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Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

#41

Post by bgilroy26 »

vacri wrote: post #34
bgilroy26 wrote: post #11

"A" people hire "A" people.

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.

Re: Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

#42

Post by altoz »

brianchu wrote: post #6

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 "leade…

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.

Re: Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

#43

Post by grimtrigger »

geophile wrote: post #29

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…

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

Re: Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

#45

Post by Einstalbert »

hkmurakami wrote: post #33

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.

Re: Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

#46

Post by geophile »

grimtrigger wrote: post #43
geophile wrote: post #29

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…

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.

Re: Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

#48

Post by learc83 »

brianchu wrote: post #6

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 "leade…

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.

Re: Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

#49

Post by gumby »

phaus wrote: post #39
gumby wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Re: Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'?

#50

Post by phaus »

gumby wrote: post #49
phaus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 l…

>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.

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