A few weeks ago I passed a milestone in my life when I journeyed back to Princeton, NJ to celebrate my 20th college reunion. I was excited to head back to see old friends, and to show my wife and daughters around a place that meant a lot to me and has, in many ways, shaped my views on what it means to be a “leader.”
It’s hard to put the experience of college into proper perspective. Yes, it’s only four years. Yes, my college friends are spread out across the country so I don’t interact with them regularly. But while the day-to-day presence is long gone, and I admit I have probably forgotten 90 percent of the facts and figures that I learned in my classes, in some ways my college experience is more vivid, more meaningful, and more of an influence on who I am today, than just about any other four-year period in my life. Much of what I bring to my life at work, at home, and to the community at large, took root on that campus, with the help of that group of friends.
A four-day reunion isn’t nearly enough time to “re-live” it all, but we did our best. I brought my family to “Hoagie Haven” for a cheesesteak. I reminisced about the “good old days.” We listened to some great 80s cover bands (I still think 80s music totally rocks). And I explained some of the unique traditions at Princeton. (My daughters thought the tradition that you can’t walk out the front gate at the University until you graduate was particularly strange. Molly defiantly walked through once. Already a rebel!)
The most meaningful moment of reunions is the big parade… or the “P-rade” as they call it. This is when alumni and their families walk a parade route through campus, oldest to youngest, dressed in frightfully gaudy orange and black costumes, being cheered for wildly by the other classes.
Not only is the P-rade a great community building event, it is also a walking history lesson. This year there was a man who came back for his 85th reunion! He rode on a golf cart dressed in an orange and black blazer, carrying a tiger cane. My mind raced back to 1925 and imagined what life was like when he first exited the front gates at graduation.
Many marchers carried signs about what was happening during their college years: wars, civil unrest, the first man on the moon, and, of course, in the case of my class, Milli Vanilli (Oh, and the fall of the Berlin Wall).
As they marched, the all white, male classes slowly started to add some diversity. The class of 1977 suddenly included women, who handed out stickers touting, “30 years of co-education!” As my class joined the parade, we walked past the younger and younger graduates and finally through the celebrating class of 2010, who cheered for us with the same sense of history that we had for those before us.
It’s become a cliché to say that college “teaches you how to learn.” But that’s only part of the equation. You learn good work habits and analytical skills. You learn from your professors and advisors. But for me, some of the most valuable learning came from my classmates. College exposed me to people from across the country, and around the world. We stayed up late together, sharing experiences, talking about politics, history, art, music, beer. We sometimes had heated debates but they always ended in mutual respect and often in laughter. (To this day I still smile thinking back on one Republican friend’s spot-on impressions of Michael Dukakis). The perspective I have and my appreciation for other people’s views grew from these four years.
As this year’s graduating classes head out to the world, amidst oil spills, wars, staggering unemployment, and intolerance, I hope they take with them a similar sense of curiosity and perspective. And I hope their generation will have more success than ours has had in solving these issues, so in 2075, when I’m back for my 85th, riding my solar powered hovercraft, we’ll have more to celebrate than a reunion.
You gotta love schools like Princeton that have implemented the debt free graduation policy for financial aid.
I’m optimistic because there are small pieces in place across the country like Princeton’s policy.
What we need though is an overarching vision. Scholarship America embraces Lumina Foundation for Education’s goal to increase the percentage of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by the year 2025.
I see this as both a personal and national priority: personal because income and well-being are clearly tied to education, and national because higher education is a prerequisite to success in a knowledge-based society and economy. Frankly, I want to strengthen our economy.
If we can start to increase the rate at which students achieve some education beyond high school each year and produce 150,000 more graduates than the year before – an annual increase of about 5 percent – we will reach the goal by 2025.
It’s going to take a lot of us to get us there, and clearly Princeton is one piece of taking steps toward that goal.
Thanks for a fun discussion!
Kit,
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree. Access to quality education is, I believe, a crisis in this country… and is creating entire populations that are being left behind. Public education, in particular, seems to have been undermined to the point where it has become a tool of inequity rather than opportunity.
Higher ed is another issue and it can be equally troubling. I do have to say that one of the things I am most proud of in regard to Princeton is that they were the first to set aside endowment dollars to create a “debt free graduation” policy for financial aid. They started this policy nearly 10 years ago, issuing grants to students from low-income families instead of loans. The average grant award for incoming freshmen last year was around $38,000. The program is for anyone eligible for financial aid and is aimed at allowing students to graduate with no debt.
I know college costs continue to skyrocket well beyond inflation… but hopefully this policy is helping Princeton attract a more diverse class… opening doors beyond the traditional “privileged few.”
Thanks for reading! Hope your summer is going well!
Brian,
I have hopes for, and worry about, this year’s graduating classes.
As these grads put their minds towards solving our country’s problems, What sort of debt load are they going to be carrying with Federal Pell Grants now only covering 35 percent of tuition. (It was closer to 84 percent when you and I were in school.)
Education is the great equalizer. It has the potential to transform an individual, a family and our nation.
With the rising cost of education and the shrinking pool of public support, is the opportunity to learn “how to learn” going to become the domain of only the privileged few?
I’m so lucky to have the opportunity to grapple with these issues every day at Scholarship America. Thanks for sharing a great view on our shared history and a hopeful vision for our shared future.
Hmmm. I learned a lot in college (Augsburg’s Weekend College), but I didn’t have quite the experience and memories you had, mostly because it was a Weekend program. Quite a few college friends showed up at my graduation open house, but today, I couldn’t tell you who they were. And, most of my college classes are a blur.
Instead, other non-college programs like Leadership Twin Cities, Partners in Policy making and my career choices have had the most impact.
Maybe if Facebook existed in the mid-1980s, I’d still be in relationships with those college friends, or maybe we’ll still find each other.