Every time I visit a college campus, I am reminded of why it is that I am so drawn to higher education and why the U.S. system of higher education remains the envy of the world.
Sure, our higher-education system struggles with some significant challenges, including the extraordinarily high cost of attending some institutions. But the sort of innovation that goes on at college campuses across our nation is nothing short of breathtaking. Meeting with professors and administrators and hearing about the various programs and opportunities they make available to students is energizing and uplifting, especially during these difficult economic times when one cannot help but worry about future U.S. competitiveness.
Sitting in Washington, it is easy to get caught up in narrow data sets that paint a picture of institutional shortcomings and failure. Never mind that the data are inadequate and that the error bars are significant. Policy makers find it all too easy to look at graduation and retention rates and assume that every college dropout is a would-be shining star if only the faculty members or administrators had done more.
I am sure that there are many students who do fall through the cracks, but having worked on and visited many, many campuses during my career in higher education, I am convinced that the majority of colleges in the U.S. offer their students abundant opportunities to learn, grow, and succeed. I would encourage all of my fellow policy makers to get out of your offices and go visit some campuses if you really want to find out what is happening in higher education. Spend some time sitting in on classes and touring facilities to see how much things have changed since our day, and to fully understand that the sad-sack stories we hear from disgruntled students don’t necessarily tell the true story of what is happening at our nation’s colleges and universities.
In fact, having seen the sort of remarkable support available to students on college campuses around the county, I’m left wondering if perhaps institutions aren’t working too hard to motivate, stimulate, guide, and satisfy students. The workplace isn’t nearly as coddling, nurturing, and inspiring as today’s colleges seem to be, and one can’t help but wonder if the ever-innovative and forgiving college campus isn’t setting students up for disappointment in the workplace.
In the real world, people who don’t work hard often fail. Perhaps it would be helpful for students to learn that lesson early in life, long before they have a mortgage and a family to support.
I am convinced that all campuses, regardless of size or cost, provide students with a remarkable range of academic support services, extracurricular activities, and mentorship opportunities in order to help each student realize his or her full potential. Perhaps now it is time to sit back and let students learn that it is up to them to take advantage of those opportunities, or to suffer the natural consequences. After all, in the real world, the boss isn’t likely to ask you if you need extra help, she isn’t likely to care if your doctor says you need extra time, and he isn’t likely to ask you to evaluate the experience or to worry about whether or not you had fun.
7 Responses to Campus vs. Workplace
optimysticynic - February 23, 2010 at 8:13 am
My university has the explicit belief, stated openly as policy, that virtually any/everyone can get a college degree with sufficient support. By definition, then, any student who cannot “succeed” has been let down by the university, which is solely responsible. Even if this worked, which it doesn’t, it’s a terribly short-sighted policy, ignoring everything we know about motivation, development and learning. I have taken to asking every student I see (several hundred/year) what the name is of the last book they read that wasn’t required for a course. The modal answer: I haven’t read a nonrequired book, EVER. EVER!! Well, maybe a Clancy or Bradford airport book a couple of years back. What about nonfiction, I ask? Nope, never. And they find the question odd and their answer completely normal.This often comes up in the context of students who are shocked at getting GRE Verbal scores in the 400s and express indignation about the vocabulary questions. “No one ever taught me those words,” they say. “No one uses them; this is stupid.” They ask me how best to prepare, giving the ineffectiveness of cramming vocab lists for two months, and I tell them: the ONLY way is to read nonfiction, nontextbook, writing and to think about it when you do. A lot. To which advice they chuckle disparagingly. Not while they’re working 30 hours/week and carrying a full load, not when they don’t really care that much, not when it’s such a meaningless and aversive process.Academics, for the majority of students at mildly-selective colleges, are an also-ran to the rest of their lives, to be done on the side. Often WE care far more about their retention and graduation than they do. Time for the pendulum to swing back. Thank you, Mark.
evansrwe - February 23, 2010 at 9:20 am
Fifty years ago, I took up crossword puzzles as a more pleasant way to prepare myself for the Miller Analogies test required for my doctoral program admission. I did well on the test, as I recall, and I still work 2-3 crosswords a day. And I solve those Wheel of Fortune puzzles way before the contestants!
dav1dr0sen - February 23, 2010 at 9:23 am
Colleges and universities are rightly places that nurture talent and not negative behaviors. The impediments to persistence and success have less to do with a failure to challenge students or an excessive cosseting of them. If you are first-generation, low-income, or a minority student, chances are that the obstructions do not come from motivation or intelligence, but from difficulties from academic background and understanding, financial stability, and cultural fit. Many of these can not be cured by an institution, but all institutions should be thinking how best to ameliorate those conditions so that the cultural capital students who don’t fit the traditional mold bring to campus can be leveraged into the best results for success and so that whatever conditions impede success may be ameliorated.
dank48 - February 23, 2010 at 10:31 am
Thanks, Diane. This seems to me right on target. In business, I’ve seen the carry-over effect from college/university to the “real” world. The sense of entitlement is amazing. The notion that one is the star of the show is breath-taking. The failure to understand that one is being paid to do something, and to do it on time, on budget, and to standards . . . well, how unreasonable can you get?There have always been people who just don’t get it. That is, folks who don’t understand, e.g., that if I pay them to copy edit a manuscript, that’s what I want, when I said–well in advance–I wanted it, for the agreed-upon price. For some reason, there are people who simply do not grasp that simply showing up is the bare minimum, not grounds for a raise. Grade inflation and automatic passing may not be the sole cause, but they’ve certainly contributed.
suomynona - February 24, 2010 at 9:17 am
While I like very much what this article has to say, I find two things very troubling:1) That the university should be preparing students explicitly for ‘the real world’ as it is, rather than for changing ‘the real world’ as it is. Perhaps I’m nitpicking with this distinction, as obviously being effective in ‘the real world,’ even for change, means being able to function properly within the system of ‘real world’ or ‘office’ methods day to day. DAJ is right that students should be prepared by universities to respect deadlines, to do their work thoroughly, etc. But let’s be careful not to mold higher education into a work farm or corporate factory anymore than it already is. Lots of the problems in ‘the real world’ are the result of people having not learned some very important lessons in the university (shall I call this ‘the fake world.’?). 2) There’s also an implication about the causality of this problem (a real problem) in higher ed. of nurturing and coddling students perhaps more than is healthy for them and their long-term prospects. Lots of people, like DAJ, may assume that this is just a disjunction between worlds: that the university life is out of touch with the ‘working life’ or ‘the real world,’ so universitiy admins and faculty need to be told more explicitly how things work outside of the university so they can prepare students accordingly. I disagree entirely. I’ve never met a professor who didn’t wish s/he could hold stronger deadlines or give out grades according to what assigments merit rather than certain accepted grade distributions. I’ve never heard a professor lament a parent who called the dean and said ‘you’re not being tough enough on my kid; my kid doesn’t deserve an A.’ The pressure for universities to be easier on students and to nurture them beyond what is healthy comes not from faculty or really even university adminis, but from outside (parental) pressure and, yes, *workplace* notions of pure meritocracy. If every student is puffed up with hot air about how simply ‘hard work’ produces success, it’s no wonder that outside pressures exist to force universities to coddle young people who aren’t yet prepared for failure. Young people who have been lied to all their lives. I wouldn’t put this on higher ed. either.
dank48 - February 24, 2010 at 10:50 am
“The task of the philosophers has been to understand the world; ours is to change it” is a fine sentiment, but let’s not forget that other social theorist and political philosopher Frank Zappa: “In a war between you and the world, bet on the world.”
marka - March 2, 2010 at 1:01 pm
This article is spot-on, and the comments thoughtful & insightful. Cheers for a civil, and meaningful, dialogue. My 2 bits: The university shouldn’t be merely a vocational/training school, but neither should it be some ivory tower, divorced from the world the rest of us live in. We aren’t doing our students, or ourselves, any favors by negating natural consequences for action & inaction. My daughter is attending a well-regarded small liberal arts college that coddles its students by saying they ‘treat them like adults’ – read let them do whatever they want; but then take away any natural ‘adult’ consequences. For example, violate drug, alcohol, and smoking laws, but protect students from criminal consequences. Allow abusive discrimination against Christians & Republicans (currently out of PC favor), and do little in response. Of course, there have been ‘boys will be boys’ attitudes about adolescent students for a long time, and look at the results … . Second, don’t pretend that most students are there to get a ‘liberal arts’ education. Most students are there to get the credentials for a life after school — a high school diploma isn’t enough, and a BA is often not enough, nowadays. We should be guiding many students to those vocational/training schools, as many other nations do, where they can develop those skills they really want. That will allow those truly seeking a liberal education to get one. My daughter’s experience in public high school was disappointing – very few really cared about lifetime learning, they just wanted to get their pieces of paper and move on. Thank god she is now in an environment where a liberal education is what the students, primarily, seek (notwithstanding the developmental coddling by the administration).