Wanted at Work: Take More Risks in College
Jeff Selingo
Bestselling author | Special Advisor to President, Arizona State U. | College admissions and early career expert | Contributor, The Atlantic | Angel investor | Editor, Next newsletter | Co-host, FutureU podcast
Innovation needs risk-taking as its fuel, but according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, workers are increasingly afraid to take chances on the job: “After years of high unemployment and scared from rounds of company cost-cutting and layoffs, managers say their workers seem to have become allergic to risk.”
A college campus should be the perfect place to teach risk-taking to the next generation of workers, but many of the gambles that colleges students take these days happen outside of the academic environment. We don’t create enough settings in college for students to fail, certainly to fail with grace (this is a problem across our education system, of course). Indeed, failure in college is largely seen in a negative light—it’s no wonder students don’t want to take risks when they get to the workplace.
What’s more, too many colleges see their role as training students for a specific job rather than helping them develop the broad skills to succeed in a career and in life. In such vocational programs, risk-taking is not inherent in the curriculum.
There are ways students can seek experiences in college where learning how to fail is a valued option. Here are three examples and a few campuses already providing such experiences:
A major research project
Working on a major research project with an unclear outcome is a great way to learn from failures. Studies over the years have found that undergraduate research stimulates critical thinking, gives students a better understanding of what they learned from a lecture, allows them to work in situations with uncertain results, and provides a sense of accomplishment.
Where it’s done: The College of Wooster in Ohio requires every student complete an undergraduate research project before graduation. At Worcester Polytechnic Institute, students are put through a rigorous project-based curriculum beginning in their first year.
Being put in unfamiliar situations
It used to be that when you went to college you were randomly paired up with roommates and had to share a common bathroom with an entire floor. For many us, dorm living was our first experience with learning how to get along with those different than us. Those experiences are lost on many students today as campuses increasingly offer semi-private living quarters and allow freshmen to select their roommates.
But opportunities still exist for undergraduates to be placed in unfamiliar situations. One of the best options is to study abroad, particularly in a country not frequented by Americans or where English is not the native language. “Culture shock” has a way of helping us quickly learn a language or find our way around.
Where it’s done: Goucher College in Maryland has required all of its students study abroad since 2006.
Focus on outcomes other than grades
Students don’t want to fail in college for a good reason: grades matter. Grades equal credits, credits equal graduation, and all are part of a student's permanent transcript. Grades also play an important role in keeping scholarships that allow students to even remain in college. But how credible are grades as a measure of success when the A is now the most common mark given out on campuses(it accounts for 43 percent of all grades). Grades should remain as a way to reward quality, but we also need other ways to assess learning that allows students to fail as they take risks.
Where it’s done: Westminster College in Utah requires its undergraduates build electronic portfolios. Think of them as personal Web pages that allow someone viewing the sites to see the work behind them, whether it’s a video, a paper, or an art exhibit.
At a time when colleges are trying to figure out how to better explain the value of their degrees, creating learning environments where their students can be creative, try things out, and on occasion fail without being penalized is a great way to differentiate their degree, and for students a great way to get a leg up in the marketplace that values taking risks.
Jeffrey Selingo is editor at large at The Chronicle of Higher Education and author of the forthcoming book, College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students, scheduled for release on May 7.
Sign up for updates on the book here and receive one of two free PDF workbooks, Making the College Decision or Colleges of the Future, a perfect way to get a head start on College (Un)Bound for students, parents, counselors, college leaders, and others.
Photo: Dudarev Mikhail/Shutterstock.com
Private Tutor at LINKZ, LLC Orton-Gillingham,Visualization and Verbalization trained, Paragraghology Trained
11 年Wow...I couldn't have read your articles at a better time. My oldest actually attends Ithaca but our middle daughter still has not committed to a college and it's been very stressful. Thanks for the great insight and words of wisdom!
Product Manager | Payment Credentials and Identity | Network Tokenization & Forward API Specialist
11 年please refer, clickswithlife.blogspot.com
Instrument Manager at California State University at Northridge
11 年Undergraduate education is complicated. I am not necessarily sure how to most effectively change the system to tailor to either Academia or Industry, but I have been asking around. I would like to say that this is a great article, but I would highlight a misconception that is commonly formed with undergraduate research. You highlighted the fact in this statement: "Working on a major research project with an unclear outcome is a great way to learn from failures. Studies over the years have found that undergraduate research stimulates critical thinking, gives students a better understanding of what they learned from a lecture, allows them to work in situations with uncertain results, and provides a sense of accomplishment." Typically, undergraduate students are challenged with a project that is engineered to get a response with a certain amount of research that will result with either an authorship--4th author, etc. Not all undergraduate research programs end with this result and I would be interested to find out how many undergraduates complete graduate school in the same research field as their undergraduate education. I would say that your statement more appropriate applies to a graduate student, or a post doc in some labs. Undergraduates do not handle failure in research very well and tend to understand that after a semester or two performing undergraduate research that there will be no return to research. Their plan was to use this experience in addition to building grades. I get to see this firsthand and time-and-time-again students do not understand the usefulness in failure. Furthermore, the utility of failing on a research project provides a definite path of investigation that is not worth pursuing on a particular project. Instead of using the word failure, one might be better served with the statement of "interesting results." This provides a further path of investigation along with determining (using knowledge from lecture/lab courses) why the results are not "linear" or perfect -- meaning I perform an action, I should get a result that is publishable and move on. Of course, all of this relies on the graduate students in the lab and the faculty/postdocs/staff in a given department to really hammer into an undergraduates head the true nature of a research failure---which is really an opportunity to advance scientific research by understanding the issues at hand. That is how one solves a problem and is exactly the lesson that Universities should be instilling in our undergraduates. Thank you for the article.
Consultant Clear Growth Marketing
12 年I’m not quite sure if one can unravel the link between risks and marks as being as closely linked as suggested, as an indication of students being risk adverse, as per one of the conclusion in Jeff’s article. When one reads though the research in this article on education https://business.time.com/2013/01/10/the-myth-of-the-4-year-college-degree/ which states less than 40% of students actually graduate in 4 years, while it takes 6 years for approximately the remaining 60% of students to graduate. These numbers would suggest to me there are a significant percentage of students who are taking risks and failing; many times via trial and error, switching majors and retaking courses to pass, on route to obtain their, costly, degree. I believe all this trial and error has exposed students to a great many uncomfortable situations. When students spend their own money; as well as their parents and obviously a significant contribution from government, they are taking a risk to obtain a degree, which is supposed to pay off for them vis-a-via those who did not obtain degrees. How much more risk oriented can we expect students to be than when they wager their own money on an education? The argument, presented by Jeff (which is worthy of a lots of opinions and research) reminds me of a somewhat famous story about how operations research came to the aid of the allied forces in World War II. See the first paragraph of this story Bullet Holes in Bombers. https://www.decisionanalyst.com/publ_art/BulletHolesinBombers.dai I would be inclined to say new graduates have very little chance of being allowed to take risks in the work environment early in their careers because the culture of the organization when they arrive. I believe our graduates of today are as ready and able to take risks as any generation and likely know how to do so with greater velocity and more cost effectively via leveraging social networking tools, internet promotions and crowdsourcing strategies etc. If existing management teams want risk taking and input perhaps all they need to do is ask a little more often in truthful and unambiguous ways.
Accounting and Finance/Business Management
12 年Most students choose to be risk averse in college or university. The rising cost in tuition fees have caused students to strive for excellent results, to be examination focused rather than to be knowledge focus. Failing meaning they will never get a job upon graduation and this has become a dilemma as many graduates have to bear credit card debts and/or bank loan debts in order to pay for their tuition fees while in college. Risk averse averse students prefer to be employed earning average salaries than unemployed. As a finance student while in university I like risk, strive for knowledge more than just getting the piece of paper. As the theory says, "the higher the risks, the higher would be be expected return." Nonetheless, it would be best if students could earn both. In many countries for example Nigeria where corruption is common corporations and government agencies use a 2 to 1 bachelor degree with honours as their benchmark in their recruitment process.