Halting The Rat Race To Nowhere

Why Trading Our Zero-Sum Education System For A Positive-Sum One Could Benefit All Learners And Society

In our book Choosing College, we discovered that many students choose the college they do with the primary purpose of getting into their best school. If that sounds circular, it’s because in many respects it is.

These students’ driving motivations are much more about getting into college for its own sake, less about what college will help them do or attain. They are swayed by everything from the opportunity to have the “classic college” experience on a beautiful brick-and-mortar campus to the opportunity to reinvent themselves among new people at a prestigious place that is highly regarded. They view college as simply the next logical step on their journey and as a benefit they are entitled to—not the investment on which many parts of society think prospective students ought to evaluate their decision.

This wasn’t a new discovery per se. Others have pointed to it—as well as the challenges it creates for individuals and families. 

As Harvard Professor Michael Sandel recently told the Chronicle for Higher Education:

Our credentialing function is beginning to crowd out our educational function. Students win admission to [exclusive institutions] by converting their teenage years—or their parents converting their teenage years—into a stress-strewn gauntlet of meritocratic striving. That inculcates intense pressure for achievement. So even the winners in the meritocratic competition are wounded by it, because they become so accustomed to accumulating achievements and credentials, so accustomed to jumping through hoops and pleasing their parents and teachers and coaches and admissions committees, that the habit of hoop-jumping becomes difficult to break. By the time they arrive in college, many find it difficult to step back and reflect on what’s worth caring about, on what they truly would love to study and learn.

Part of what causes people to pursue education to get into Job is our zero-sum education system, in which for every winner, there is also a loser—from exclusive higher education admissions to when we grade on a curve instead of assessing mastery. 

But what if the conditions changed and we moved from a zero-sum system to a positive-sum one? That’s the question that Todd Rose, bestselling author of The End of Average, posed to us during our first season of Class Disrupted and that I took up in my latest piece for Forbes. As he observed, one of Adam Smith’s central insights in 1700s was that “the mercantilist idea of zero-sum economies was just fatally wrong” and that society should instead create the correct conditions in which self-interest could create positive-sum outcomes.

Rose said we ought to strive for such a change in education. If we successfully accomplished such a transition, my sense is that the “Help me get into my best school” Job to Be Done we discovered would change.

Yes, it’s true that although people’s behaviors can change rapidly, it’s hard to change the fundamental Jobs to Be Done people have. Jobs like “Help me get into my best school” are sticky.

But we’ve also found that Jobs to Be Done are context and circumstance specific. If the fundamental conditions—or underlying system—change, then perhaps a new Job to Be Done might emerge for which students hired higher education.

Read my latest in Forbes, “Creating A Positive Sum Education System Could Stop Students From Running A Rat Race To Nowhere,” for more on my thinking.

Podcast corner

Speaking of Class Disrupted, Diane and I released two new episodes I recommend on hot-button topics. Listen for our takes on:

1.     Should There Be In-Person Sports When Schools Are Remote?

2.     The Fires Burning Behind the SAT and Patriotic Education

And on Future U, Jeff Selingo and I interviewed Southern New Hampshire University’s president Paul LeBlanc. Among the largest higher education institutions in the world, SNHU has grown over the last decade through its innovation. You’ll want to check out Paul’s comments on the perilous state of higher education and what Covid-19 will and won’t accelerate, on our latest episode of Future U here.

Finally, I appeared on two other podcasts in the past couple weeks. On The Disruptive Voice, I got to geek out with Christopher Diak from The Forum for Growth and Innovation at The Harvard Business School on theories of innovation of what’s ailing higher education, our own learning pod, and what might create more lasting change in education. And on MarketScale, I spoke about how strategic investment in employee education pays off for employers—and why serving working adult learners is imperative for academic institutions as well. Have a listen.

Quote I’m Pondering

It’s no secret I’ve been frustrated that many schools didn’t focus more on creating a compelling learning experience for students over the summer.

In a conversation I had with Joel Kupperstein, head of curriculum for Age of Learning, the company behind ABC Mouse, he offered a thought as to why educators have struggled to adjust in a time of Covid—even for those who were using a lot of technology and personalizing the learning in their classrooms beforehand—that reminded me to keep empathy at the forefront as we try to understand why anyone takes the actions they do (you can watch the full conversation here):

It's such a drastic transition. When you think about the physical classroom, what you were describing in an app world, teachers have done in the physical world forever and ever and ever. They know the things they want to use to teach a particular topic and like a great chef, they have their mise en place set up and they move around and grab things, and their moves are almost balletic the way they can set up their lesson and then they know what it’s going to look like for every learning objective and the great ones know how to modify it based on what kids are getting and what they're not getting and how to attend to specific needs of kids. But they’re grooved into some of these things that they trust. …

Think about the paradigm shift for classroom teachers. I mean, you’re ingrained in the way you move around your classroom and the way you think about delivering instruction practice and assessment to your kids and suddenly, that is shifted 100% in a different direction, and that paradigm is now totally different for you.

Thanks for reading, listening, and writing.