Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/why-are-american-colleges-obsessed-with-leadership/283253/



Earlier this month, more than 700,000 students submitted the Common Application for college admissions. They sent along academic transcripts and SAT scores, along with attestations of athletic or artistic success and—largely uniform—bodies of evidence speaking to more nebulously-defined characteristics: qualities like—to quote the Harvard admissions website—“maturity, character, leadership, self-confidence, warmth of personality, sense of humor, energy, concern for others and grace under pressure.”

Why are American colleges so interested in leadership? On the Harvard admissions website quoted above, leadership is listed third: just after two more self-evident qualities. So too the Yale website, which quotes former Yale president Kingman Brewer's assessment that “We have to make the hunchy judgment as to whether or not with Yale’s help the candidate is likely to be a leader in whatever he [or she] ends up doing.” Our goals remain the same today” before going on to stress that “We are looking for students we can help to become the leaders of their generation in whatever they wish to pursue.”

The language of Princeton dean Janet Lavin Rapeleye in The New York Times is strikingly similar: “We look for qualities that will help [students] become leaders in their fields and in their communities.” (So too Princeton's admissions website, which lists leadership prominently in its section on extracurriculars: “We look for students who make a difference in their schools and communities, so tell us about your leadership activities, interests, special skills and other extracurricular involvements.”) In his study The Gatekeepers, Jacques Steinberg describes how the admissions officers at Wesleyan scored the “personal” section of an applicant's portfolio: “A 9 [out of 9] at Wesleyan...someone 'sure to “have significant impact on campus in leadership roles”; a 7 or 6 would be assigned to someone who was “likely to be a leader in some areas, contributor to many.”

Leadership alone rarely makes or breaks an application, says Emmi Harward, director of college counseling at The Bishop's School in La Jolla, California and the Executive Director of the Association College Counselors in Independent Schools. But, she says, “Not only does leadership distinguish a student in a competitive applicant pool from other students ([compare] a student body president to someone who has spent four years just going home and doing their homework) but also serves to foreshadow the impact the student could make on the college/university campus, and the potential impact they could make once they graduate.”

[Skidmore]

1. Goes hand in hand with the business community's insistence on

productivity as a measure of the worth of human endeavor, even in times of crises. I swear, if I hear one more item on the news about how some weather event, disaster, or some other happening which impacts people outside of the world of work measured in terms of lost productivity, I'm going to scream. Leadership means you are a candidate to whip the unwashed masses into great productivity.

[xchrom]

2. +1

[get the red out]

3. Agree

I am sick of hearing the word "Leadership" at this point. Disgusting way to judge people. I wish we valued "community" over "leadership".

[GeorgeGist]

4. Tune in next week for:

Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'maturity'?

[bemildred]

5. It is a shibboleth used to justify power in the hands of the well-off but incompetent. nt

[Orrex]

11. Shibboleth always conjures an image of an HP Lovecraft monster...

[bemildred]

12. Something by A. Merritt perhaps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwellers_in_the_Mirage

[Fumesucker]

6. More likely to make big donations as alumni n/t

[no_hypocrisy]

7. It depends.

I attended and graduated from Sweet Briar College, independent all women.

They called their mission as leadership but what it offered was women taking risks and responsibility with innovative ideas. A lot of women had followed others or just watched from the sidelines. I founded the campus radio station after creating the proposal and justifying its existence in the budget.

I wasn't groomed to be a leader but I took advantage of opportunities. I suppose this also would be the case for others (unless there are specific courses on how to be a leader).

[pipoman]

8. leadership leads to bios of the leader

Giving the school someone to point to as a successful graduate of their program resulting in better quality applicants.

My bio isn't on my company website, the CEO'S is however.

[NuclearDem]

9. IWU turned me into a duck.

[tammywammy]

10. Interesting article.

While recognizing leadership is important, not everyone is a leader nor desires to be one. Managers or followers are very important to all organizations. Leaders and their organizations only survive if there are managers to implement the vision and mission. Schools hopefully will recognize the importance of all types of people, and there's nothing wrong with not being a leader.

I also think people individually get too caught up in the notion of being a leader and that it's used a lot to mean managers. Even where I work there's "leadership development", but what they really mean is "manager development". Personally, I am not a leader, but I'm an excellent manager.

[KurtNYC]

13. Likely: it just sounds good. College is about Brand now -- football teams, image, logos

They are selling you their name to put on your resume. They are selling the student their brand and they are playing on the experience that the child's parents had in college. Traditions, scrolls of paper and goofy black hats. That they want "leaders" coming in the door implies that they don't seek to make students into leaders, only that they want to claim the later success of these kids, if any, as part of the brand that they then turn around and sell to the next generation of diploma fodder.

I liked the article's discussion of the british system and it is exploration of "other potential roles: that of a “natural follower,” a “natural team player,” a “natural lone wolf.” Some of which begs the question: How is a grown child, who spent the last 14 years in heirarchiacal institutions of learning, expected in any way to have been a "leader" during that time? Wasn't their role to be a learner and follower and team player? What would a true 19 year-old leader look like? Alexander the Great ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great#King_of_Macedon