Common College App Should Encourage Entrepreneurialism, Not Narcissism

In a recent essay Naomi Riley, author of Faculty Lounges, pointed out the absurdity of the essay questions that many high school seniors have to submit as part of their application to colleges and universities.  Indeed, Ms. Riley rightly suggests that the ego-centric focus of the questions on the ubiquitous Common Application, a utility that many schools use, is reflective of a well established culture in high schools, now enforced in colleges, that encourages a view that individual identity is all important.  It is no wonder that a recent poll finds that a majority of college students think they are way above average.

If one manages, using Facebook and other social media, to establish celebrity status, however restricted the province in which it is achieved, pre-college adolescents come to believe the world has deemed them somehow accomplished.  Narcissism is the result of a theorem of social engagement that sees successfully establishing a unique identity as the goal of life.  The achievement of objectively important things that are judged important because they advance the welfare of others – seems a terribly old fashioned, outdated and irrelevant way to order one’s life.  Beyoncé bests Ben Carson!

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Thus, aspiring entrants are asked to write about, among other things, how something they have done has changed the world!  Anticipating such questions, and either affirming the values that are presumed to underlie them or knowing that their students have to play this game to successfully apply to college, something on the order of 80 percent of school districts require students to do “community service” projects as a condition for graduation.  In seven states and the District of Columbia community service is required for graduation by law!  These projects are seen as providing an experience that can be rendered in five paragraphs as a life-changing episode that distinguishes the applicant in the eyes of college admissions officers.  (One wonders what would happen to the thoughtful student essay that weighed these legally imposed obligations to community against the traditional duties of charity, voluntary service and civic obligation?)

Given that getting into college no longer brings with it the expectation of a good job in an economy that is starting to appear as if it discriminates against too much education in entry-level positions, maybe an alternative question should be substituted.  Why not ask aspiring students if they ever started a business, worked in a new business, know an entrepreneur, or might themselves want to create a new business?  This simple change or addition to the required essays could be the first great lesson colleges might teach.

For one, it might cause students to think that their role in the economy is more up to them to make than for their college education to preordain.  Increasingly, in an economy that is changing in profound ways not the least of which is that productivity in all industries is reducing the demand for even highly trained labor, everyone will be more and more responsible for the opportunities they can make.  Perhaps the most successful applicants will write that their goal is to “make a job, not take a job.”  Come to think about it, the phrase has a faint community service ring to it.  Maybe existing jobs should go to those who can’t make their own.

Second, it would force high school students to consider that perhaps business is not such a bad career choice.  In fact 90 percent of graduates work in the private sector.  Surely they are creative people who have dreams of changing the world for the better.  And, can anyone say that working at Apple or Genentech, or Johnson and Johnson is not changing the world for the better?

Speaking of making jobs, a third benefit comes to mind.  Most of the new jobs made in America are in new firms.  About eighty percent of all new jobs are found in firms less than five years old.  So could it just be that entrepreneurs are doing the very best community service?  What does a phi beta kappa graduate starting an all night basketball league accomplish that is somehow more beneficial to society than the “B-“ graduate who undertakes the risk of starting a company that brings a needed new product to the world, and in the course of doing so gives ten unemployed people jobs that never before existed?  With employment these people can go on to earn dignity and support families and help break the cycle of poverty.

Finally, if colleges required students to write about their entrepreneurial aspirations, maybe high schools and universities might learn something about how to structure education in ways that really improve what students learn and need to learn.  The college that sets its sights on helping more of its graduates start businesses that can help the society become more robust economically might think twice about developing courses in any number of fields where students will never find meaningful work; teaching high school seniors how to write their community service essays being one.

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