Before he became the president of Reed College, John Kroger served in the Marine Corps (which he joined at 17), studied philosophy at Yale, was a federal prosecutor, wrote a bestselling book (Convictions: A Prosecutor’s Battles against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves), and was Oregon’s attorney general. For me, that’s more than enough success to qualify him to address the question, what is a successful college education?
Whether or not a student has aspirations of attending a college like Reed, I hope parents and their students will spend five minutes reading—and a lot more time discussing—Kroger’s piece, What is a Successful College Education?
As Kroger writes:
“In the United States, we spend a massive amount of time and energy figuring out where our kids should go to college. We start worrying about it their sophomore year of high school and never really stop until we write the first tuition checks. We read guidebooks, consult counselors, pay for test prep, visit campuses, and even—in extreme cases—hire college search consultants. But after all this effort to find the perfect college, we spend virtually no time talking about what students should do once they get there. We equip them with bows and arrows but identify no targets.”
I agree with all of his assertions within the article. But even if you and your family do not, you almost certainly hope to get some kind of return on your college investment. Why not consider thoughtfully not just what you want your particular return to be, but also what the student can do to maximize it?