Tag: competition

Posted on

Never Good Enough: Learning in a Culture of Perfection

With the start of classes this fall, it’s become increasingly clear that college students find themselves caught in a perfect storm of social pressures, political upheaval, and economic uncertainty, all conspiring to transform the college experience from a time of intellectual growth and self-discovery into a crucible of anxiety and self-doubt. This transformation, while affecting learners across the board, has cast a particularly heavy shadow over those already grappling with systemic inequities and material difficulties. Indeed, the modern university campus, with its manicured lawns and ivy-covered buildings, has become a battleground where students wage war not just against challenging curricula, but against stress and the ever-present specter of failure. 

Gone are the days when a solid academic performance and a modicum of extracurricular involvement were sufficient to secure a bright future. In their place, learners increasingly feel expected to excel in every conceivable arena, from maintaining a stellar GPA to cultivating a curated social media presence, all while navigating the intimidating waters of an increasingly competitive job market. This pressure cooker environment disproportionately affects students from under-resources schools, who may lack the financial and social capital to keep pace with their more privileged peers.

This pursuit of perfection is fueled, in no small part, by the ubiquitous presence of social media in students’ lives. Platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn have been transformed from mere communication tools into virtual stages where young people feel compelled to perform their best selves 24/7. Every achievement, no matter how minor, must be broadcast to the world, while moments of vulnerability or failure are carefully hidden from view. This constant comparison to one’s peers,  or rather, to carefully scripted versions of their peers, has created a toxic environment where learners feel they can never measure up, no matter how much they achieve.[i]  For those already struggling with issues of belonging or imposter syndrome, this digital landscape can exacerbate feelings of inadequacy and alienation.

Continue reading “Never Good Enough: Learning in a Culture of Perfection”
Posted on

The Problem with Meritocracy

College students are a lot more worried about grades these days. This is something I myself have witnessed in the large general education courses I teach at UCI. My offerings are part of the breadth requirements common at most universities. These attract learners from a wide array of academic disciplines –– which at UCI translates into large numbers of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors. The changes I’m seeing manifest in a growing preoccupation with grades and rankings, as well as increasing concerns about future earnings potential. This shift has not gone unnoticed by my colleagues, many of whom express disdain for students more invested in grade point averages than the intrinsic value of learning. Some view this as a troubling trend towards a consumer mentality in education. But I take a more sanguine view.

While grade pressure always has been present to some extent, its recent intensification goes beyond individual classrooms. Almost every university uses these metrics as the primary measure of learning. This makes assessments and scores central to most university teaching for a variety of reasons: measuring comprehension, motivating student effort, providing feedback, generating student rankings, etc.  But grade-centric approaches also can fail to account for learners’ diverse challenges, and may undermine equity as a result. Moreover, too much attention on grades can compromise critical thinking and intellectual curiosity crucial not only for academic success but also for life after college.

Continue reading “The Problem with Meritocracy”
Posted on

When School is a Factory

David Trend

For 20 years, I have been teaching large arts and humanities general education courses at the University of California, Irvine. These 400-student classes are part of the undergraduate “breadth requirements” common in most colleges and universities, and hence draw enrollments from across the academic disciplines. At UC Irvine, this means that most of the class comprises science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors. Aside from an orientation to more practical fields, I’ve noticed a clear shift in student attitudes in recent years –– a heightened preoccupation with grades and rankings, combined with growing anxieties about future earnings. Many of my colleagues see this as well, often disparaging students more concerned with GPA metrics than learning itself, while increasingly behaving more like consumers of educational commodities. I take a more sanguine view.

Bear in mind that many of today’s college students grew up during the Great Recession, when families of all incomes had money worries. With scant knowledge of a world before 9/11, it’s little wonder that polls show millennials expecting lower earnings than their parents, seeing the United States on a downward spiral, and believing the two-party system as fatally flawed.[i] Rising income inequality doesn’t help matters, especially at UC Irvine where 6 in 10 students get financial aid and half are the first in their families earning a college degree.[ii] Because of this, Irvine has been cited by the New York Times as the country’s leading “upward mobility engine” –– making the campus a national model of what public higher education can do.[iii] But it’s still not a cake-walk for degree seekers. As at most public universities in America, the majority of Irvine’s full-time students also work at jobs to make ends meet.[iv] Continue reading “When School is a Factory”

Posted on

The gendered price of success

This is depressing, but not exactly shocking. New research suggests that many men get depressed when women in their lives thrive.

As the story in today’s WebMD reports:  “Men tend to feel worse about themselves when their wives or girlfriends succeed, with their self-esteem sagging rather than basking in the glory of their partners’ accomplishments. That’s the conclusion of a study published online recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“A series of social experiments revealed that men’s subconscious self-esteem bruises easily when their partner succeeds in a task, even if they’re not competing against each other in that task, said study lead author Kate Ratliff.

imgres-1“It makes sense that a man might feel threatened if his girlfriend outperforms him in something they’re doing together, such as trying to lose weight,” said Ratliff, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida.

“But this research found evidence that men automatically interpret a partner’s success as their own failure, even when they’re not in direct competition,” she added in a news release from the American Psychological Association. At the same time, a male partner’s success had no effect at all on a woman’s self-esteem, the researchers found.

“We sort of expected that women would internalize the success of their partner and actually feel better if their partner succeeded, but we found that nothing was going on,” Ratliff said. “It could be that women are used to the idea that men are expected to be successful, so when they are it’s no big deal.” The study involved 896 people in five experiments conducted in the United States and the Netherlands. The first experiment included 32 couples at the University of Virginia who took a problem-solving test. Then they were told that their partner scored either in the top or bottom 12 percent of all university students. Participants did not receive information about their own performance.

“The news of their partners’ success or failure did not affect how participants said they consciously felt about themselves, which the study authors referred to as “explicit self-esteem.” But, tests gauging “implicit self-esteem” — a person’s unconscious and unspoken sense of self — found that men who believed that their partner had scored in the top 12 percent had significantly lower self-esteem than men who believed their partner had scored in the bottom 12 percent.

“I want to be clear — this really isn’t the case that men are saying, ‘I’m so upset my partner did well.’ The men aren’t acting different toward their partners. It’s not like the men are being jerks,” Ratliff said. “It’s just hurting their sense of self to be in a relationship with someone who has experienced a success.”

More at: http://men.webmd.com/news/20130830/in-showdowns-between-sexes-male-ego-bruises-easily?src=RSS_PUBLIC

Posted on

Why women bosses pay themselves less

This is a tricky issue. A recent article in Forbes tries to understand why women executives pay themselves less than comparable male managers –– the same 76% seen elsewhere. One answer is that female-run businesses are often smaller. But studies correcting for that difference have found the same pattern. Before we write this off to internalized oppression, let’s consider one other answer, a more poignant and important one. Successful women may have a different value system, one less driven by competition, greed, and instant gratification. Women seem more willing to think about the interests of everyone in a company, and not just themselves.  Studies show that women also seem more oriented to long-term goals. See “Even When Women Write Their Own Checks, the Gender Pay Gap Persists” by Meghan Casserly. Continue reading “Why women bosses pay themselves less”