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July 7, 2008
"Floundering", he said
By Bob Connor, The Teagle Foundation
This Liblog entry is also available as a podcast – to listen, simply click here.
The director of health services at a prestigious university told me recently that at any given time 10% of the undergraduates there were “floundering.” For a split second I thought he meant that they had gone off fishing somewhere. Then I realized he wasn’t thinking of flounders. He meant students were having real trouble coping.
“You mean they can’t handle the academic challenge?” I asked.
“No” he laughed, “that’s a piece of cake. If they can get admitted they can handle the work.”
He then used phrases such as “can’t cope with social pressure,” “feel lost,” and “lack a strong sense of autonomous self.”
Well, I got what he meant but didn’t really believe him, especially that 10% figure, “10% at any given time”.
So I turned to his colleague at an equally prestigious and selective university and said, “Does that figure sound right for your campus?”
“Yes, pretty much.”
Well, I thought, these highly selective places are pressure cookers. Maybe the kids burn out trying to get in and then fall apart when they get there. So I decided to test the 10% figure when I spoke to a hundred or so student life staff, chaplains and faculty from a wide range of institutions gathered at the Institute of College Student Values at Florida State University early in February.
I asked them to think of the campuses they knew best and to tell me if they thought the 10% estimate was too high, about right or too low.
Let’s see the hands. “Too high?” No hands went up. “About right?” Maybe twenty percent raised a hand. “Too low?” The other 80%.
I didn’t ask “How much higher?” or “if it’s 10% at any given moment, how many flounder at some point during their undergraduate years?” It has to be a big number and it has to affect student engagement and learning in all sorts of ways.
And what about the other really big question: “What causes this?” I’m not convinced by some of the answers that I hear, “Oh, they are just having short term problems adjusting to college life,” — or by the response that we get to this problem — more counseling, more medication. These are necessary responses, I am sure, at least in some cases, but do they really get at the heart of the matter?
Suppose we take seriously the idea that human beings are constantly trying to make meaning out of the environment and the people they encounter. This idea helps us understand geographically and chronologically remote societies and seemingly unusual forms of ritual, social mores, art, expression and action. Can it also help us in understanding what’s happening on campuses right here, today — a dissonance between the drive to find meaningful ways of living and learning, and a culture of expertise that doesn’t really want to deal with such concerns?
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