Month April 2015

Choose a challenge instead of a competence

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

I think we have created a bumper sticker approach to career choice; serious decisions truncated into platitudes designed to market books and sell tee shirts: ‘Lean In’, ‘Thrive’, ‘Do what you love, love what you do’.

It’s not that simple. Having a dream and executing it are two very different things.

And it’s very easy to be distracted from the very beginning.

In 2011 Marina Keegan, an undergraduate at Yale wrote a short piece in The New York Times, “Another View: The Science and Strategy of College Recruiting”.

“When I arrived at Yale as an eager 18 year old, I had never even heard of consulting or I-banking. And to be honest, I still didn’t totally understand the function of a hedge fund. But what I do understand is that students here have passion. Passion for public service and education policy and painting and engineering and entrepreneurialism. Standing outside a freshman dorm, I couldn’t find a single student aspiring to be a banker – but at commencement this May, there’s a 50 percent chance I’ll be sitting next to one. This strikes me as incredibly sad.”

It’s hard to sustain the ‘semi-fictional’ goals in personal statements written to gain admission to college. It takes a significant degree of courage to withstand the influence of corporate recruiters, family, peers and looming financial obligations to become an artist, writer, teacher or entrepreneur.

David Halberstam, speaking to the University of Southern California Class of 2002 reflected on a visit back to Harvard and the campus newspaper where he had been managing editor as an undergraduate. He talked with a few of the graduating editors who had wanted to be reporters. On the way to graduation they were offered three times an average journalists’ salary and had decided to become consultants.

He challenged their choice.“Did it ever occur to you that the salary you are being offered reflects the fact that this is a choice that you might not make were it not for the size of the salary? And that in some way that you do not yet entirely comprehend, you are being manipulated.”

Finding your ‘work place’ is hard work. It’s a process of discovery that will only occur when you take the lead. It’s a process that involves ongoing conversations with those who have gone before and healthy skepticism for those who might persuade you to change course.

Your first choice of work is not your last. If you are one of those students Marina or David described, you have time to change and become the artist or journalist you imagined yourself to be.

We learn from the wisdom of others and sometimes we have to look back 54 years to capture that guidance. Former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt expressed her thoughts and perhaps added a phrase to the ‘bumper sticker’ canon when she wrote an article in the April 1961 issue of The Atlantic.

“Perhaps the older generation is often to blame with its cautious warning: “Take a job that will give you security, not adventure.’ Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, and imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence.”

Choose a challenge instead of a competence.

The week@work – March 30 – April 5

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work stories ranged from college admissions to a debate over foreign players in England’s Premier League and a stagnant US Jobs report.

On the college admissions front, McSweeney’s published ‘A Honest College Rejection Letter’ by Mimi Evans. In part:

“Dear Applicant,

The Admissions Committee has carefully considered your application and we regret to inform you that we will not be able to offer you admission in the entering class of 2015, or a position on one of our alternate lists. The applicant pool this year was particularly strong, and by that I mean the Admissions Committee once again sent candidates like you multiple enticing pamphlets encouraging you to apply, knowing full well we had no intention of accepting you.

However, you will be pleased to know that you have contributed to our declining admissions rate, which has helped our university appear exclusive. This allows us to attract our real candidates: upper-class kids and certified geniuses who will glean no new information from our courses or faculty, whose parents can incentivize us with a new swimming pool or lacrosse stadium…”

A high school senior in North Carolina responded to a rejection letter from Duke:

“This year I have been fortunate enough to receive rejection letters from the best and brightest universities in the country. With a pool of letters so diverse and accomplished I was unable to accept reject letters I would have been able to only several years ago.

Therefore I will be attending Duke University’s 2015 freshmen class. I look forward to seeing you then.”

The student will be attending the University of South Carolina in the fall and should be encouraged by the comments of 26 year old Jenna, described in Frank Bruni’s article on college admissions.She was not offered admission to her first choice college:

“I felt so worthless,” she recalled.

She chose Scripps. And once she got there and saw how contentedly she fit in, she had a life-changing realization: Not only was a crushing chapter of her life in the past, it hadn’t crushed her. Rejection was fleeting — and survivable.

As a result, she said, “I applied for things fearlessly.”

It’s Final Four weekend. Talented college athletes will be competing in both men’s and women’s basketball. Marc Tracy, writing in The New York Times, takes us back to 1965 when the Final Four included Princeton University and their star player, Bill Bradley. The story is about the athlete and the writer, John McPhee at the beginning of their careers. Published in The New Yorker, ‘A Sense of Where You Are’ was later released in book form. How did Bradley choose Princeton?

“Bradley was affluent. Having initially accepted a scholarship to play basketball at Duke, he chose Princeton, he said, because the summer before his freshman year he had visited Oxford University and was determined to return. A Rhodes scholarship seemed like a great way to do so, and he had read that Princeton produced the most Rhodes scholars.

“I came home from a date, woke my parents up, and said I’d like to change my mind,” Bradley recalled.

And yet in its way the book does argue the merit of incorporating athletics into education. Watching Bradley’s dual sense of where he is — on the basketball court and in life — serves as a reminder that most young people lack a sense of where they are, and that sports are one way to try to find it.”

In 2010 author Franklin Foer published his book, ‘How Soccer Soccer Explains the World’. He looked at soccer and it’s role in various cultures explaining how international forces affect politics and life around the globe. This week, in England an anti-globalization sentiment is growing as Premier League fans question how many potential players in soccer academies are losing opportunities to international players. The English league owes its popularity and skyrocketing salaries to globalization. Will England restrict the number of players recruited from abroad? The debate illustrates conversations that go beyond the ‘workplace’ of soccer and fuel the immigration controversy in both the US and EU.

The New York Times reported on the latest economic report:

“The yearlong streak of robust monthly job creation was broken on Friday with the Labor Department’s report that employers added just 126,000 workers in March, a marked slowdown in hiring that echoed earlier signs that sluggish business investment and punishing weather were exacting a toll on the economy.”

The Road Not Taken – a poem by Robert Frost

Eileen Kohan 1 Comment

The Friday poem is about choices. Immortalized on Hallmark cards and memorized by school children, it’s worth a slow read and reflection in light of a decision you might face.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost 1874-1963

Recapture the global imagination

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

‘The whole world is going to university’ is the cover story in the March 28 issue of The Economist. In the special report ‘Excellence v Equity’, a series of articles examines the current state of global higher education beginning with a thumbnail summary of its’ history to date:

“The modern research university, a marriage of the Oxbridge college and the German research institute, was invented in America, and has become the gold standard for the world. Mass higher education started in America in the 19th century, spread to Europe and East Asia in the 20th and is now happening pretty much everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa.”

According to the report, we question of the value of university today because of the tension between research and teaching, and between excellence and equity.

Why the tension between research and teaching? Why are these written about as if they were mutually exclusive activities?

Let’s look at it from the perspective of the work and compensation. A tenure track faculty member is rewarded for research and publications. The percentage of compensation dependent on teaching is only a small part of his or her package. So where would you put your effort? You set your priorities on advancement and compensation.

The skill set of a researcher is not always the same as a great teacher. It’s the rare faculty member who can combine the talents  of research, emotional intelligence and public speaking. On a large research university campus you can probably name 10-20 and these are the classes students place at the top of their list.

To address this, universities spend significant effort working with aspiring faculty who serve as teaching assistants to help them develop their  skills in public speaking and curriculum development. In many cases you are forcing a size 12 foot into a glass slipper.

The tension comes from the culture where teaching and research are not equally valued.

Why can’t we have ‘master’ teachers exist next to researchers in a partnership that clearly articulates research results, identifies ‘real world’ applications and motivates students to dig deeper?

There are many articles and opinion pieces that have circulated recently confirming the belief that adjunct faculty are viewed as ‘second-class’. This is not healthy for an institution advertising itself as ‘world class.’ A university benefits from a faculty that is diverse and combines research with practical application.

The second point of tension identified in the article is between excellence and equity.

How do we determine excellence in higher education? How are we to compare institutions?

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article in The New Yorker magazine in 2011, ‘The Order of Things: What college rankings really tell us.’ In it he tries to demystify the college ranking system. And he finds “There’s no direct way to measure the quality of an institution – how well a college manages to inform, inspire, and challenge its students.” He finds the ‘proxy’ measures used by U.S. News to be lacking. He is particularly critical of comparing universities with missions to serve a wide range of students to those who are more selective. “Rankings are not benign. They enshrine very particular ideologies, and, at a time when American higher education is facing a crisis of accessibility and affordability, we have adopted a de-facto standard of college quality that is uninterested in both of these factors.”

The larger consequence of this process results in employer recruiting behavior that targets graduates of the most highly selective universities, ignoring the potential candidates who might be a better ‘fit’, congratulating themselves in annual reports for their ‘elite’ candidate pool.

How we value higher education is about how we value the people in a university community: faculty, students, administrators and alumni. Leaders in higher education should step back an reevaluate what it is that makes their community unique. Have the courage to ignore the ratings and compete with the talent and resources they have to articulate a clear vision of their place in society. Create a place of work, study and research that anticipates global problems and is situated to be the first responder with solutions. Recapture the global imagination.

‘Uncommon Women and Others’ – The advantages of attending a women’s college

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

On November 21, 1977 a play opened in New York in a small theater at Marymount Manhattan College. ‘Uncommon Women and Others’ written by Wendy Wasserstein is a memory play set in1978 with reflections back six years earlier at a college for women.

Act One, Scene 1

Man’s Voice: “The college produces women who are persons in their own rights: Uncommon Women who as individuals have the personal dignity that comes with intelligence, competence, flexibility, maturity, and a sense of responsibility. This can happen without loss of gaiety, charm or femininity. Through its long history the college has graduated women who help to make this a better, happier world. Whether their primary contributions were in the home or the wider community, in advocations or vocations, their role has been constructive. The college makes its continuing contribution to society in the form of graduates whose intellectual quality is high, and whose responsibility to others is exceptional.”

Wendy Wasserstein graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1971. The play opened at a critical moment in the women’s movement and was the first to depict contemporary women and their efforts to negotiate the world of careers, relationships, family, and society.

The play’s dialogue has passed its’ expiration date, but the value of a women’s college is as relevant today as it was in the early 70s.

A woman’s college is a place dedicated to the success of women, academically and professionally. In some ways it’s a more relevant ‘incubator’ of self-esteem and self-confidence. It’s a place where you see successful women as faculty, administrators and alumni and you have the opportunity to take on leadership roles and build life long networks. In laboratories and classrooms you engage in research and discovery absent of preconceived gender bias.

There are fewer than fifty women’s colleges remaining in the United States. Most recently Sweet Briar College in Central Virginia has announced it will be closing at the end of the spring semester.

I attended a women’s college. I developed my own voice, but more important I was given leadership roles as a student that prepared me for work. I managed budgets, planned events and interacted with administrators and alumnae. I learned how to make decisions and deal with their consequences. Most important, I left campus believing my dreams were without limits.

Near the end of the play, the offstage man’s voice fades into a woman’s voice “A liberal arts college for women of talent is more important today than at any time in the history of her education. Women still encounter overwhelming obstacles to achievement and recognition despite gradual abolition of legal and political disabilities. Society has trained women from childhood to accept a limited set of options and restricted levels of aspirations.”

A women’s college is a portal to unlimited options.