This week my oldest daughter went off to College at Michigan State University (my alma mater) – I stood in the doorway in my robe wishing her luck and hoping the day went well for her. She already graduated from high-school and has a two-year degree and full-time job – so it was a little weird to feel almost as nervous as the day she toddled off into Kindergarten.
After she left I was thinking about how she had chosen her school and the non-trivial part I played in her decision :). She got her two-year degree from Lansing Community College – I love LCC – I went to LCC and I have taught at LCC. LCC is a wonderful place for students to go after High School – it has structure in places and less structure in other places. The advisors and faculty are friendly and caring and the class sizes are small. There is inexpensive covered parking and many of the classes are in the building connected to the parking structure – all in all – a wonderful environment.
As she was finishing up her degree at LCC – the discussion turned to where she should continue her education. She had several places in mind – Ferris State University, Olivet College, and Western seemed like a good fit. She was particularly attracted to the 2+4 programs at Ferris – where they simply came to the LCC campus and taught the courses in the buildings she was already familiar with. Simple and effective – just keep going to the same, comfortable place, and a few years later – poof – out pops a four year degree – slick as a whistle.
She also had a high school friend who went straight to MSU and Amanda had heard horror stories about attending MSU – large classes – distracted instructors – long walks between buildings – expensive parking. So she really did not want to go to MSU – and in particular given the alternative of a few more years in the comfortable LCC building – why bother making it complex? Why take the risk?
But for me – even though I am fascinated with how we will learn “in the future” and the idea that you can take courses anywhere in the world – and do it all using technology at a distance. But somehow – all I could think of in the decision was bricks and mortar – and not just any bricks and mortar – I wanted her to go to the exact same bricks and mortar as I had gone to. Mom got her degree there as well and loved the place too. The physical location mattered – and to me it mattered a lot. The bricks and mortar were my single most important criteria – all of my discussion with Amanda was justifying *why* MSU was her best choice.
So she applied and got accepted to MSU (along with the other places she applied to) – she knew pretty much that once she was accepted to MSU – she was pretty much stuck going there – particularly if she ever wanted to have a conversation with me about college again :) She also knew that if she went to MSU she could get a Red Lobster dinner anytime she liked. She sold out to dad. I picked up her car payment while she goes to MSU. You get the picture… There are many rewards to be had by making dad happy…
So off she went on day one – a little excited and a little scared – and me a little excited and a little scared – you never want to force your child into doing something – they need to live their own life. I was afraid that it would go badly and then I would have been proven wrong – she would drop out and then go back to LCC and get a degree from Ferris.
So why the obsession with bricks and mortar? Probably because for me – going to college has had more impact on my life than anything else. I was the nerd picked last in High School – I had very few friends and never felt I fit in. In college at MSU – pretty much you needed to be smart to get in – so for the first time in my life – I met people like me – and I also met people like me that were more cool than me – so they showed me how I could be a more cool version of myself – without losing who I was.
Sure – I got a degree from MSU – but more importantly I got a personality – an approach to life and a set of life long friends – pretty much I grew up there.
I kept telling Amanda that the most important part of MSU was the people she would meet – the faculty and her fellow students – I told her that in many ways – you don’t pick a profession – it picks you. At a large university like MSU you can meet the future members of a profession and see if you like them. Frankly if you don’t like the kind of people who are in a profession – you should switch professions – and in college is the exact time to figure this out.
So what is necessary is some large and diverse population of bright people – all brought together around some bricks and mortar. Because the community that forms around the teaching and learning will have a far larger impact on your life than the actual material in a course – I know – I have taught college for years!
There is just no way to get this from a degree-in-a-box experience. The problem with a degree-in-the-box is that you are likely to start out pursuing the *completely wrong* degree – if you are stuck churning through the degree – you will never rub shoulders with someone who will show you where your rightful place in the world might be.
I came to MSU to be a Biology Teacher – in an honors Calculus Class I met a guy named Kirk Messmer – he said – “Chuck – you seem kind of bright – you might want to get a student consulting job in the computer center – it is where I work. It is fun and you don’t have to get dirty or clean dishes.” That changed my life forever in a wonderful way.
So as I watched my little girl driving off to school – I hoped that she would find her profession and that her profession would find her. When I wrote that first tuition check – at $1000 per class – it seemed like a bargain – given how much she was going to grow and how she would find her real profession and find her place in the real world as a result – the tuition was a small price to pay. I was paying for bricks and mortar and a learning community and a context – oh yes – some of the money went toward “learning”.
Luckily the first day went very well for her – her teachers were passionate and interesting and a bit nutty (no degree-in-a-box here) the students were interesting and by the end of the first day she was beginning to appreciate the value of something other than degree-in-a-box.
Lunch was a buzz of activity – long lines noise – kids from all over the world – finding their place in the learning community – hearing many languages (no degree-in-a-box here) and watching the Chinese students go around helping each other learn the ropes. In meeting the faculty and fellow students – she already had a strong visceral sense of what career in “K12 Education” is all about. She is excited – even the long walk was not so bad (I neglected to tell her about walking between classes in February).
So we got through the first day without her giving up and running back to the comfortable degree-in-a-box. Hopefully success will breed success and confidence will grow and she will stay at MSU long enough to get student hockey tickets that I can borrow if she does not want to use them!