The Old College Try

Rooty and I were driving Fern and Sprout through my old university town when we came upon a hotel where Rooty and I once stayed.

"Hey, Fern, that's the hotel where Momma and I stayed on our wedding night."

"Yuck!  That old building?  It looks so rundown."

"No, it's very charming!  It was actually an old sorority that was converted to a hotel."

"What's a sorority?"

"Well, it's like a club for women on campus."

Fern contemplated my response.
 

"...Lesbians?"

 

---
 

"Yo, Deadwood!  Fancy running into you.  What are you doing here?"

Well, libraries are a great resource. And you know...free. What about you, Slash?

"Researching colleges."

Going back to school?

"No, for my kid. Trying to make sure she gets into the best university she possibly can."

I see...

"I saw that! You rolled your eyes!"

What, me?  No.

"Yes, you did! I saw it! You're judging me again!"

I didn't mean to.   It's reflexive.  I see you, I judge.

"Very funny, Deadwood. Very funny. So just what am I doing wrong now?"

Oh, well, you know, this is out of my area of expertise.  I'm years away from sending my kids off to college.  So, I have no right to judge even if I did by accident.

"Spill it."

Well, okay, if you have a minute... Tell you what, take this pencil. Write down all the things you want for your kid. Not what your kid says she wants, but what you want for her.  It can be a short list, a long list, whatever you want.

"Okay...hold on..."

No problem.  I'll be back.   Gotta return these "Henry and Mudge" books.

 

...

Hey, Slash.   I'm back.  All done?

"Yep. Now what?"

Rip it up.
 

"WHAT?! You're even more insane than usual. You haven't even read it!"

True.  But I can see that your list is pretty darn long.  I bet it has things on it like "Graduate from Harvard," and "Own a home in the Hamptons," and "Have a high powered career on Wall Street."  Am I right?

"Ha! Little do you know.  Stanford, Woodside, and Silicon Valley.  You're not even on the same side of the country, Deadwood."

Well, maybe your list is more high tech than high finance, but it's basically the same.  The point is, that's a wishlist for you, not your kid.

"I want this for my kid."

No, you want that for you for your kid.

"What do you mean?"

If your list has anything more on it than "Lead a fulfilling life" then there's a pretty good chance you are imposing your own wishes, desires, insecurities and needs on her.  Things rooted in money, prestige and status.

"Well, even if we assume you're right, what of it?   I want her to be happy."

Well, there's just no evidence that any of this will make her happy.   Take college, for instance.  I'm guessing that when it came to your research project, the first thing you grabbed off the shelf was the "Best Colleges" rankings from U.S. News and World Report.  Am I right?

"No."

Then what are you hiding behind your back?

"Um...nothing."

Okay, well...I won't push it, then.  You may be different, but when it comes to picking a college, a lot of parents and students tend to grab that list and use it as a gauge to figure out which colleges to target.

In fact, some parents then go on to even hire these new age "college admission consultants" who charge thousands and thousands of dollars coaching insecure parents and their teens on how to get into their dream university.  A dream often based on nothing more than rankings and prestige.

"What's wrong with that?  You live in some kind of rainbow/unicorn fantasy world, Deadwood.  The reality is that when it comes to colleges, rankings and prestige matter!"

For status, it does, certainly.  But for happiness?  Not so much.  Gallup recently conducted a study of 30,000 respondents to understand the relationship between happiness (or more broadly speaking, "well-being"), and the type of university attended.  We've discussed their measure of well-being before, but to remind you, it includes five key areas:

• Purpose: Liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals.
• Social: Having strong and supportive relationships and love in your life.
• Financial: Effectively managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security.
• Community: The sense of engagement you have with the areas where you live, liking where you live, and feeling safe and having pride in your community.
• Physical: Having good health and enough energy to get things done on a daily basis.

According to their findings, it doesn't matter if you graduated from a small college or large university, public school or private institution.  It doesn't even matter how selective the universities were in their acceptance of applicants (their prestige).  None of that had any significant bearing on people's well-being.  The only exception?  Students who attended for-profit universities had significantly worse future well-being scores.

"What are for-profit universities?"

You know, like the ones advertised on television. 

"Okay, that's interesting.  So, other than that, did anything about college have a correlation to one's well-being?"

Yes, but not anything that the college ranking systems measure.  Of all the things that Gallup tested, what mattered most to a student's future sense of well-being was:

• a professor who cared about you as a person
• a professor who made you excited about learning
• a mentor who encouraged you to pursue your dreams

Students who felt supported in these areas were three times as likely to be thriving in all aspects of well-being after college than those who didn't. 

"Huh. Did anything about college have a negative bearing on one's well-being?"

Yep.  Student loans.  If you graduated with over $40K of debt, you were seven times less likely to be thriving across all five aspects of well-being.

So don't feel like you need to send your kid to a $50,000 a year institution.  The important thing is what your daughter makes of her college experience.  She should get to know her professors.  Engage them, talk with them.  Give them a chance to inspire her. 

When I was a junior, I had an engineering professor who inspired me despite the fact that I had no interest in the subject.  He kept me motivated.  He even indirectly inspired me to get my MBA.  (While he was getting his PhD, he decided, on a whim, to get his MBA at the same time.  I figured I could do the same thing.  Except for the PhD part.)

In the end, your daughter's happiness will have nothing to do with college prestige and ranking.  Your daughter's well-being will depend much more on whom she marries, her ties to her community, her engagement at work, her health, and her money management.

Fretting about college?  Relax.  And engage.

 

You're deep in thought, Slash.  What are you thinking?

"Well, to be honest,  I'm a little skeptical.  I'm wondering if your perspective is all just a sophisticated, research based rationalization of your land grant university background.  You know, versus my Ivy League prestige."

It's possible, but I don't think so, because I chose not to go Ivy League.  Remember that professor I mentioned?  He tried to recruit me to follow him to Princeton.  ("That sounds great, professor, but um...would I still have to study engineering?")  And for my MBA, I seriously contemplated Cornell and Wharton.  (Full disclosure: Harvard and Dartmouth both said no, thank you.  Well, except for the thank you part.)

 "Okay, so why didn't you go Ivy League?"

Well, at the time, I really did want to experience it.  But I already had student loans from undergrad.  I couldn't see piling on another payment of $500/month for ten years ($900/month in today's dollars).  And you know what?  I think my decision greatly contributed to my sense of financial well-being once I graduated.  In the end, I ended up at the company I was targeting, in a fulfilling career where I was fully engaged.  Well-being, not prestige, Slash.

"Well, all that makes some sense, I guess. But what about graduate school? How is my daughter going to be able to research and study under the best professors without a prestigious undergrad degree?" 

The cream will rise to the top, Slash.  Especially if she engages her professors with special projects.  I remember once attending a graduation ceremony at an unimpressive, non-prestigious state college.  It didn't offer any degrees above the masters level.  But the valedictorian was a woman who developed a technique to measure the rotational speed of stars using the Doppler Effect.  (If you are a nerd, you are totally impressed by this.  So much so, you'll remember it a quarter of a century later.  I'm just saying.)  She was accepted into MIT's graduate physics program.  Engage.