Teaching Skills Is Easy; Inspiring Future Mentors, Less So

The number of entrepreneurship programs offered by colleges in the US quintupled from 1975 to 2006, and the number of classes on entrepreneurship offered increased twenty-fold in the same period. While some contend that entrepreneurship can’t be taught, John Warner of Inside Higher Ed argues the opposite.

Regardless, any startup founder knows that mentorship is incredibly helpful, if not necessary, in the quest for success. Incubators, for example, are increasingly in demand in part because of the support networks they provide.

Many of Switchboard’s most active users are in the tech community, and that’s a good thing because the communities we serve are heavily interested in tech and startups in particular. These communities use Switchboard because it connects mentors to mentees in a public and inspiring way. Tools like incubators, if they can be loosely defined as tools, and Meetup and Switchboard help communities foster cultures of mentorship.

Changing curricula to meet demand—that’s easy. Inspiring people to help others—that’s hard[er]. But it’s exactly what we aspire to do.

Turn First Generation Alumni into Mentors for Students Who Are in Their Old Shoes

Nancy Cantor, chancellor of Rutgers University’s Newark campus, recently called on colleges to work to cultivate talent in prospective students rather than merely select for it. She proposed that institutions establish “farm teams” for high school students to help prepare them for college.

Syracuse University, where Cantor worked previously, is already working to diversify its campus racially and socioeconomically. Further, their Working Orange project connects alumni with current students. It would be great to see something like the Working Orange initiative connect first generation college students with alumni who were once in their shoes. Statistically, it could help increase the graduation rate of these students just as administrative and peer-to-peer initiatives are already. On the human level, it would ease the burden of being the first in one’s family to go to college and give alumni a powerful way to remain involved in their alma mater’s community.

At Switchboard, we’re deeply invested in making these connections possible. We’d love to see a college or university use Switchboard to help meet the needs of first generation college students.

Edifice Rex—Why a New Career Services Office Can Only Do so Much

You may have read this New York Times piece, “How to Get a Job with a Philosophy Degree,” the other week. To summarize it, Wake Forest University has spent $10 million on a new Career Services building that “looks like Google” and hired nearly thirty additional Career Services staff to help students prepare themselves for and find employment—and to help justify the expense of attending college to their parents.

The narrative is similar to many that are unfolding across the country. The economy has changed and is changing. The cost of education is rising and schools must justify their model. And so on.

Usually, when a school decides it isn’t as dedicated to something as it should be, the solution is obvious. Not enough emphasis on the performing arts? Build a new performing arts building and hire faculty. They throw money at the problem.

And that’s what Wake Forest is doing in the article above. Their method has some merit. More staff can help more students with more things: scholarships, resume writing, grant applications, navigating difficult alumni databases, and so on. But there are too many possible career paths for even a few dozen staff to advise students on all of them.

We’ve always maintained that alumni affairs is career services. Schools need to recognize the immense amount of expertise and goodwill that exists in their population of alumni. Thousands of alumni can talk about jobs and life choices that a few dozen career services staff can’t—and they can offer more than just advice. For a student, a connection with an alumnus or alumna is meaningful on its own. But more concretely, alumni can offer mentorship, connections to jobs and internships, and places to stay. They can offer the support of a community. 

When a school spends a lot of money, we view that money as a proxy for devotion to solving a problem. The more a school spends, the more we think it cares. But not all problems can be solved with money. As Thoreau wrote in Walden:

“Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.”

Money is an easy metric by which to judge success, but how can we measure community? Maybe community isn’t something we can measure; maybe it’s something we can only do.