Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'? | Hacker News Reader

Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

theatlantic.com

49 pointskrstck54 comments

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.

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.

I found this very frustrating in High School. It ruined clubs because people weren't interested in the club, just the resume.

...It's such great leadership to get yourself elected leader of the club that doesn't do anything because you're too busy being a "leader." No doubt said "leadership" provided some compelling anecdote for an entrance essay...

The whole approach to 'leadership' taken these days where it's almost a subject itself is so frustrating and at odds with the whole idea.

I saw exactly this situation in high school. I went to a prep school, so there was definitely explicit pressure to do things that look good for college.

Two of my classmates put together the "Dollars for Darfur" program, which became a relatively big deal. They spoke in front of congress, appeared on some morning shows, etc.

Sometimes it was honestly hard to have a conversation about the program that didn't involve some cynical "and this'll look really good on their college application" type of stuff. Which is true, it's an impressive project and I'm sure it boosted their changes, but it was always sad to me that people questioned their motives. Definitely a combination of jealousy and cynicism.

People have multiple motivations for doing good things. There are the public ones, which they tell others about, and the private ones, which they tell only to their closest associates if at all. People are complicated.

But since the good things get done, does it really matter if the motives weren't 100% pure?

And plenty of evil is done in this world by people with the best of intentions. (My father once said he'd rather have a crook as President than an idealist. The crook would do a lot less damage.)

Very interesting observation. It's very similar to work resumes in that it's very difficult to tell which positions a candidate had which meant anything.

yeah that kid doesn't really give much of a damn whether you thought his experience was genuine:)

That's basically what happened in my religious youth group in high school. I ended up "Executive Vice President", which basically amounted to being "One of the three people who actually shows up to every single meeting and goes to the retreats", because when we actually held elections, suddenly another four people show up and vote themselves the leadership positions.

And they were never seen again.

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.

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.

> 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.

>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 think this has quite a bit more to do with the good ol' boy network and less to do with Yale's ability to produce leaders.

> I think this has quite a bit more to do with the good ol' boy network and less to do with Yale's ability to produce leaders.

But the GOBN is part of leadership. I don't mean this sarcastically and, though I started to write that sentence with "unfortunately" I took that word out since I am not sure whether it's unfortunate or not -- even though I am not a GOB myself.

>But the GOBN is part of leadership.

Are you saying that the ability to network is a part of leadership? Perhaps I'm a dullard but could you clarify what you meant?

I'm saying that being embedded in the matrix of movers and shakers is necessary (although not sufficient) to become one yourself.

"Ability to network" is not sufficient -- I am well networked into an infrastructure of nerds. But by declining to go to Harvard for university and instead choosing to go to MIT, I cut myself off from that network. ⅓ of my graduating class (13/39) did choose to go to Harvard and they all landed on their feet one way or another.

The whole point of scholarships was to try to inject some meritocracy into this network.

Look at many of the most successful tech entrepreneurs and you'll see this same GOB phenomenon. Bill Gates' mother was on the United Way board with the CEO of IBM. Chad Hurley (at Youtube) was the son in law of Jim Clark. etc etc. These connections are not usually mentioned in the hagiographies.

By the way here's another example: my high school and harvard university are about the same age and there is a lot of interlinkage between the institutions. So it's not surprising that a large proportion of its graduates go there. The high school is super aggressive about not admitting kids of the GOB network since they'll do OK anyway. But sadly it wasn't alway so.

>I'm saying that being embedded in the matrix of movers and shakers is necessary (although not sufficient) to become one yourself.

That's kind of what I was getting at. The people who are already in charge generally get to pick the next generation of leaders. While this is the way things are done in our current reality, it doesn't give current leaders, future leaders, or the institutions that prop them up a legitimate claim to natural leadership ability.

Basically, all our democracy has managed to accomplish lately is to prove that monarchies don't necessarily depend on blood-relations to function.

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.

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.

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

I feel like everyone should be a "leader", in that it's important to develop qualities that are useful in leaders. Critical thinking, decision making, etc.

Even if you're not actually in charge, the related skills of leadership are useful.

Most of those things, (also "communication skills") are probably not really best described as "leadership skills". They are more "general life skills", but "leadership skills" is just the popular thing to call them I guess.

The problem is when things like college admissions start believing that these skills are best demonstrated in "leadership positions".

This is not limited to the Ivies: http://www.sa.sc.edu/leaders/

Of course, this is the same phenomenon on a larger scale. Nowhere tries to be "normal". Visit the website of any college or university: it will claim to be exceptional.

But is that such a bad thing? I for one, want to be around the sort of people who push others, the organizations they belong to, and themselves. And I aspire to be such a person as well.

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.

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.

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

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

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!"

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.

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.

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

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%.

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

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.

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.

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.

"A" people hire "A" people.

... and just to be clear "A" stands for "Annoying."

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.

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.

why is the tech industry obsessed with 'entrepreneurship' ?

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

At Harvard, the most occurring grade is A

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/3/grade-inflation-...

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

Choice quote:

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

College Board publishes test results:

http://research.collegeboard.org/content/sat-data-tables

This is the interesting one for this question:

http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/S...

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?

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.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com