125. The famous-college trap
[From Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams]
Spend time around suburban teenagers and their parents, and pretty soon the discussion will head inexorably to the notion of going to a “good college.”
Harvard, of course, is a good college. So is Yale. Add to the list schools like Notre Dame and Middlebury.
How do we know that these schools are good?
If you asked me if a Mercedes is a good car compared to, say, a Buick, by most measures we could agree that the answer is yes. Not because of fame or advertising, but because of the experience of actually driving the car, the durability, the safety—many of the things we buy a car for.
The people who are picking the college, though, the parents and the students about to invest four years and nearly a quarter of a million dollars—what are they basing this choice on? Do they have any data at all about the long-term happiness of graduates?
These schools aren’t necessarily good. What they are is famous.
Loren Pope, former education editor at the New York Times, points out that colleges like Hiram and Hope and Eckerd are actually better schools, unless the goal is to find a brand name that will impress the folks at the country club. His breakthrough book, Colleges that Change Lives, combines rigorous research with a passion for unmasking the extraordinary overselling of famous colleges.
If college is supposed to be just like high school but with more parties, a famous college is precisely what parents should seek. If we view the purpose of college as a stepping stone, one that helps you jump the line while looking for a good job, then a famous college is the way to go. The line for those good jobs is long, and a significant benefit of a famous college is more than superstition—associating with that fame may get you a better first job.
A famous college might not deliver an education that’s transformative to the student, but if that’s not what you’re looking for, you might as well purchase a valuable brand name that the alumnus can use for the rest of his life.
But is that all you’re getting? If the sorting mechanism of college is all that’s on offer, the four years spent there are radically overpriced.
It turns out that students who apply to Harvard and get in but don’t go are just as successful and at least as happy throughout their lives as the ones who do attend. Try to imagine any other branded investment of that size that delivers as little.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both dropped out of college (one more famous than the other). It turned out that getting in was sufficient to give them a credibility boost.
Famous colleges are part of the labeling and ranking system, but have virtually nothing to do with the education imparted or the long-term impact of the education received. If you need the label to accomplish your goals, go get the label. Either way, we ought to hold colleges to a much higher standard when it comes to transformative education.
For starters, though, start using the word “famous” when your instinct is to say “good.”
Tags: stopstealingdreams
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