Page 61 - Considering College

In August 1975, I started teaching at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. After 45 years of
service to students in universities, I thought I knew something. In January 2017, I began visiting

high schools in the Texas Panhandle. I visited 66 by May 2017, and I felt like I learned a great deal.
After a hiatus, in September 2019, I began a similar journey on the South Plains of Texas. Again, I

visited 66 schools in five months. These two treks to 132 high schools, nearly 20,000 students, and
16,000 miles of road proved to me that I knew very little. This is what I think students should look

for now when considering college, but take it with a grain of salt.

Become part of something larger than yourself. When looking for a university, the power of

a family-like organization is critical to a well-functioning study setting, whether on campus,
online, traditional, transfer, or returning student. The costs of study, academic reputation, the

quality of the faculty, student clubs and organizations, potential for scholarships and other
recognitions of achievement and a winning football or volleyball program may all be important

considerations. However, if you don’t believe you will become part of something larger than
yourself, put the campus in the rear-view mirror or click out as quickly as you can.

Understand stewardship. If visiting a college campus and you see indicators of a lack
of stewardship of any kind, from cleanliness of the restrooms to utilization of increasingly scarce

resources—state funding, tuition and fee dollars, gifts, grants and other means of material
support, look elsewhere. The same can be said regarding websites that promise much. It can be a

mirage. Go where history shows resources are carefully calibrated.

Good teaching and leadership are integrated. There is no border between these two. Teaching

always requires that a vision be cast. Leading requires the same. No excuses, no lack of funding, no
challenge with unprepared students and no placing of blame elsewhere absolve the teacher from

being a leader and the leader from teaching. Effective teaching and leadership allow no borders
between. Without an obvious commitment to excellent teaching and leadership, skip the free

lunch or trinkets offered.

Noble citizenship is the goal of all education at every level from pre-k to post-doc. People
passionately helping other people is the only salient purpose of public education. It is Jeffersonian
democracy at work in the community. Students who emerge from places like the dozens of smaller

high schools I visited should seek a university that values the same principle—citizenship as a
guiding light.

Thinking and doing are of equal value. Places where you can help build a free society and

contribute to a university’s sustenance with a clear and concise focus for liberty, passion and
community purpose make a shared universe and a good university work. If you sense on campus a

dismissiveness regarding trades, vocations and knowledge applied to some necessary and useful
task, leave. They are not as smart as they want you to think.