94. College as a ranking mechanism, a tool for slotting people into limited pigeonholes
[From Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams]
The scarcity model of the industrial age teaches us that there are only a finite number of “good” jobs. Big companies have limited payrolls, of course, so there’s only one plant manager. Big universities have just one head of the English department. Big law firms have just one managing partner, and even the Supreme Court has only nine seats.
As we’ve seen, the ranking starts early, and if you (the thinking goes) don’t get into a good (oh, I mean famous) college, you’re doomed.
This is one of the reasons that college has become an expensive extension of high school. The goal is to get in (and possibly get out), but what happens while you’re there doesn’t matter much if the goal is merely to claim your slot.
When higher education was reserved for elite academics, there was a lot of learning for learning’s sake, deep dives into esoteric thought that occasionally led to breakthroughs. Once industrialized, though, college became yet another holding tank, though without the behavior boundaries we work so hard to enforce in high school.
In the post-industrial age of connection, though, the slotting and the scarcity are far less important. We care a great deal about what you’ve done, less about the one-word alumnus label you bought. Because we can see whom you know and what they think of you, because we can see how you’ve used the leverage the Internet has given you, because we can see if you actually are able to lead and actually are able to solve interesting problems—because of all these things, college means something new now.
Tags: stopstealingdreams
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