NY Times Essay Contest Entry

The following is my response to "What's the Matter With College" according to the NYT's essay guidelines. This version of the essay has been modified. I felt some social narrative accounts that are not present in this version were relevant to my rebuttal of Mr. Perlstein's essay, but not to the more important discussion of international opportunities.

"Fortunately, College Has Changed."

This spring, Mervin Jebaraj, a University of Arkansas student from Dubai, stayed up all night to write the Arkansas Legislature a Sudan divestment letter. He handed his note to Arkansas State Senator Sue Madison the next morning during their introductory hand shake at an on-campus political awareness bar-b-que. His note went on to become Senate Bill SCR20 which was passed and signed last April as an announcement to managers of all state retirement accounts that they should divest from genocidal activities and to provide socially aware retirement options for state employees. Of course, Mervin did not invent the state’s divestment campaign, although he logged a full time job’s worth of lobby hours to pass the bill. Instead, he helped develop the idea at a Washington D.C. student summit on genocide which he attended earlier during the winter term.

I learned about the divestment campaign’s details this summer while hanging in a hammock in Dangriga, Belize where the University of Arkansas along with Peacework International created and sent a development team with a delegation from each of the University’s colleges. We spoke during my fourth week in Belize where I was working to establish a University micro-credit fund. It has since become the first institution to specifically create educational loans on an organizational level. As I write this essay, I am again in Belize and living in Peacework’s commune with three female agricultural students from the US and a doctor researching a policy paper on waterborne illnesses.

My experience this summer illustrates why college campuses are no longer the center of American social movements. Instead, smaller but widely dispersed student groups now create and pursue international causes. The rise in both higher education funding and enrollment has facilitated a competitiveness that leads any motivated college student to spend at least a summer semester abroad. Look around the college campuses domestically and usually they are calm. This is because many of our nation’s developing leaders are in places that are not calm. A short list of my friends’ current locations includes Croatia, China, India, Vietnam, Peru, Nicaragua and Nigeria.

Although they are distant, these students are not quiet. They agitate for international equality and make their voices heard through electronic mediums. Instead of letter writing and marches, Facebook is the collegiate culture’s informational source for social causes (where our microfinance fund information was quickly published) as well as economic and political debates. In thirty or forty years, when students from my generation are campaigning for political office, discovering their political passions during their college years will not be an anomaly such as with Hillary Clinton’s letters, but will likely be available with a few mouse clicks on the “Facebook dataset.” This phenomenon was apparent recently when Caroline Giuliani, Rudy’s daughter, was identified as a Barack Obama supporter by the Harvard Crimson and later major news outlets based on her Facebook profile.

Students still spend most of their time debating issues in coffee shops. However, these coffee shops are no longer only down the street from campus. Instead they are in our residence hall basements and libraries in multiplying numbers, and we commonly rendezvous in cafés in Johannesburg, Antigua and Prague. However, our nation’s educational achievements mean that there is some consolidation in shared knowledge. College students no longer debate easily defined and educationally clarified issues such as race and gender equality, but instead focus on related, but more technical arguments, which are usually difficult to riot over.

Since students have become broadly informed and more rational, it is becoming harder to rally around specific youth causes, which makes college much calmer. Similarly, it’s correct to say that the discrepancy between youth and adulthood has rapidly disintegrated as internships proliferate and job recruiting starts earlier. However as we’ve matured, college students now recognize that we are global patrons who must advocate not only for their local causes, but for international ones. Issues and rallies are less consolidated on a physical level, but our efforts are more acute and we reach large and diverse audiences. Students are equally aware that with accessible personal information we will likely be held responsible for any hooligan actions that arise during college, which breeds mature demonstrations and practical rather than revolutionary approaches to attract an audience.

Admissions offices around the nation have embraced students’ international ambitions with equal enthusiasm. Thirty years ago, studying abroad was for the intellectual elite, primarily language based, and limited to western regimes. Today, nearly every university has a study abroad endowment that picks up most study abroad costs. Recruiters promote these opportunities with pitches similar to “join the Navy, see the world.” I was told, “your education is now global, and we’ll help you travel the world while you complete your degree.” This trend reached a new milestone last year when the Institute of International Education, which tracks study abroad statistics, reported that the number of US students abroad topped 200,000 for the first time which has increased 145% in the last decade.

As college opportunities proliferate, competition for the best students is no longer between the top twenty-five institutions and a few unique privates. A growing majority of the nation’s elite 1% are entering what were once less glamorous public schools and their honors colleges because these large institutions have used state as well as private resources to attract the nation’s best. Many state schools now lead the international trend with elaborate pitches that include international service and research opportunities as well as provide individual fellowship applications that ask for not just student’s resumes, but their music and literary interests, photography portfolios and use interviews that identify their humor and curiosity.

The elite student diaspora to public schools and the number of students who are abroad has affected the physical centrality that once existed on college campuses. However, this has not diminished the student experience, but instead has spread the ability to learn across the globe. Students are now able to satisfy their intellectual curiosity internationally, and in a more cosmopolitan atmosphere when at US institutions. Along with recruiting key speakers to campus, students are now encouraged to use school funds to visit other institutions to hear guest lectures. Similarly, along with a school newspaper, most campuses have added a student run literary magazine, business review, alumni magazine, photography and art journals, and an economics periodical. Student voices are heard more loudly than ever before through these mediums since it is students who handle the state’s economic data and are more likely than ever to freelance for major news organizations.

Unfortunately, excitement about change is far from universal and many institutions such as the University of Chicago have not adapted. Mr. Perlstein’s sample case is widely known to be among the most sedated campuses in the US. The campus is famous for not only its uncommon application, which is not special at all, but for its widely worn student t-shirts, which say, “The University of Chicago, where fun comes to die.” However, we can hope that change will ultimately be fully accepted as the market forces that Perlstein mentions fully reach campus. The growth in competition and increase in opportunities has made college a more intense and creative experience than ever.