The best graduation speeches, remaking the SAT, and more insights from Kenyon College President Sean Decatur

Happy Sunday from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. I’m Sean Decatur, Kenyon’s president since 2013, and I’m your guest editor today. During the week, the Daily Rundown brings you the day’s trending professional news. On the weekend, we try to keep you current on the big ideas that can help you see what’s coming. Read on and join the conversation.

A college acceptance letter isn’t always a golden ticket: Access to higher education is an urgent national conversation, but in many ways, inclusion in campus culture presents a greater challenge. Anthony Abraham Jack’s new book, “The Privileged Poor,” illustrates how differences in socioeconomic class affect how one navigates college: Students from an under-resourced high school might understand “office hours” differently than those from top-tier prep schools, and food insecurity can disproportionately harm low-income students’ GPAs. How can we address this issue? We can continue to diversify campuses and raise awareness of students’ experiences. ? Read more here.

A season of change: On Saturday, Kenyon celebrated its 191st Commencement. As The New York Times’ David Brooks recently noted, rituals such as graduation ceremonies “encourage you to be more intentional about life,” and I find that the best commencement speeches inspire the same goal: to pause and reflect before moving forward into life’s next chapter. In his famous 2005 Kenyon address, David Foster Wallace reflects on the importance of knowing our life’s context: that “the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.” ? Explore more top graduation speeches here, via NPR.

What stands in the way of academic success? Much attention has been paid to the recent college admissions scandal and the myriad ways in which wealth has an outsized influence on how students prepare for and access higher education. Some students even encounter obstacles in trying to access a standardized test. Last year, less than 15% of Puerto Rico’s high school seniors took the SAT. For students who do have access to the SAT, new changes that add an “adversity score” to the test may help schools identify socioeconomic disadvantages. ? Here’s what people are saying.

Fixing the ‘leaky pipeline’: In more than a dozen academic fields in 2017, not a single doctoral degree was awarded to a black person, The Atlantic reports. Campuses are strengthened by the diversity of students and employees, and doctoral programs are crucial to joining a faculty. How can we change this stubborn issue? As the American Council on Education’s Lorelle Espinosa notes, “Research, exposure and experience for undergraduates is a huge predictor of success in research careers.” And it’s the job of all faculty, not just those of color, to support black students. ? Read more here.

A ‘campaign’ to watch: The role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons is experiencing a surge in popularity (much to my personal delight). Its parent company reported that 2017 was its biggest sales year in 20 years — until 2018, when sales jumped 30%. What do people find so appealing about this game? For me, this engagement in play exercises creativity, imagination and problem-solving skills, and it offers an irresistible freedom to experiment with one’s identity and try on new roles. For some, D&D even has therapeutic benefits. ? Here’s what people are saying.

One last idea: All too often, we focus on higher education as a means to an end, typically a job or career. But this focus on the transactional outcome of college detracts from the higher purpose of education: to transform not only the individual, but also the communities to which they belong. As Adam Grant notes, we might benefit by placing more focus not on who we are as workers, but who we are as people living together in a shared world.

“Asking kids what they want to be leads them to claim a career identity they might never want to earn. Instead, invite them to think about what kind of person they want to be — and about all the different things they might want to do.”

— Sean Decatur