“Not College Material”, or 50 years in Higher Education

Parents Forum
1

This is the speech a dear friend gave at his retirement party this year. Never give up on your child.

“There is NO way I can possibly thank all of you who have been a part of these 32 years as a Spartan, and a Briggsie. Therefore, I will not even try. Rather, and if you know me very well, this will not be a surprise, let me tell a little story.

NOT COLLEGE MATERIAL

50 years ago, a little kid wanted to go to college, it was 1968.
He was not considered “College Material.” He had spent much of his elementary years in “Special Class.” Had difficulty learning to spell, read, and write. He went to summer classes for a speech impediment.

However, in the fall of 1968 off he went to college, Blackburn College in Illinois, enrollment of 650! Yes, 650!
In the very first semester, he accomplished a lot. He made a lot of friends, had a lot of fun, and ended up on Academic Probation and Disciplinary Probation. The next semester he changed majors from math to history, and was on the Dean’s List. He also knew that going to college was the right choice; he was College Material after all.

Little did he know he would spend most of the next 50 years in college.

He did graduate, and in 4 years, Studied Abroad at the University of the Americas in Cholula, Mexico. Then he moved to Tennessee and work with Upward Bound at Tusculum College, and earned a 2nd degree. In Upward Bound, he worked with a lot of young people who were “Not College Material,” but went on to college anyway!

Then to everyone’s surprise, including his, he went to graduate school at Southern Illinois University. Not bad for someone who was “Not College Material.” First year he worked in Residence Life on a side of campus that was fully accessible, and the 2nd year for a Program in the School of Medicine designed to increase the diversity of students going into medicine. Again, students who were not considered “College Material,” or “Medical School material.”
From there his first “job” was at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls, running Grimm Hall, an all-male residence hall, which included running the Grimm Hall Bar, selling beer and wine 7 nights a week.
Grimm Hall had a lot of kids off the farm as they used to call themselves, and a lot of late admits, “Not College Material.”

Then at Loyola College in Maryland, he worked in Student Activities and Residence Life. Opening a new apartment complex housing freshman and senior citizens, people who could “Not” successfully live together. Well, they did, and they learned from each other and thrived.

Then he worked at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. At Allegheny, he hired RAs who should not be RAs, how could a deaf student be an RA? How could a student with a serious stutter be an RA? Well, they could, even if your boss said they could not.

Then he came to MSU, and to McDonel Hall. Back then, 32 years ago, if you were not white, you were “Not McDonel Hall Material.” He challenged and changed that.
The he made the move to Holmes Hall and Lyman Briggs School, later to become a College again. I will not even attempt to begin to list all the amazing experience that these past 25 years with Briggs and Holmes Hall have offered me.

In case you have not noticed, there has been a theme in my remarks, “Not,” “Not College Material,” “Not belonging some place.” But I have spent my life challenging that view.

In my time off campus, I have also challenged some of the “Nots.” With Habitat for Humanity I have challenged the idea that “Not” everyone has a right to a decent place to live, by tutoring refugees challenged that idea that not everyone has a place here. Through my work with diversity issues, I have tried to challenge he idea that some are “not” a good as others.

Sadly, however, this idea of “Not” is still pervasive in our world.
Whether it is because or gender, or race, or ethnicity, or religion, or socioeconomic status, or sexual orientation, or immigration status, or physical or mental health issues, you fill in the blank, we cannot continue to tell people they are “Not College Material.” They “Do Not Belong Here.” I hope you will join me as I continue this journey in however many years I have left.

(Let me close by again thanking each and every one of you for being part of this unbelievable journey, you have enriched my life in countless ways and I am eternally grateful to you. I hope you will continue to journey with me into whatever the future holds for us.)

THANK YOU!”

2

Lots of people shouldn’t go to college. If everyone were college material, we wouldn’t see so many people drop out.

3

Dropping out of college is not the final chapter most of the time. Nor does it mean that going to college was pure waste.

4

This is one average college success story. However, as in post # 1, many people should not go to college. This is not a case of the success meaning most “not college material students” should go to college. I note the type of jobs this person has had- most will not be able to find this niche. Dealing with residence and like issues is not the same as being faculty. The whole academic story is not told- the elementary years likely made a huge difference because many problems were successfully managed. Nothing is said about the HS years. Purely an anecdote.

5

However, often it is not known until after they attend college whether they will succeed. High school academic record and test scores can only predict percentage chance of success, not guarantee success or failure. And those who attend college after gap years (e.g. work, military service) may not be the same as right after high school in terms of chance of college success.

Of course, the reality these days is that attending and completing college is usually more about parental financial support, rather than one’s own academic merit.

6

Well, my fav uncle and aunt on DH’s side went to Blackburn.

Sure hope that posters’ desire to prove some point about who shouldn’t attend college doesn’t mask:
the very sweetness of OP’s post.

Thanks @eastcoascrazy.

7

What a lovely story @eastcoascrazy, thank you for sharing it!

8

Great post! Funny how people read the same thing completely differently. I didn’t see the speech being about who doesn’t, or even does, belong in college. Or what success looks like.

It is a call to action to break down artificial barriers of all kinds. It is a lovely and important reminder that a life spent supporting others’ aspirations is a life well-lived.

Your friend is an inspiration. Glad you shared it. Thank you!

9

Thank you for sharing. I was unexpectedly touched and found myself crying silent tears by the end. All about seeing the potential in everyone, no matter from where they start.

10

Thank you for posting this uplifting story. Sure, we all agree college isn’t for everyone. That’s a general statement. There are kids who don’t get to try to figure that out because of economic and social barriers. And who can say with certainty how a particular 17-year old will develop.

I love this story.

11

That’s a nice speech.

To the “college is not for everyone” crowd: In a rational world, I think everyone would agree with that. There are productive things to do in the world that do not require 16+ years of education, and many people’s skill sets and learning styles are not conducive to the kinds of things best taught in classrooms.

But.

In the world we currently live in, we have done such a poor job of elementary and secondary education for children who live in non-affluent areas that graduating from high school is practically meaningless as a credential (unless you happened to have graduated from one of the high schools where all of the graduates should go to college). Basic reading, arithmetic, and communication skills are being taught in college because they aren’t being learned in high school or earlier. So, yeah, until further notice pretty much everyone should be going to college unless they have a clear, personal path to economic self-sufficiency without going to college.

If you don’t like that, what are you doing to improve the value of secondary education in your community?

12

I’m not sure I agree high schools are as bad as you say. Let’s assume they are. In that case, we should fire most of the teachers at these places, which are so bad you have to go to college to learn what should have been taught in middle school. Make all public school teachers at will employees.

13

I have been surprised over the years to hear about my peers from high school and my kids’ peers from high school who seemed less than motivated … but ended up doing amazing things. The kid that lived behind us was a hot mess. I had him in my class often when I subbed at the local high school. He would smoke dope at lunch & do nothing in class (well, once I recall that he cut out a paper doll chain during a lesson). He went into the army after graduation, and he almost got kicked out. Somehow, he made it through … then he ended up going to college. He got his masters in Occupational Therapy a couple years ago. I can guarantee you there were many adults (and kids) saying he wasn’t college material. To each his own, in his own time and place.

That said, one of S’s childhood friends did not go to college. His mom wants him to, but the guy never liked school, never did well in school, and doesn’t want to go to school. At 27, he has a job that pays a tad more than minimum wage. He keeps talking about going to HVAC school, and S is encouraging him … but his mom tells him he needs to get a degree. He works on cars and knows how to fix things … I am willing to bet he’d do well in HVAC. I hope his mom gets on board and gives him the encouragement he seems to need. College is not the only path.

14

It doesn’t follow that because schools are bad, the teachers in those schools must be bad. It could be that some schools are bad because they are not funded well enough to do the job they need to do. If there is a school that’s crumbling to bits, with no textbooks, with no reading specialists to help the kids who are having trouble learning to read, that’s not the classroom teachers’ fault.

15

Re: #10, #11, #13

The K-12 schools are not necessarily worse overall than they were decades ago (and the kids now are not breathing fumes from leaded gasoline), though they may be worse in some places but better in other places due to local conditions and policy.

But expectations for high school graduates are much higher. Decades ago, opportunities for a high school graduate to get a job and get on-the-job training to a career were more common. Now, employers want entry level employees to be educated, trained, certified, and/or licensed at their own (or previous employer’s) expense. Such education, training, certification, and/or licensing commonly requires some college education (not necessarily a bachelor’s degree; college being inclusive of any post high school education). So someone who is “not college material” or whose position in the birth lottery makes whatever post high school education that makes good use of his/her potential unaffordable may be very limited in his/her career path, and may become a burden on others.

16

As always, I am fascinated with the responses and the unexpected directions any CC thread can take.

My own reactions to this speech included:

Have faith in yourself. And have faith in your child. True, college is not for everyone, but that doesn’t mean anyone needs to believe the label “Not College Material” when someone else applies it to you or to your child.

Don’t get stuck in the first college major or in your first attempt at college. life is rarely a straight line.

Our country and our colleges would be better served by finding ways to include rather than exclude people who are a little different.

Give back. Pay it forward.

On a side note, among those kids who are “not college material”, I am embarrassed to include my own less than positive beliefs about my best friend’s son. If you had asked me 10 (or even 5) years ago I would have said that he would never make it through college. He was a very late reader, never did a minute of homework, and had serious mental health issues as well as learning disabilities that were not diagnosed until 8th grade, when his parents’ very contentious divorce was well settled and he moved back in with his mom and step father. Somewhere in high school they found the right combination of meds, an IEP, and a good therapist.

He lived at home for two years of community college, transfered to an instate public university (one that gets some love here on CC), and just graduated with a great GPA and a job offer in four years. That’s four years total. None of the high school masters of the universe or their parents are aware of those invisible kids who plug along, finding success in their own ways and in their own time.

To quote Clark Griswold, “If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet I wouldn’t be more suprised than I am now.”

17

Since the most common reason that kids drop out of college is financial, are you claiming that poor kids shouldn’t go to college?

Yet, somehow, MA, whose teachers are not at will employees has the best public education system in the USA, while Alabama, with laws against unionization, has the worst. In fact, of the 10 worst states for K-12 education, 9 are at-will states.

I am sorry, but “at-will” laws destroy K-12 education, since teachers stop trying to teach, and instead focus on not angering the powers that be.

18

DH was told by a teacher that he should skip college and be a baker. Went on to a prestigious PhD, some renown in his field. My brother dropped our of comm college a few times (I think the D grades made it obvious he was wasting time.) But got into a now popular/known 4 year (as a freshman) and the rest is history.

I have a saying: “just because the high school ways and formats work for 85% of the kids, doesnt mean something’s wrong with the others.” (Maybe 85% is high, but at the time, I was thinking of one particular hs.)

19

College enrollment has been steadily dropping over the past seven years, even though it felt like every 18-yo is trying to get into (elite) colleges on CC.
It is a nice story, but I wonder whether 50-year from now on, anyone could tell similar stories again!

20

Alabama has a teacher’s union. It does not have laws against unionization as you say. More importantly, there’s a tenure process that makes it extremely difficult to fire bad teachers. Alabama has nothing like a private sector “at-will” status for public teachers. MA likely has lots of high IQ parents, who pass their high IQ genes down to their children, which accounts for the high test scores.

You say teachers will stop trying to teach, but are they trying to teach now? If so, we wouldn’t have the situation described by JHS where most high school grads lack “Basic reading, arithmetic, and communication skills”.