College Admissions Mania

I just finished Frank Bruni’s book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be. The subtitle of the book makes a significant claim as “An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania”. The author’s main point, and I agree with him here, is that students can choose to make the most of their opportunities in college instead of being a passive consumer drifting through the experience. I’ve seen my fair share of students who just go through the motions on the academic front and attempt to do as little work as possible. I’ve also met a number who are engaged, enthusiastic and actively aim to better themselves both inside and outside the classroom.

In Chapter 4, Rankings and Wrongs, Bruni opens with a quote from a former college president (of a high-ranking college) that the U.S. News & World Report rankings is possibly the worst thing that has happened to higher education. When institutions spend huge sums of money to move up the rankings, student education is not always the main beneficiary. Part of the difficulty is that we don’t really know how to measure the complex package that is “learning” and it gets reduced to things we can measure. Whether these measurable items are good proxies and how they are weighted in the rankings is highly questionable. This leads to alternative rankings that jostle to be more authoritative, typically pointing out flaws in the earlier systems. Is there a systematic, dare I say “scientific” method to reach consensus? I don’t know. But one should keep in mind the dictum that “not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts”.

While I agree with the author’s main antidote – a call to the student to actively take opportunity of their college experience, I’m less persuaded by his argument when more broadly applied. His main approach is to use personal stories from different individuals – famous and successful folks who did not go to elite institutions. These are interspersed with stories from current students and recent graduates who may not yet be famous, but were able to thrive even though they did not get into their dream (elite) schools. On the flip side, Bruni gives examples of students at elite institutions who are Excellent Sheep, as described by William Deresiewicz in a book of the same name. The main description of many such students is that they often just want to be told what to do to get on to their next stage of a successful life. After all, this is what they’ve been doing since young, thanks in part to their parents and social circles – Chapter 8 of Bruni’s book is aptly titled “Strangled With Ivy”. In all fairness, Bruni does acknowledge that although going to a non-elite undergraduate school doesn’t determine one’s future (there is some indication he might not extend this to graduate school), a student graduating from an elite education is still at an advantage. (Chapter 7 is titled “An Elite Edge”.)

Although I had read Andrew Ferguson’s Crazy U some time ago, I was still flabbergasted by the mania that parents and students go through to get into an elite institution. Hiring life-coaches to help craft the student’s application package by making sure they have the right extra-curricular activities and community service work amidst the academics seems out of whack – even more so when it starts before the kid even enters high school. Looking back on my own journey, I’m thankful my family had no ability to influence my getting into an elite institution. (I did not attend one according to U.S. News.) They didn’t read the essays I wrote (in longhand). There were no test prep courses. I went to the library, found a single SAT book with practice questions and sat there and worked through them because it was a reference book that could not be checked out. I didn’t even know how well my college prepared me academically until I went to graduate school. (I was very well prepared!)

But if elite schools do provide the edge by getting your foot in the door, this could still be a significant advantage in a tight economy where jobs are not plentiful. Certainly the statistics show that on average, graduates from elite schools earn higher salaries through life. But the cost of attending these elite institutions is high (if you are paying full price). Can we do the cost-benefit analysis? Maybe so, but it’s unclear how meaningful the numbers will be particularly since we have not come to agreement on the key factors. The cost of higher education is becoming a significant issue in the U.S. and the political circus may lead to some policy changes. Admittedly when I look at this problem, it seems dauntingly complex so I offer no good solutions.

What can I do as a professor? I can be an academic adviser (especially to my first year students – it’s no longer PC to call them “freshmen” aloud on campus in the presence of administrators) that challenges my students to make the most of their experience in college. Bruni’s book did give me several ideas of conversations I could be having with my students. A balance however needs to be struck between encouraging students, pushing them out of their comfort zone, and giving them space to reflect and think for themselves. I don’t want to turn into one of their parents even though some of them do seem like wandering sheep. Instead of a teacher-scholar (popular buzzword), I might turn into a teacher-scholar-shepherd (buzzword of the future)!