a 3-minute YouTube video to justify his/her candidacy for each school applied to. A cinch for a generation leading its life online, but enough of an annoyance to thin the ranks.

The problem with college admission isn’t that it’s too hard but that it’s too easy to apply to too many schools. Really challenging students with significant hurdles as they consider their post-secondary plans would really tamp down the anxiety, because most students would probably rather lick an electrical socket than write another college essay. Crabby says, Apply away, young friends, but don’t take all that stuff for granted. Good luck!

Educational Destruction, Part 2

A University of Wisconsin–Madison professor, William Cronon, is the subject of a witch hunt because he dared to voice an opinion. The Republican Party in Wisconsin has requested all his emails under the FOIA in an attempt to discredit him, but also as a way to chill the kind of debate and free expression of ideas that citizens of the United States have come to take for granted. Cronon is an excellent historian and writer: His book, Nature’s Metropolis, is a terrific “biography” of Chicago as a linchpin of the natural/manufactured world. He has created a blog about his recent experiences with the GOP’s brand of McCarthyism called Scholar as Citizen, which you can see here. His own web page also deserves a look.

I mention Prof. Cronon not only because I believe his situation is appalling but also because I believe it is related to the National Governors Association’s report I wrote about yesterday. By taking a position opposing Gov. Scott Walker’s recent meat axe approach to governance, Prof. Cronon has aligned himself against business interests, which incurs the wrath of the Republican Party. If the NGA report’s recommendations were to be adopted, it seems very likely to me that he would not have been able to say anything at all. Let’s take a closer look.

First of all, while we may decry our educational institutions from pre-school through grad school, the United States has a very proud and long tradition of respect for education dating back to the Founding Fathers. Even more, however, was a reverence for free inquiry as an essential part of democratic society: “Knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” (Northwest Ordinance, 1787; citation here.) (Note how “knowledge” is inextricably linked both to “good government” and “the happiness of mankind.”)

As the U.S. expanded and became more mechanized, legislators and others realized that having an educated citizenry would be a benefit to American society and economy. As a result, the Morrill Act was passed in 1862, bringing education within reach of those who would not ordinarily have ever seen the inside of a college classroom. Originally emphasizing agriculture and the “mechanic arts,” the institutions gradually combined practical with liberal arts educations. Sixty-nine colleges were funded by these land grants, including Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Nebraska, Washington State, and Clemson. (citation here.) [At the time, a "classical" education--Latin, Greek, and so on--was generally reserved for the wealthy or those entering the ministry, and men. The land grant institutions changed all that.]

One can argue that the land grant institutions were founded in service to economics, and one would be partially correct. Students learned new agricultural techniques, engineering, and so on. They also became acquainted with ideas about society and culture; they read more widely than they might have otherwise, and helped pioneer the idea of academic freedom that is a cornerstone of American university life. The University of Wisconsin–Madison’s current president puts the case succinctly:

Academic freedom is one of the university’s greatest contributions to a democratic society.  No other institution is charged specifically with protecting the pursuit of knowledge, wherever it may lead. Individual faculty, staff, and students inevitably consider and advocate positions that will be at odds with one another’s views and the views of people outside of the university.

This academic freedom has given us innumerable inventions, ideas, and controversies over the years, all of which in one way or another have made American higher education one of the liveliest and most creative institutions in the world.

But the National Governor’s Association’s Center for Best Practices would like to dismantle all of that and chain American public higher education to its needs, without all the “frills” of the liberal arts. The NGA has produced a report called ”Degrees for What Jobs?: Raising Expectations for Universities and Colleges in a Global Economy.” It proposes that, rather than encouraging openness and free inquiry, the better to discover possibilities and build an intelligent citizenry, public colleges and universities focus on “strengthen[ing] their universities and colleges as agents of workforce preparation and sources of more opportunity, growth,and competitive advantage.” Of course, it won’t be easy: “Given the longstanding independence of institutions of higher education—and their emphasis on broad liberal arts education—getting such institutions to embrace a more active role in a state’s economic developmentis often challenging.” Read on…

Preparing students for the working world is certainly part of the reason to get an education; we know that earning a post-secondary degree is more and more crucial to employability these days than ever. However, the report is not interested in promoting “Knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.” It is interested in creating workers, not citizens. Its five basic tenets point toward a radical restructuring of American higher education that will make it merely a supplier of well-trained, pliable drones geared specifically toward satisfying the interests of state and regional economies. Here is the list:

1. Set clear expectations for higher education’s role in economic development. Articulate the expectation that postsecondary education in the state will contribute to the success of industry and the state in a global economy by preparing a 21st century workforce.

2. Emphasize rigorous use of labor market data and other sources to define goals and priorities. Ask institutions of higher education to use data on global, state, and regional labor market needs to develop courses and degree programs that prepare students for high-paying, high-demand jobs.

3. Encourage employers’ input in higher education.Encourage—even incentivize—institutions of higher education to seek state and regional employers’ input about how best to ensure that students have the 21st century skills employers need.

4. Require public higher education institutions to collect and publicly report impacts. Track higher educational institutions’ impact on students’ employment outcomes, workforce gaps, employer satisfaction, and state economic growth.

5. Emphasize performance as an essential factor in funding.Use performance-based funding for institutions of higher education to get—and reward—outcomes aligned with state strategic goals. Award funds on a competitive basis to develop industry-oriented curricula and create new efforts to meet the workforce needs of specific key sectors. (Emphases mine.)

Let me say again, I’m not against employability as an outcome of higher education. But the NGA’s recommendations make the idea of “education” as a broadening of one’s horizons as quaint as a powdered wig. This is a prescription for training narrowed to fit the needs of whatever industry happens to be in the area. It recommends that businesses set university curricula; that “labor market data” be a major determiner of what is taught; that universities be held responsible for economic growth; and that they be rewarded (or punished) when their “outcomes [align] with state strategic goals.” This is a brave new world of higher education that lets business and economic conditions determine what should be taught in universities. Instead of free inquiry that may lead in any direction, the NGA advocates a focused, utilitarian approach to education that replaces the concept of “knowledge” as a good in itself (and which may or may not be immediately useful or important) with that of “training” that’s only good if it has some direct, positive economic result.

Assume for a moment that there are plenty of reasons to have colleges operate at the behest of the business world. Many controversies have already erupted over private company funding for university-based research, including questions about its objectivity and accuracy. Typically, university research is performed with dissemination of knowledge in mind, but private funding results in privatization of knowledge. If business dictates university course content and outcomes, that would take the idea of privatization light years further–classes could be copyrighted, student papers could be restricted, and so on. Business is not a monolith; competing companies that had a say in university governance would have no reason to encourage sharing of information, to the detriment of the whole enterprise.

The American system of higher education, for all its faults, is still the best in the world. Its fractiousness and messiness help keep it vital. The NGA wants to create a sleek, focused, edgeless assembly line that will stamp students with an “OK for Use” sign and send them into the waiting maw of the working world. It’s a formula that will almost surely turn American higher education into the next Rust Belt as the world changes around us. What’s ironic is that if businesses get their way here, they will almost certainly eradicate the very intelligence, independence and creativity they might need to keep our economy going into the 21st century and beyond. It’s the messiness and unexpected sparks of discovery that make “education” truly useful, and that is something the NGA clearly doesn’t understand.

A Proposal to End Public University Education

I’ve been involved with college admission and college counseling for 21 years now and I’ve read many depressing things. If I paid attention to all of them I’d have to find another career: universities are terrible, high schools don’t educate, students don’t learn, and on and on. You can probably fill in the headlines and even write the stories. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the first-generation students I work with a favor by encouraging them to go to college. Of course I always say yes, but add forlorn job prospects to the litany of misfeasance schools are accused of every day and it’s a wonder anyone in the U.S. can read a fast food restaurant menu, much less work in one.

Even with all this doom and gloom, a recently released report from the National Governor’s Association sent an icy shiver down my spine. It’s summarized as follows:

Colleges need to do a better job of aligning their programs with the economic needs of their states, says a new report by the National Governors Association’s Center for Best Practices. The report highlights steps taken in Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, and Washington State, and makes recommendations on how lawmakers can persuade [colleges] to move beyond their traditional emphasis on a broad liberal-arts education to thinking more about skills for specific jobs. It suggests that colleges use “rigorous labor-market data” to set goals and get more input from local businesses on the skills students need.

The NGA’s position seems to be that colleges (the report focuses on public institutions, but I think the ramifications are broader than that) should focus on turning out workers, not thinkers. What’s needed is a solid corps of willing drones who will do what business and the economy tell them to do, rather than thoughtful individuals who might raise a stink about being exploited, hired or fired at will, or forced to keep quiet about shady practices in order to keep those jobs.

Rather than take their inspiration from the great writers, thinkers, scientists, and philosophers of history, the NGA suggests that colleges rely on ‘”rigorous labor-market data’” and the instructions of “local businesses” to form their curricula. This position proposes that colleges simply train students for jobs, jettisoning anything that might interfere with that, including that pesky and perhaps commie/subversive “broad liberal-arts education.” We need workers, not thinkers!

In a nutshell, the NGA suggests turning public institutions into conduits for business, letting it dictate the requirements for “educating” students. But it doesn’t really want them educated, it wants them trained. And it doesn’t respect university values of independent thought, curiosity, exploration, or enlightened, disinterested discussion. It insists that universities respect the values of business, which, as we have seen graphically in the last few years, have very little to do with these qualities, which might restrain some of the worst excesses of winner-take-all capitalism.

The NGA’s report isn’t subtle in its disdain for liberal arts values:

Given the traditional independence of institutions of higher education—and their long-established emphasis on broad liberal arts education—getting such institutions to embrace a more active role in workforce development will not be easy.

Let me translate: “It’ll be tough to get these damned universities to toe the line when it comes to what we businesses want. They are too free-thinking and produce people who challenge what we do. If they’d stop letting kids read Marx and Orwell and all those other freakin’ lefties maybe we could get some workers who won’t bother us as we ravage the world and the economy for profit. We’re gonna have to smack ‘em around first” The report basically asks state governments to allow businesses to dictate the terms of education, turning colleges into elaborate training grounds for corporations.

Don’t get me wrong, I think college students should be prepared to get to work once they’re out of school, but I also think they should be learning some things about their world in ways that enable them to question it and suggest alternatives. They should have some contact with beautiful literature, music, and art and be taught by professors who have interesting and perhaps even “radical” things to say. They should find the beginnings of their own voices in college, not simply be stamped out like widgets. This is not simply decorative, but adaptive–good thinkers are able to face change and understand complexity. They can take initiative and create original ways to do things. Widgets just do as they’re told, and when circumstances change, they fail. Is that really where the NGA wants us to go?

I feel especially angry when I think of first-generation college students who may end up in these brave new universities–they may never have the chance to explore intellectual opportunities before being sucked into the maw of the business world. While their more privileged counterparts can still revel in thoughtful debate over ideas and theories, less fortunate students will have to put their heads down and trudge through a “curriculum” that has no room for anything but what an end-user will need. For a particularly graphic illustration of this idea, watch Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the 1927 silent film remarkably prescient in its depiction of a sullen, cowed, and anonymous work force laboring mechanically deep within the Earth while the lighthearted, romantic, bookish, and leisurely ruling class enjoys life in its city in the sky.

Turning colleges and universities into servants of business will destroy them as institutions that can produce ideas, original research, challenges to our assumptions, and so much more. It would be a tragedy for the states to abdicate their responsibilities (something, unfortunately, already well underway) to education itself as a public good. We do not need more drones, we need more thinkers, more writers, and more challenges to “business as usual” in order to remain a vital and creative society. This report suggests we abandon the original goals of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, which were to “teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts, as well as classical studies, so that members of the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education.”

Note especially the joining of “liberal” and “practical” as modifiers of “education.” Surely there’s room for both in a society that claims to prize individuality and progress.

Waiting for News

I was recently asked to do a piece for the Center for Student Opportunity‘s newsletter for Opportunity Scholars about waiting for “the letter.” I’ve included a link to it here. Whether you’re the first first generation student or the fifth child in your family to apply to college, the wait for news from the admission office can be excruciating. But if you think it through, you can make it through March and enjoy April as well as the rest of your senior year.

If you’ve applied carefully, you should have at least one acceptance. Even if it’s not from your “first” choice, remind yourself that the colleges you applied to are all good, and that you’ll probably be happy at any of them. In my experience, students who end up attending a third or even fourth choice school end up loving it, and often forget about the other choices not long after they arrive on campus. Also remember, there’s no “perfect,” so no matter where you go, there will be warts and kinks, unexpected setbacks and uncomfortable dorm rooms. You have the power to make you experience the best it can be no matter where you are, so use it.

Also, if you have some choices, enjoy April. That’s the month where you get some control of the process. Now colleges are hoping you’ll accept their offers, so take your time and make your decision after due deliberation. Take advantage of accepted student weekends and be sure to ask any questions you have that may have come up between applying and now. You’re making a big commitment, so don’t let the rush of good news overwhelm your better judgment.

Congratulations on getting through the process. And remember to thank mom, dad, your counselor, and your recommenders (especially your teachers). They helped make it all possible; sharing your good news is one of their big rewards.