How College Obsession Can Be a Force for Good

[Music]

[Applause]

i confess

when my oldest child my son sam was in

high school

i was college obsessed

the moment it occurred to me that he

would be applying to college

i thought about that and i worried about

it

a lot where would he go to college

how would he apply to college how does

that even work

would he get into a good college

i became that parent that you did not

want to sit next to

in an auditorium or run into that at the

grocery store

because if you did i would somehow steer

our conversation to the topic that was

on my mind

seemingly unaware of your utter lack of

interest in the topic of college

i’m sure parents were avoiding me

but that would soon change

now parents are drawn to me just to talk

to me about this topic when their

children are applying to college

because although i was gripped by

college obsession at a time when i had

been a trial lawyer for over 15 years

now i work as a professional college

admissions consultant

i want to talk to you about how college

obsession can be a force for good

in the lives of students children

when they’re applying to college and how

the help of

adults and parents can be

natural and right

let me start in the beginning when i was

nine years old

my father a lawyer took me to work with

him

it was extremely exciting to go to work

with dad because it meant going to

downtown detroit

where he worked in a classic art deco

skyscraper

the guardian building it meant rides on

shiny elevators and lunch at a diner

on that particular day on our way to

lunch

my father had to duck into another

building to meet with a lawyer

he asked me to wait in the lawyer’s

waiting room

and that’s when it happened there on the

coffee table in front of me

was a glossy magazine the building

on the cover was made of large limestone

blocks

it had arched doorways the doors were

made of a rich mahogany

it had brass hardware on the door

there was ivy climbing up the walls of

the building and blue sky up above

it was a castle when my father came out

of the lawyer’s office and saw me

looking at the magazine

he said that’s yale

that’s where all the smart people go to

college that’s where all the brilliant

people are

and he told me the lawyer he had just

met with

had gone to college there

i was amazed there was a place

where all the brilliant people were

where my father was proud

just to know someone who had gone to

school there

and no less it was a castle

it made college seem wonderful

and i think it was in that moment that a

little bit of college obsession

was made a part of me and made a part of

me

forever

now i don’t think i knew what a college

was

i don’t think college was even a thing

back then

where i grew up in the suburbs of

detroit the worldwide epicenter of the

automobile industry many people in my

life

did not have a college degree you didn’t

need a college degree to have a good job

in fact my mother envied some of our

neighbors

who had jobs in the auto companies

whether they worked in assembly sales or

some other position

because they had such stable high-paying

jobs

now don’t misunderstand my father was a

lawyer

he was a solo practitioner he made his

living legal fee to legal fee it was

just a different way of making money but

we were doing just fine

so my mother’s bit of envy not

particularly rational envy aside

everyone in my neighborhood was doing

very well we were all very comfortable

we lived very similarly in fact we lived

almost identically

because we lived in tracked housing all

the houses were alike

fast forward to the early 2000s when my

son was

about to start high school much had

changed

by the time he did start high school in

2003

the income divide between

people with degrees and people without

degrees had widened

by 60 percent

so that in 2003 a person with a college

degree

earned a median income

of sixteen thousand dollars more than

someone without

a college degree the stakes were getting

higher

also in 2003 u.s news and world report

had been publishing its famous college

rankings issue

and our minds were infused with the idea

that there were best

and better colleges and more and more

students were applying to those colleges

so naturally the admissions rate the

chance of getting into those college was

steeply and rapidly declining

for example in 1976

an applicant to yale had a better than

26 chance of being admitted a better

than one in four chance of being

admitted to yale

that rate of admission that rate of

getting into yale had declined to below

9 so now an applicant had

less than a 1 in 11 chance of getting in

and it’s not as though these colleges

had become first come first served

no now every student that applied to

yale or any of these colleges

was a needle in a haystack to be found

among an increasing number of

competitive applicants

to these stresses that according to

recently published research by two

economists

a certain parenting style started to

arise it was much more involved much

more intensive and helpful

to help children compete in this arms

race

for college admission in fact it was in

the years

early 2000s that the term

helicopter parent came in a very common

usage

among college administrators who are

experiencing

these intensive hyper-vigilant

hovering like a helicopter type parent

helicopter parent it’s a headline

grabbing term

in fact journalists who write for

media outlets like the new york times

the washington post and harvard health

publications just to name a few have

reported

that it is said of these parents that

they are

robbing children of adulthood they are

putting children at risk of higher rates

of anxiety

and depression and that these

helicopters are themselves

high strung nuisances who are tormenting

college administrators

strong words headline grabbing but the

good news is

we don’t have any proof that these

helicopter parents so-called

exist in any significant numbers we

don’t have

the academic comprehensive research to

show that they do

and what we think we know about these

helicopter parents is largely based

on anecdote

recent research out of eastern illinois

university

that included a meta-analysis

a study of the studies of helicopter

parents

found two things first

the studies did not have agreed upon or

common definition of what a helicopter

parent was

and the definitions varied widely

so you could not compare one of the

studies to the other

and secondly those studies that did try

to

zero in on the prevalence of these

parents

were not able to show that these parents

were particularly prevalent

now i can hear my friends in the

teaching profession

my friends who are college

administrators thinking to themselves

how can anyone deny the pervasiveness of

these

pushy parents you’re thinking i know

i just had one in my office yesterday my

coach just had one on his field last

week

i feel your pain i recognize your con

your cognitive dissonance i’m not saying

that those parents don’t exist i’m not

saying they’re a myth

i am saying that they are grabbing

all of the attention they are the

anecdote-worthy ones that are grabbing

the headlines

and they may be outliers

i’m asking for you to rethink

i’m asking for a reframing

two suggestions let’s shrink

the concept of the helicopter parent to

match the research that we do have

more research may be needed but for now

let’s shrink that concept and secondly

let’s embrace a new concept to talk

about

helpful involved parents

i suggest the tow truck

parent it’s a humble term

and believe me being from the motor city

it pains me to name any vehicle

by a humble name in the motor city we

name

new vehicles racy names market

marketing worthy names but this term

this humble term tow truck parent

aptly describes what i have experienced

with

parents in the last several years

they are to define them

like a tow truck often available

come to the scene when needed

and can make repairs most of the time

i’m asking for a new classification of

parent

so we can separate the hovering type

from the more intermittent type like the

tow truck parent

from the parents that are just caring

for their children

and to borrow a term of art from my

prior profession

the standard of care for our children

has been raised

necessarily as the value of that college

degree both socially and economically

has increased

so has the need for the help of parents

and adults and children’s life increased

it’s inevitable

it’s rational it’s helpful

intensive parenting is here to stay

college obsession when i talk about

college obsession

many people inextricably blended

with the idea of this intensive

parenting but college obsession

is neither a type of parenting

or linked to any particular type of

parenting

other people when i talk about college

obsession think that it is a

frenzy for admission to one particular

star-studded school or dream school

that is not college obsession that’s

college consumerism

not long ago when a group of wealthy and

powerful families including hollywood

celebrities

brought the armored trucks to the curbs

of colleges to

cheat and pay their children’s way into

the colleges

that was college consumerism run amok

and

run amok all the way to criminal

behavior

in fact it was ultimately a part of a

criminal investigation called operation

varsity blues

any college process that involves a

parent in an orange jumpsuit is not

college obsession

what college obsession is is a desire to

be

as my father put it where all the

brilliant people are

to modernize that idea it’s a desire to

be where you

will learn and where you can learn

among others in a collaborative setting

and that can be achieved at any

four-year college

community college trade school or tech

school

and you don’t need armored trucks full

of cash or any particular type of

parenting

to achieve that college obsession

is the secret sauce that motivates

young people everyone to seek out higher

education

of every type and at every level

so in my own case when the time came for

me to apply to college

i told my father i want to go to yale

after all that’s where all the brilliant

people were

my father just looked at me and said

people like us don’t go to yale

gone was that dad who so admired

education and intellectual life and

romanticized that castle that i was

seeing

and then came a very practical man who

had six children

it would have been very expensive to

send someone to yale

and from a working class all-girl

catholic school like mine

it was never imagined much less done

so if you’ve ever been in a building

where there’s a hallway and a velvet

rope is across the hallway

and a security guard wanders up to you

as you go somewhere near the velvet rope

and says to you sir madam you don’t

belong there

don’t go there you know exactly how i

felt when my father said

people like us don’t go to yale

and you may think what a shame your dad

could have

encouraged you or he could have been a

tow truck and taken down the velvet rope

it doesn’t matter what he

did for me was more important and it’s

what i want for everyone

my father gave me that little bit of

college obsession in that lawyer’s

office so many years ago

and it is what carried me through my

life

through my education and importantly it

was passed on through me

to his grandchildren my children

so when the time came for my four

children each in their turn to apply to

college

my husband and i had raised them to

revere

education to enjoy education and to have

a little college obsession

of course but now we took the velvet

rope down

and they were allowed to apply widely

so my oldest son sam unlike me

did apply to yale and he did get

into yale he didn’t go to yale

he chose to go to harvard my other three

children

all had similar opportunities they were

allowed to pl

apply widely they

were admitted to several selective and

ivy league colleges

my second son joey chose to attend mit

my third child my son tom chose to

attend harvard

and my youngest my daughter annie chose

to attend the university of michigan

go blue

so you see that spark that my father

gave me

that’s what helped and

notice that he also spoke the truth

people like us don’t go to yale

we go to other colleges and i honestly

believe that my children attended the

colleges they did because of that spark

transferred to me by my father in that

office of that lawyer so many years ago

and i think it’s why i do what i do

today

so i encourage all of you to have a

little college obsession

to have a wonderful life in higher

education

a little college obsession never did

anyone

any harm and it could be a force for

[Applause]

good