
Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'? - krstck
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/why-are-american-colleges-obsessed-with-leadership/283253/
======
brianchu
I currently attend UC Berkeley and graduated from a fairly affluent top US
high school a few years ago. Meaning: everyone was very concerned (I won't say
obsessed) about college admissions.

This focus on leadership in admissions is very well known, and manifests
itself conspicuously in competitive high schools. There's a considerable
amount of unspoken pressure to get "leadership" positions in school clubs, do
"leadership" activities in community service, do varsity sports or other
leadership in sports, and participate in ranked competitions. The list goes on
and on. This breeds a lot of cynicism about people's motivations, especially
as people try to game the system (with empty leadership positions). What
starts to happen is that when people hear about a high schooler who goes off
and founds a non-profit and does work in Africa (or something like that),
people start to wonder whether that person did it just to improve their
admissions chances. The sad part is that this person could very well be
genuine.

EDIT (reply to below): Sometimes those people are college admissions officers.
I'm in college now, so I don't worry much about that stuff anymore. I just
recognize that the system is screwed up.

~~~
learc83
I won an award for the highest SAT score in my graduating class. They gave out
the award at a combined ceremony for every school in the county, and it wasn't
until the first student started talking that I realized I had to make a
speech.

While I was scribbling notes on a napkin about maybe wanting to go to law
school, the other recipients talked about charity trips to Africa, food
drives, and saving the planet--I was pretty intimidated.

I ended up just winging it, and after it was over I got business cards from
several people who told me that mine was the only speech that didn't bore them
to tears.

Later on, nearly the exact same thing happened in a group interview for a
scholarship I was applying for. The other kids were parroting what they
thought the interviewers wanted to hear, and every time they were asked a
question they'd try to bring the subject back to something wonderful they'd
done. It sounded like they'd spent their entire time at school ticking off
boxes on some leadership actives checklist. I didn't have any of those
activities to fall back on, so I just treated the whole thing like a casual
chat. I ended up winning the scholarship.

Apparently it's pretty clear when high school kids are just padding their
resume with "leadership" activities.

------
ACow_Adonis
Well, its a social signal isn't it.

Take a job interview at an investment bank. It is incredibly important, if you
want to get the job, that you simultaneously deny being primarily motivated by
money, power, and status, while sending the social signal that you are in fact
primarily motivated by money, power and status. If you weren't, you're
probably making a mistake applying for a job at an investment bank (although I
believe the joke about someone writing on their resume/cv/cover letter about
their "lifelong passion for taxation/equities/super funds" did the rounds a
few years ago).

So you get your extra-curriculars/interests/academic quals to do the dance
about how well a rounded person you are, but simultaneously you must wear the
right clothes, drop the right names, read the right things, follow the right
topics, and say the right words to strongly signal that your main motivators
are in fact money, power and status and that you accept that. And if, god
forbid, you're ever asked the question outright, you must find a way to
explicitly deny it, while sending the subtle message that is completely the
opposite.

Similarly, what are colleges selling/interviewing for? Well it sure as hell
isn't skills or merit, because most rich people didn't use skills or merit
they got from university to get rich, and many of them could be gotten at a
similar standard for a far cheaper price.

God no.

Connections. Power. Links. And the hunger for doing what is required for more
of it.

And that's what "leadership" signals. That you care about it. That you want
it. That you'll be surrounded by others who think and want the same.

That's what elite universities are selling.

As for the rest, well, that's probably just regular human imitation/cargo-cult
mentality. It seems almost second nature for humans to mindlessly try to
imitate those they find socially powerful.

~~~
zaraflan
Yep, it's a social status dogwhistle, just like requiring college degrees for
jobs where it is in no way relevant.

There's also a significant racial component to it. It's not a coincidence that
top power-broking universities have moved sharply away from objective towards
subjective metrics and increased the percentage of legacy admissions at the
same time that increased access for minorities has been sought.

------
crazygringo
> _But the implicit message behind the rhetoric of leadership in the American
> college admissions is that intellectualism alone is not enough, even for an
> academic institution. Simply learning for learning 's sake is not enough._

Implicit? I'd say it's pretty explicit. Harvard, Yale, etc. aren't trying to
be "normal" colleges, they're _explicitly_ trying to produce the next
generation of world leaders. Admissions make very clear that
intellectualism/learning on its own is not enough.

And rhetoric? It's reality. Our most recent 6 terms of presidents, and 9 out
of 9 current Supreme Court justices, all have degrees from Harvard or Yale. So
the whole leadership thing appears to be working, whether or not you think
that's a good thing.

I don't think Harvard, Yale, or anybody else is arguing that most colleges
need to, or should, focus on leadership. But they're certainly within their
rights to want to -- it's one of the things that makes Harvard and Yale what
they are.

~~~
Crito
With Yale or Harvard it makes perfect sense to emphasis leadership.
Emphasizing leadership skills for STEM students at engineering schools? That
makes less sense. Emphasizing leadership skills for developers at West Coast
tech companies? Now we're just getting silly... Sure leadership _plays a role_
in what I do, but I wouldn't rate it in the top 5 important skills.

As an example, to help myself get into college I was in the boy scouts and got
eagle scout (that was the only reason, I hated it.) The idea there was that by
teaching other kids how to use an axe without dismembering themselves, I
demonstrated leadership skills that would prove valuable in computer
science... Of course that is rubbish, that stuff doesn't even have anything to
do with leadership, it is just going through the motions. Paying lip service
to the idea of leadership because the _idea_ of leadership, not actual
leadership, is something that we are all addicted to.

I've gotten use to it though. My personal theory? Leaders overemphasis the
importance of everyone being a leader. Just as tech people get behind _"
everyone should be a coder"_ initiatives, leaders get behind _" everyone
should be a leader"_ initiatives.

~~~
dubfan
I always detested this empty "leadership" concept and I actively avoided doing
anything like that in high school. I was lucky enough to get into my top
choice of universities despite this. Today, I don't think I would be able to
do that, and I only graduated high school 10 years ago.

~~~
aet
Easy enough -- just found a new club -- make your group of friends the
"executive leadership team" \-- then make the entire high school honorary
members. You now lead the largest club. Woo! admitted

------
amtab
It's easy to say that the American college admissions game relies on strange
and difficult to quantify criteria, especially at top schools. The more
interesting aspect is the comparison to the UK and other high quality European
universities. As a student at a "prestigious" American college, I find it
strange how little the lone wolf mentality is encouraged. In graduate
programs, the most successful students are almost always lone wolves in many
ways, since leadership ability doesn't get you very far with pure science or
truly original ideas.

I wonder what the impact would be if American universities used Oxford /
Cambridge as a model instead of whatever they're doing now.

------
geophile
Better question: Why are Americans obsessed with 'leadership'? With leadership
defined as being charismatic and influential, not necessarily wise, correct,
or even logical.

I think a large part of the answer has to do with the belief that if you lead
a group of people who do X, then within that group you must be the best at
doing X. Which is puzzling, because everyone who has ever had a mediocre boss
knows this to be false.

~~~
grimtrigger
Leadership is power, and people love power. I don't think its an American
condition, though it certainly manifests itself here quite loudly.

~~~
geophile
I agree completely, which is why I didn't generalize further.

------
AnimalMuppet
Institutional pride/snobbery? "We don't just admit smart people. (The really
smart ones go to MIT, not here.) No, we admit _leaders_! That's how you know
that we're more elite even than MIT!"

~~~
gumby
I don't remember MIT caring much about "leadership" when I attended back in
the 80s but I do remember being contacted by the institute in part because
they wondered why MIT folks worked at and founded some major companies yet
were almost never the CEO (and thus the big financial gifts went elsewhere).

I will say that back then MIT was pretty _anti_ -entrepreneurial; policy was
more important (which makes sense when you think about how MIT functioned, and
still functions). That seems to have changed somewhat.

------
hkmurakami
This made me remember that the business school I was at had enough leadership
positions in the student clubs to accomodate something like 70% of the student
population.

It was basically a joke, hahaha.

~~~
Einstalbert
Considering our leaders in America, I think it being a joke fits right in
line.

------
001sky
Consider a degree like a widget that is a trust metric. If you want to extract
the highest price for your widget, you sell your product to the market with
the deepest pockets. That in a nutshell seems to explain why university
education is pitched to the 1%.

------
calibraxis
Presumably managerialism? Structural analysis of universities is obviously
relevant. As well as their function in the economy.

------
rayiner
Are they particularly? They lead with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, extremely
elite schools that produce a large portion of the country's leaders. How many
CEOs have one of these schools or Stanford on their resume? It is in the
interest of these schools to cultivate these people.

Outside this elite circle, I'm not sure the premise is true. I went to a state
school, and leadership was never a big concern. Much more so teamwork.

------
stonemetal
It seems like the US has a fascination with leadership. I remember when I was
in college and going to meet and greets held by companies on campus all I ever
heard is that they were looking for leaders. Never smart or hard working, just
leaders. So it isn't just colleges it is the whole culture.

------
CurtMonash
The only thing that sounds at all wrong here is the conflation of leadership
with authority.

Way back in the 1970s, I observed that a lot of universities were focused on
training leaders. I was at Harvard at the time, and they didn't much care
whether you wound up as a leader in scholarship, politics, business or
whatever; but they assumed they were training some kind of leader.

The case was even more extreme in other countries. Tokyo University was
obviously in the business of training its country's leaders. Poorer countries
had their one-best-university with a similar charter. France had its Ecoles
Normale.

And by the way -- notwithstanding what the article writer says, a lot of the
UK's leadership does come from Oxbridge.

------
bgilroy26
"A" people hire "A" people.

~~~
vacri
There's a theory that new world European colonies tend to be more socially
dynamic because it's more likely that an "A" will migrate from the home
country than a "B", so you get more "A"s overall, which affects the general
culture.

I'm not sure if I believe it or think that the premise of social dynamism is
that simple, but it's an interesting idea.

~~~
bgilroy26
This is a barstool conversation topic I enjoy. To my mind, the traits that you
would expect in immigrants to the "new world" would be a mix of positive and
negative ones.

The way I see it, if I were successful back in the old country, I would not
move. If I were unambitious in the old country, I would not move. But there
you have it.

------
hans
why is the tech industry obsessed with 'entrepreneurship' ?

------
elag
Typical Oxford defeatism. They simply don't understand that in America
everyone can be above average.

~~~
aet
At Harvard, the most occurring grade is A

[http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/3/grade-
inflation-...](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/3/grade-inflation-
mode-a/)

~~~
elag
Of course. Everyone there's best. (Cheers).

------
jayvanguard
Choice quote:

"People who can climb the greasy pole of whatever hierarchy they decide to
attach themselves to."

------
clavalle
Americans colleges are obsessed with leadership because it is one of the
United States' main exports and profit centers.

Look at Silicon Valley. What is the whole phenomena of technical innovation
about if not leadership?

------
spiritplumber
This explains why Americans look at me like I just ate a bug when I tell them
that I'm not interested in leadership, at best I can be interested in
teaching, but my main work focus is making things.

------
TwoBit
You all have it wrong. Universities are obsessed with leadership because those
kinds of people are the ones that will donate to the school later.

------
ulfw
Because everyone in America believes they have a chance to be a leader
someday. Better to believe in the dream than to be disgruntled I suppose.

------
Bahamut
These schools are not perfect at identifying candidates, just as with any
process involving people currently.

I view that more as a problem than anything else.

------
erobbins
those of us in the lone wolf camp get pushed aside a lot, and generally have
to create our own opportunities.. which suits us just fine :)

------
michaelochurch
Most of that shit was designed (originally) with racist intent. I don't think
modern admissions committees are racist; at this point, it's more of a "how
things were always done" dynamic, and it's taken for granted that nonacademic
factors should have a huge influence over college admissions. (One problem is
that grade point averages aren't standardized and the SATs don't go high
enough for as competitive as college admissions are. The bullshit gets such a
high weight because _so many_ students are 2400/valedictorians, now that
admissions are a national pool with many students submitting 20+
applications.)

Admissions tests (such as the SATs) made college admissions "too" meritocratic
in the 1920s-30s and prep-school boys started losing spots to ethnically
diverse applicants from public schools. For example, student bodies went from
0-3% to 20-25% Jewish in a year. Many of the professors and administrators
welcomed the change (the quality of students improved) but wealthy donors went
into race panic and demanded that WASP-biased extracurricular factors (what
would be called "pattern matching" in modern VC-istan) be injected back into
the process.

~~~
maxerickson
College Board publishes test results:

[http://research.collegeboard.org/content/sat-data-
tables](http://research.collegeboard.org/content/sat-data-tables)

This is the interesting one for this question:

[http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/S...](http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-
Percentile-Ranks-Composite-CR-M-W-2013.pdf)

494 students scored a 2400 in 2013.

~8,300 students scored better than 2300, the tippy top of the 99th percentile.

So SAT scores might not be serving the most selective institutions, but what
about the thousands and thousands of spots available at what are reasonably
called good schools?

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goggles99
It's been quite obvious for some time that learning institutions (especially
at the university level) have an ever stronger left leaning political and
cultural agenda. Who better to indoctrinate to push their agenda than future
leaders?

These "wise fools" will be the ruin of us all.

------
kimonos
Because those who take leadership roles will eventually become efficient
employees..

