As I write this,
our seniors are immersed in the college application process and their teachers
are being inundated with requests for recommendations. Conversations about
whether a particular college is a “Common Application” school and “Do you want
me to submit the recommendation through Naviance?” opens up the brave new world
of technology as it applies to the college admissions process. The bulk of
their recommendations will be written by their teachers and college counselors;
but every year, two or three seniors will, for a variety of reasons, want a
recommendation from the School’s President. I don’t mind; it keeps me involved
in their lives as students and aware of how their high school career has
prepared them for college and beyond.
Plus, having taught English in a previous life - two or three
recommendations a year is a light load!
The college
application process is probably the most intellectually and emotionally
draining experience of the four years teenagers will spend in high school. It
is so stressful that, just shy of ten years ago, La Salle launched “Camp
College,” a week-long program during the summer between junior and senior year
in which students devote their time to the identification of colleges that
represent a good “fit” for them (along with, what our College Counselors call,
“safety” and “stretch” schools) and drafting the all-important college essay.
Needless to say, Camp
College fills up fast.
With nearly a
third of our students earning a 4.0 GPA each semester of attendance (with similarly
impressive performances at the 3.5 and 3.0 marks), I know our graduates will
enroll in selective and competitive colleges and universities. The performance of the Class of 2014
illustrates my point: 30 students matriculated at a UC campus (six students
headed off to UCLA) with another 24 attending CSU.
Private colleges and universities enrolling members of the Class of 2014
included: Brown, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, University of Chicago
and Notre Dame. The University of Michigan,
Ohio State, Purdue, VPI,
Oregon, Indiana (Bloomington) and LSU
represented some of the competitive out-of-state public institutions who
received members of the Class of 2014. I’m not surprised by these results; over
60% of the Class of 2014 earned Honors at Commencement - the highest it’s been
in five years.
We are
particularly proud of Renaissance Forster ‘14 and Elizabeth Lynch ’14 who
achieved the rare accomplishment of being admitted to West
Point - from the same
school (less than 30% of military academy nominations will be admitted). I
can’t resist the temptation to make the point that Renaissance and Elizabeth
highlight my firm conviction that La Salle, a
coeducational school, can nurture leadership skills in young women as
successfully as our single-gender counterparts assert.
Still, these
impressive results beg the central question about higher education in the 21st
Century: to what end? Is a college or university education meant to be the
capstone of 16 years of formal education, rounding out a student’s knowledge
and honing in on a particular area of study called a “major?” Or is its purpose
to ground a student in the rigors of a professional discipline that will
provide access to employment after graduation?
Like many
educators, I would argue for both outcomes. Higher education has always
concerned itself with the education of both the mind and the person. It is a false dichotomy to argue that one
should take precedence over the other. I favor the perspective of Harvard
Professor and cultural critic, Louis Menand (he hails from my home town in
upstate New York),
who captured the problem of confusing higher education with employability when
he recently asserted:
“Education is about personal and intellectual growth, not about winning
some race to the top.”
And yet, college students today
are “voting with their feet;” they are choosing majors and concentrations that
align themselves with the utilitarian end of higher education. The Pew Survey (2013)
of higher education reports that 60% of college students are not liberal arts
majors; the #1 major is business and more than twice as many degrees are
awarded in parks, recreation, leisure and fitness than in philosophy and
religion. This isn’t to suggest that these trends are misguided, just that they
are incomplete with respect to what college preparatory schools like La Salle aspire for their graduates.
The
quality of college placements earned by the Class of 2014 suggests that our
students leave La Salle knowing that both the
mind and the person must be stretched over the course of the next four years. I
believe their four years at La Salle have
prepared them for what the Pew survey also reports - which is that the vast
majority of graduates from a four-year institution say their college education
helped them grow intellectually and to mature as a person. In other words,
college may teach students as much about getting along with people as it does
about analyzing Shakespeare’s sonnets (or mastering a spreadsheet).
Our recent Annual Report highlights our successful Advanced Placement program - a critical
element in providing our most talented students with a college-level academic
program which nurtures their ability to interpret, synthesize, and use evidence
found within a wide range of sources. This is the essence of a college-preparatory
education and our AP and Honors curriculum is available to any student willing
to challenge his/her ability to stretch their minds under the tutelage of
extraordinarily talented educators.
This
is why I look forward to the opportunity to write letters of recommendation for
those seniors who request it. I know that their academic preparation, active
involvement in and out of the classroom, on and off the field has enabled them
to approach the college application process with confidence that they will
successfully meet the challenges they will face in the next chapter of their
academic career.
