Elite Universities, Failure, and How They Just Don’t Get It
My Inc. article yesterday, “Elite Universities, Failure, and How They Just Don’t Get It,” began
“Elite Universities, Failure, and How They Just Don’t Get It” Joshua Spodek’s article in Inc.
Elite Universities, Failure, and How They Just Don’t Get It
Elite universities don’t get failure, revealing a deep strategic flaw in U.S. education. Some solutions are easy.
A recent New York Times article, “On Campus, Failure Is on the Syllabus,” reports on how elite American universities are trying to prepare students for things not going their way.
I commend the effort, but the article reveals strategic problems in their educational foundation. It begins
Last year, during fall orientation at Smith College, and then again recently at final-exam time, students who wandered into the campus hub were faced with an unfamiliar situation: the worst failures of their peers projected onto a large screen.
“I failed my first college writing exam,” one student revealed.
“I came out to my mom, and she asked, ‘Is this until graduation?'” another said.
The faculty, too, contributed stories of screwing up.
“I failed out of college,” a popular English professor wrote. “Sophomore year. Flat-out, whole semester of F’s on the transcript, bombed out, washed out, flunked out.”
“I drafted a poem entitled ‘Chocolate Caramels,’ ” said a literature and American studies scholar, who noted that it “has been rejected by 21 journals … so far.”
Does anyone else see any problems?
I see two big ones.
Read the rest at Elite Universities, Failure, and How They Just Don’t Get It.
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