James Surowiecki's "Better all the Time" in the 10 November New Yorker explains how in the past 30 years athletic performances have improved markedly because the measurement of performance has improved markedly. The ability to measure performance has, in turn, made it possible for serious athletes to train better--to perfect small skills, to eat correctly, sleep deeply, train wisely, and thus to improve. This improvement has been driven by three things--(1) better technology, (2) the realization that athletic skills are malleable, not fixed, and (3) the emergence of coaches who know how to employ (1) and (2).
Surowiecki then turns to other parts of society that have shown similar improvement--chess, for example, where the the number of grandmasters has exploded, or manufacturing, where "lemons, for the most part, have become a thing of the past."
Finally, Surowiecki argues that struggling sectors of society could be improved by following the tenets of the performance revolution. Not surprisingly, he focuses on education. Surprisingly, he turns his attention to teacher training. He argues that "if American teachers--unlike athletes or manufacturing workings--haven't gotten much better over the past three decades, its largely because their training has, either."
This attention to teacher training surprises me for two reasons. First, Surowiecki accepts the currently vogue-ish claim that "teacher training in the United States has usually been an afterthought." This is simply not true, as anyone who has been involved with a school of education or a school district could tell you.
Second, though, he misses the clear analogy in his article. Teachers are not athletes, teachers are coaches. And as with their peers in athletics, teachers' ability to improve the performance of their charges depends on better technology and a system where the malleability of skill is assumed.
Teachers (high school or college level) have neither of these things. A coach who wishes to improve the performance of her team has access to film, statistical analyses, and the ability to require athletes to repeat their work again and again until it is perfect. Coaches also have motivated charges who love the thing they are being asked to do. Teachers have only the bluntest assessment tools--occasional tests, quizzes, papers, and presentations--and none of the time or equipment necessary to build a powerful window onto student learning.
Imagine, for example, that I want to help students be outstanding historians. I need a way to record what they do when the research, what they think when they write, and how they respond to corrections. I have none of these tools. Instead I have a classroom whose technology is entirely focused on either the teacher (the projector, for example) or the student (computers, for example). I have no meaningful way to replay the activities of students, pointing out their strengths and flaws as they assemble their learning. Instead, I generally pass judgement on a nearly complete product.
If there is a silver lining in this situation, it is that small schools are better equipped than large ones to provide this sort of data coupled with the ability to put it to use. The revolution in coaching relies on a small coach to athlete ratio, one-on-one mentoring, and the opportunity for athletes to put changes into practice. All three of these things are more available in classes with 10 students than 100, and for faculty whose job it is to advance learning, not research.
The question for small schools, then, is how we put in the hands of our teachers the tools they need to mimic the coaches of our elite athletes.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Distinctiveness, truth-telling, and small schools
Colleges and universities small and large are told or claim to be distinctive. Distinctiveness seems to be a pathway to flourishing, and so to become distinctive is to fine a way to flourish in the future.
The advice makes sense--one way to flourish is to stand out--even as it is almost impossible to follow. Think of the problem as a question: Which colleges are most distinctive? There is almost no way to answer. One is tempted to say "Harvard" or "Yale" but those schools aren't particularly distinctive. Their programs overlap significantly, the demographics of their students are similar, they occupy a similar spot in the higher education universe. They are not distinctive, they are prestigious.
Or think about the nation's best-known schools. This time of year more people know about Florida State, Alabama, Auburn, and the University of Oregon than know about who is running for the Senate from their state. But FSU, Alabama, Auburn, and Oregon aren't distinctive, they are famous.
Or think about schools that really are unusual--Marlboro College, Deep Springs, College of the Atlantic--are three that can really make that claim. But all three of these schools are tiny, and survive on a razor's edge, where a drop of 10-15 students makes a massive difference in the well-being of the institution. These schools are distinctive, but their distinctiveness hasn't guaranteed their flourishing.
Or think of the claims of distinctiveness that most non-prestigious, non-famous schools make. We talk about small class sizes, relationships, the opportunity to make a difference, the chance for students to grow. But these aren't distinctive traits--they are local traits, made different only inasmuch as our school is the only one in the region (remember, most students attend college within 100 miles of their homes) that offers such things.
We would perhaps be wise, then, to wonder if we can or ought to be distinctive. No college where I have ever worked can claim to be distinctive--as measured by prestige, or fame, or the rarity of our programs, we fall short in spite of our claims (one school where I worked called itself a "unique environment for learning" true only in that no school is exactly the same as any other).
What we can do is try to describe ourselves truthfully, and make it possible for students, faculty, and staff to tell their stories truthfully, publicly, and regularly. Doing so allows us to do two things: first, to make sure that the truths of our institution cohere, or put another way, to listen closely enough to know if there is commonality among us, a commitment to the same goals and a common measurement of their outcomes. Second, to allow people who hear about us to connect with us as people who work at an institution, not as an institution that happens to employ people.
Let me say a bit more about this last statement. It is true that with the exception of schools that are famous or prestigious, few students choose colleges by choosing institutions. Instead they choose pieces of the institution ("I want to play on the soccer team, I want to major in microbiology.") or they choose the people of the institution. The pieces of small institutions are only attractive inasmuch as they are connected with authentic people who tell the truth about them. Or put in practical terms, if you major in biology at Barton College it is because of your connection to the real people who teach and study biology at Barton, not because of the abstract distinctiveness of the program.
The advice makes sense--one way to flourish is to stand out--even as it is almost impossible to follow. Think of the problem as a question: Which colleges are most distinctive? There is almost no way to answer. One is tempted to say "Harvard" or "Yale" but those schools aren't particularly distinctive. Their programs overlap significantly, the demographics of their students are similar, they occupy a similar spot in the higher education universe. They are not distinctive, they are prestigious.
Or think about the nation's best-known schools. This time of year more people know about Florida State, Alabama, Auburn, and the University of Oregon than know about who is running for the Senate from their state. But FSU, Alabama, Auburn, and Oregon aren't distinctive, they are famous.
Or think about schools that really are unusual--Marlboro College, Deep Springs, College of the Atlantic--are three that can really make that claim. But all three of these schools are tiny, and survive on a razor's edge, where a drop of 10-15 students makes a massive difference in the well-being of the institution. These schools are distinctive, but their distinctiveness hasn't guaranteed their flourishing.
Or think of the claims of distinctiveness that most non-prestigious, non-famous schools make. We talk about small class sizes, relationships, the opportunity to make a difference, the chance for students to grow. But these aren't distinctive traits--they are local traits, made different only inasmuch as our school is the only one in the region (remember, most students attend college within 100 miles of their homes) that offers such things.
We would perhaps be wise, then, to wonder if we can or ought to be distinctive. No college where I have ever worked can claim to be distinctive--as measured by prestige, or fame, or the rarity of our programs, we fall short in spite of our claims (one school where I worked called itself a "unique environment for learning" true only in that no school is exactly the same as any other).
What we can do is try to describe ourselves truthfully, and make it possible for students, faculty, and staff to tell their stories truthfully, publicly, and regularly. Doing so allows us to do two things: first, to make sure that the truths of our institution cohere, or put another way, to listen closely enough to know if there is commonality among us, a commitment to the same goals and a common measurement of their outcomes. Second, to allow people who hear about us to connect with us as people who work at an institution, not as an institution that happens to employ people.
Let me say a bit more about this last statement. It is true that with the exception of schools that are famous or prestigious, few students choose colleges by choosing institutions. Instead they choose pieces of the institution ("I want to play on the soccer team, I want to major in microbiology.") or they choose the people of the institution. The pieces of small institutions are only attractive inasmuch as they are connected with authentic people who tell the truth about them. Or put in practical terms, if you major in biology at Barton College it is because of your connection to the real people who teach and study biology at Barton, not because of the abstract distinctiveness of the program.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Putting the "love" back in the advice to "do what you love"
For a moment a few months back the internet pondered anew the advice to "do what you love." Miya Tokumitsu argued in Jacobin that "do what you love" is a "worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-regard." Slate reprinted the article; the New York Times blog The Stone picked up the theme and tied it to college advising.
This approach--where love carries deep, other-regarding, meaning--is nothing new. Most religious traditions have some statement like Paul's in 1 Corinthians 13, where he reminds us that
Adopting Paul's injunction as career guidance would do two things: first, it would remind us that the measure of love is in its ability to narrow distinctions among people, and between people and God. Second it would recall that any work can be done for love--whether that work demands hard labor or endless hours at a computer, years of education or none at all.
The argument in these essays is that work is, well, work, and that most of us have to do unpleasant work some or all of the time. If you can indulge the desire to do what you love, you must be acting out of a sense of privilege and/or selfishness.
This critique is true, but it is also based in an unimaginative reading of the phrase. Most often, when someone says "do what you love" they mean that you should "do what YOU like." Put that way, with an emphasis on the self, and a definition of love as nothing more than pleasure, the advice to do what you love is, indeed, as bad as Tokumitsu argues. But to simply say that work is often crummy is no more satisfying, ultimately, that saying work ought to be pleasant. Both views resign people to a work life that lacks meaning--if dedicated to self-indulgence, work reinforces the gap between rich and poor, if acknowledged as unpleasant, work reinforces the belief that life guarantees dissatisfaction.
Two weekends ago I attended the Council of Independent Colleges conference on chaplaincy. There, a couple of dozen colleges and universities tried to figure out how college chaplains could help higher education to become more reflective, more honest, and more committed to the use of love in pursuit of the Good. Or put another way, rather than reading "do what you love" as guidance to self-interest and pleasure, the theme of this conference was to put the emphasis on love itself, or to say "do what you do for LOVE."
What does this have to do with small schools? Small schools are places where it is very difficult to "do what YOU like" since almost no one does one thing. We teach courses we don't want to teach, we administer programs where we have no expertise, we attend events with little connection to our passions or expertise. We even tout this experience as part of the attraction of a small school, for faculty and students alike. we tell people that if you come here you will matter because you cannot be isolated, narrowed, or dedicated only to those things that you like the most. Of course we fail to take the next step--to describe this way of working as an act of love, and thus as something that might be a pathway to meaning beyond the college campus. That is our failure, but one that small schools ought to rectify.
If we do, then we can describe ourselves not just as small, or as places where students matter or where people build close relationships. Instead we can say that ultimately we are about creating a community based on love--not the sort dedicated to self-satisfaction but the sort that acknowledges that humble connection with others is one of the best ways to live.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Why small schools need strong systems
This is the cultural moment for the small, the local, and the specialized. Craft beer has more cultural resonance than Budweiser, artisan bread is more attractive than Wonder Bread, more people would rather shop at a farmer's market than at a Food Lion. Local bookstores are resurgent; Barnes and Noble is fading. In politics, people distrust the national government but trust their local governments; they perceive the quality of "public schools" and "teachers" to be in decline, but still like the neighborhood school and their kids' teachers.
It is easy to see why this is the case. Local things carry both a perception of value and of quality. They are more personal and more connected to their audiences. They are more authentic than big, distant, hard-to-understand organizations. They have values rather than brands.
But the change that makes this the age of the local has less to do with perceptions and more to do with process. Today, for the first time, small organizations have access to excellent systems. A jewelry-maker can sell his wares on Etsy or Amazon, take payments through a plug-in Square device, and print new models on a 3-D printer. Local growers have greater access to heirloom varieties, specific information about their land's microclimates, and simple ways to get their products to market. And all of them have inexpensive ways to draw attention to their products. Each of these systems allows small producers and organizations to be excellent at what they do.
It is ironic, then, that in the age of the small, small schools struggle so much. There are many explanations for the attractiveness of big colleges and universities--Division I sports, a huge variety of majors, the prestige of their faculty, the dollars generated by tens of thousands of students and alumni. And there are plenty of reasons why small schools struggle--low visibility, small-town locations, and a perception that the value isn't worth the cost.
All of these are true, to be sure. But an equally important reason that small schools haven't flourished in this local moment is that they tend to have weak systems, or in some instances, are hostile to good ones. We pride ourselves on personal interactions with students, but too often those one-on-one meetings happen because the student has a problem caused by a broken system--they got a bill they shouldn't have, or were advised into the wrong class, or can't graduate on time, or are in a conflict because they can't get away from the antagonist that is in every class in their small major. We save money by not spending on infrastructure, even though spending on infrastructure protects against catastrophic failure and massive bills. And we don't build good policies and practices for problem-solving or innovation because we have long made decisions in idiosyncratic, one-off ways. In short, we believe that good systems are too expensive, or too impersonal, to be worth the time.
For students, faculty, and staff, though, these small school system problems mean that the experience of being at a small school is too often about working around failed transactions rather than building deep, authentic relationships.
The challenge for small schools, then, is to think more like the craft brewers, local growers, and artisans enjoying the prominence of this moment. Obviously we need to focus our efforts on those few things we can do really well, and take pride in our specialized nature. We need to contrast ourselves with our larger, more generalized peers. But even more, we need to build strong systems, both within and outside of our institutions--systems that provide ongoing cultural support for small schools, and that free the faculty, staff, and students of small schools to attend to learning rather than patching broken systems.
It is easy to see why this is the case. Local things carry both a perception of value and of quality. They are more personal and more connected to their audiences. They are more authentic than big, distant, hard-to-understand organizations. They have values rather than brands.
But the change that makes this the age of the local has less to do with perceptions and more to do with process. Today, for the first time, small organizations have access to excellent systems. A jewelry-maker can sell his wares on Etsy or Amazon, take payments through a plug-in Square device, and print new models on a 3-D printer. Local growers have greater access to heirloom varieties, specific information about their land's microclimates, and simple ways to get their products to market. And all of them have inexpensive ways to draw attention to their products. Each of these systems allows small producers and organizations to be excellent at what they do.
It is ironic, then, that in the age of the small, small schools struggle so much. There are many explanations for the attractiveness of big colleges and universities--Division I sports, a huge variety of majors, the prestige of their faculty, the dollars generated by tens of thousands of students and alumni. And there are plenty of reasons why small schools struggle--low visibility, small-town locations, and a perception that the value isn't worth the cost.
All of these are true, to be sure. But an equally important reason that small schools haven't flourished in this local moment is that they tend to have weak systems, or in some instances, are hostile to good ones. We pride ourselves on personal interactions with students, but too often those one-on-one meetings happen because the student has a problem caused by a broken system--they got a bill they shouldn't have, or were advised into the wrong class, or can't graduate on time, or are in a conflict because they can't get away from the antagonist that is in every class in their small major. We save money by not spending on infrastructure, even though spending on infrastructure protects against catastrophic failure and massive bills. And we don't build good policies and practices for problem-solving or innovation because we have long made decisions in idiosyncratic, one-off ways. In short, we believe that good systems are too expensive, or too impersonal, to be worth the time.
For students, faculty, and staff, though, these small school system problems mean that the experience of being at a small school is too often about working around failed transactions rather than building deep, authentic relationships.
The challenge for small schools, then, is to think more like the craft brewers, local growers, and artisans enjoying the prominence of this moment. Obviously we need to focus our efforts on those few things we can do really well, and take pride in our specialized nature. We need to contrast ourselves with our larger, more generalized peers. But even more, we need to build strong systems, both within and outside of our institutions--systems that provide ongoing cultural support for small schools, and that free the faculty, staff, and students of small schools to attend to learning rather than patching broken systems.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
The "new normal" is the old normal for small schools
Search the phrase "new normal higher education" and you will come across hundreds of links to articles arguing that concern about cost, debt, enrollment, tuition increases, and graduation rates have made running a college a risky business. This period of uncertainty and rapid change is the "new normal."
This may in fact be true for public colleges and universities and for mid-sized privates, but for small, non-profit colleges and universities, the new normal is simply, well, normal. We, the "old normal" schools, have always been institutions for whom the loss of a few students is cause for concern, where every penny gets counted, and where modest increases in cost both provide a bit of marginal revenue and heighten the risk that students will be unable to afford college.
The remarkable thing about the new normal, then, is not that there is such a thing, but that higher education analysts and the press have paid so little attention to schools that have proven their ability to survive the new normal for years and years. What are those practices? Here are a few:
This may in fact be true for public colleges and universities and for mid-sized privates, but for small, non-profit colleges and universities, the new normal is simply, well, normal. We, the "old normal" schools, have always been institutions for whom the loss of a few students is cause for concern, where every penny gets counted, and where modest increases in cost both provide a bit of marginal revenue and heighten the risk that students will be unable to afford college.
The remarkable thing about the new normal, then, is not that there is such a thing, but that higher education analysts and the press have paid so little attention to schools that have proven their ability to survive the new normal for years and years. What are those practices? Here are a few:
- Denying the distinction between the liberal arts and professional training. Schools struggling through the new normal are often committed to either a liberal arts education or a focus on professional and graduate training. Old normal schools, like Barton College where I work, or the New American College and Universities, have always understood that the liberal arts are training for professional life, and that professional training is but a way of providing meaning for graduates and their families.
- Acting in the public interest even as a "private" institution. New normal schools are struggling to attract students from outside their regions in an effort to bolster flagging local enrollments. Old normal schools, because they have always drawn most of their students from nearby, understand their local settings, and are seen as acting in the public interest in their towns, cities, and region. For instance, Barton College is building articulation agreements with local community colleges because our communities understand that expanding access to higher education is not just an abstraction, it is essential for the actual places where we live and work.
- Acting sustainably. Many "old normal" schools aren't green in the current sense. But they act sustainably in that they re-use, re-make, and restore most things. Old computers get new processors, old chairs move from the library to offices, old buildings get remade. This behavior is more than frugality. It is a sign of a culture of tinkering and of comfort with traditional things.
- Avoiding pretense. Old normal schools can never compete with larger, more successful, richer schools just now facing the new normal. Our buildings will always be older, our technology more fragile, or residence halls less luxurious, our salaries and budgets smaller. But acknowledging those limits has made us modest places, and thus places that feel welcoming to the new demographic of college-goers--those for whom size, scale, and aspiration indicate class divisions, not "the cutting edge."
- Acknowledging limits. To overcome the limits of the new normal, higher education is forced to make ever more grandiose claims about its abilities--we promise transformative global experiences and world class learning and ever higher-paying jobs. Old normal schools are less effusive. We are working on the hardest problems in education--the effects of poverty, a crumbling K-12 system, the decline of rural towns, a shifting economy. We don't claim to solve any of them. But we do know how to make life in this context meaningful for our students. We know how to help them to a moderately better future. And in so doing, we acknowledge both the difficulty of creating a good society and the modest ways in which small, hard-working colleges and universities help do just that.
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