One of the hot topics on the MSU Family Facebook page last weekend was Michael Smerconish’s CNN interview of Jeffrey Selingo. Smerconish described Selingo’s list of the “New Dream Schools,” and Michigan State University is one of them. These are colleges and universities that are not focused on prestige, but rather “on value, on access, and outcomes.”
Selingo is a journalist, most recently with the Chronicle of Higher Education, who has gained prominence for authoring popular books about college admissions. His most recent book, Dream School: Finding the College That’s Right for You, includes a list of 75 accessible colleges and universities that provide high-quality education, excellent student experiences, and great employment outcomes. The list is divided into three categories: small privates, regionals, and large schools.
Selingo lists MSU among the “Large Leaders,” which are big universities with the depth and breadth of other large public and private institutions that many students have missed because too often families have focused only on the top of the traditional ranking lists. But, these are campuses where students can thrive and break free of the ‘elite college or bust’ mentality.” Selingo notes MSU is one of the schools that “punch[es] above its weight,” with a graduation rate that “is 7 percentage points higher than predicted for institutions serving similar students.”
As one of my colleagues said to me about Dream Schools, a well-informed reader will find no new arguments and no new information in the book. Selingo draws from his prior books as well as the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and other published surveys of students, their families, and higher ed institutions to make his argument about the importance of the student experience over the institution’s reputation in choosing the right school for a prospective student.
While there’s no ground-breaking information in it, I enjoyed reading Dream Schools because of how skillfully Selingo focused on the actual experience students have in college. Selingo asserts that getting into a “dream school” is not about gaining admission to one of the schools at the top of the US News and World Reports rankings list. Rather, “it’s about finding a place where you can thrive, learn, and become the person you’re meant to be.” The book offers a “framework for finding a good college” that “starts by discovering what you value and what you need out of college when you graduate, no matter your major.”
In the chapter on student success, Selingo details a survey he conducted of parents that helps uncover what families mean with they use the term “student success.” He found that parents believe that student success requires that their student is valued by the institution and experiences a positive culture of health and well-being at college (something they said too often does not happen in high school). They wanted their student to find life-long friends and mentors. And they hoped their children would easily find people who would “create a spark” and “stoke the flame for discovery.” Nowhere did anyone mention grades or GPAs when they talked about student success. Instead, they focused on the students’ experiences in college and how they were prepared by their college experience to be happy, healthy, and productive after they graduated.
I also liked Selingo’s Dream Schools because it so clearly articulates the critical importance of many of MSU’s current initiatives. Our goal is to meet students where they are, support them in the ways they show us they need support, and launch them into happy, healthy, and productive lives.
I am very happy to see MSU highlighted in Selingo’s book, and proud of our ongoing efforts to support every Spartan to learn, thrive, and graduate.