From Rachel Toor
When the Paper of Record asks you to write a guest essay, you jump.
At least, I do.
I said, I’ll write whatever you want.
They said, We need to work on your negotiating skills.
Okay, I said. Pay me one million dollars and I’ll write whatever you want.
Frailty, thy name is Rachel.
They said, this was the worst year ever. [This was in February, before the protests at Columbia.] They said, here’s what we want: “a piece about selective admissions with the framing that this year an already-crazy system went truly bonkers.”
How so? I asked.
Test optional or required, they said. Early decision(s). Summer interviews. Demographic cliff. Parental concerns about the job market forcing students into specific majors and driving down admit rates in pre-professional areas.
Um, I said, where’s the news?
This is the worst year ever!
Hmm, I said. I every year since I started working in elite college admissions in 1997, deans have sent out that memo. And every year I talk to parents who, like those diagnosed with an illness they previously knew little about, suddenly start paying attention and freaking out. (I'm grateful that most of my friends are over this stage so I don't have to hate them for their sickness.)
The big news this year, I told the editors at the Paper, is how the FAFSA delays are going to really mess things up for a lot of people, particularly hurting those with financial need.
Oh yeah, they said. We forgot about that.
And also, I added, because, come on, this was for the opinion section and I am paid to have opinions, you people at the Paper only care about twenty schools—forty when you're trying not to be snobby. There are about 3,960 other places where people can get educated.
Yeah, yeah, they said. We’re only interested in highly selective schools. We think maybe you can argue there should be some kind of regulatory body like the NCAA to whip them into shape.
Um, I said. Don't you think boards bear some responsibility here? And maybe status-conscious parents?
They said, we don’t want to tell you what to write [but here are the arguments we want you to make]. Oh, and this is all on spec. But if you submit such a piece, we will consider it very, very seriously. Think big magazine piece, like 2,000-3,000 words, deeply reported with a strong argument. And of course it will need to come out before the admissions decisions do.
The next five days I spent writing my head off. Draft after draft, talking with friends, deleting, revising, researching, turning sentences around. And asking for feedback from people way smarter than me.
While the Paper declared that my piece was “lively and so much fun to read,” it wasn’t what they wanted. Too “opinionated” and didn’t do the job of “laying out the evidence, showing readers what's new and why it matters, and then making an argument about what should be done.”
What evidence? What should be done? Um, how about telling your kids that the world won't end if they don't get into an Ivy or that you don't have to be embarrassed to put the sticker from a state school on the back of your Tesla?
At this point, I think it's pretty clear that this has been the worst year ever for higher education (political interference, college closures, public doubts, campus protests), but not in the way those at the Paper meant, with their laser focus on the college prospects of their spawn.
Turns out, they got someone else to make exactly the argument they wanted to come from me.
Admittedly, I don't know much.
What I know about parents, including those indicted in the Varsity Blues scandal, is that they all want what they think is best for their kids. Even if they're incorrect or willing to do things the rest of us find hinky.
What I know about most presidents and chancellors is that they strive to do what they think is best for their institutions and the people they serve. I don't believe anyone is rubbing their hands together and saying, "Yippee! We now get to bring in the police to arrest our students."
What I know about today's students is that they spent way too much time in their rooms doing Zoom school. They are lonely and sad and afraid. They became apathetic when they had to mask up and were told to stand six feet apart. The clear enemy was invisible and it's hard to be mad at a virus. They crave a sense of belonging and don't know how to make friends.
I don't believe the majority of those who are protesting know much about the history of the Middle East or could even find Gaza on a map before this fall. I don't believe most of them are antisemitic. I don't believe most of them are inclined toward violence. Their brains haven't finished developing. It's their job to be aggressively naïve.
What I do believe is that being passionate about something makes you feel alive and too many current students feel dead inside.
In his brilliant first novel, The Moviegoer, Walker Percy writes, “The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”
Protesting students are finally experiencing the search, which is, in many ways, what college should be about, even though it is heartbreaking to see so many wonderful leaders having to deal with horrific scenarios with no easy solutions.
If anyone wants to find the root of what made this the "worst year ever," it's not in the miniscule admit rates at elite colleges. Part of it, in addition to the litany of things we can all recite, is that we still haven't figured out how to be together after the ravages of the pandemic.
Each time I speak with a president I ask, What we can do to make your lives better? How can The Sandbox and the Insider program help leaders do what feels more and more like impossible jobs?
Most presidents say it helps to feel seen, to know that you're not the only one facing some of these issues, both big (racism, sexism, all the hate) and small (what to wear, faculty complaining about dust bunnies in their offices, no time to exercise).
And many say it's nice to have a little bit of snarky fun on Saturday mornings.
But when they get serious, they all also say exactly the same thing, and it's a complaint about media coverage of higher ed.
The work of traditional journalism is to shine a disinfectant light into the places shady people want to keep covered. That is essential. If you want a cheerleader, hiring a marketing firm.
But maybe, in the press of so much awful news to keep track of, we are losing something. When a president says, "Where are the good stories?" sometimes we can hear that as "Why aren't you writing about all the great things I've we've done?"
If the news media keeps beating you up, piling on with the naïve students (bless their hearts), the minority of aggrieved faculty (it's always the Angry Eight or the Furious Five who want to fight), the Masters of the Universe board members who know the way to run a business (fire them!), the donors who threaten to withhold their hundred bucks a year if you don't get to the Final Four, we will bear some of the responsibility for the tenure of a college president lasting just barely longer than the lifespan of a fruit fly.
We need good people to continue to want to lead in higher ed. How can we help?
