Making the decision about where to go to college and what to study in college has a lot of weight during the high school years. There can be a lot of anxiety and fear surrounding college choice. Students feel like if they don’t make the absolutely right decisions, they could not only ruin their chances to get into their top college, they could ruin their life. The aim of this article is to remove some of the fears surrounding college choice and redirect the energy given to the college decision process towards some meaningful projects that students can work on that will provide direction and understanding, not just about colleges, but about themselves.

What is Vocation?

So what exactly do we mean by vocation? The Latin word voco means “I call,” and from this we can say that a vocation is a calling. What one does in one’s life has this sense that God is calling someone to something. It is a pursuit that calls us forward. In the Bible, we often see moments where God specifically calls people to something, calling them to an office of kingship or prophecy. But we all can have that sense of life direction, a sense of where we’re going and what we ought to be doing with our lives. For students in high school, this can feel like a very remote experience. What does it look like to be a grown up and to have a job, to have a family, to have a sense of what to do with this life that God has given. All of this feels so far off on the horizon. How could a high school student possibly know what their calling is?

However, in my many years of working with middle and high school student, I have observed how deeply spiritual these students can be. Thus, I think it entirely possible for students to have a sense of life mission or calling. We who are guiding these young people need to shift our questions from, “What college do you want to go to?” or “What would you like to do when you grow up?” to different questions such as “How are you going to show up in the world?” and “Why has God put you on the planet?” This shift in question moves us away from occupation to vocation. It begins to address the matter of what kind of person are you becoming instead of asking what kind of job will you have. It enables the student to cast a vision for what life will be like – the kind of person will they marry, what kind of parent or grandparent would they want to be, what will people remember them for when they attend their funeral. These are really weighty questions and point to the ways in which a single life will touch hundreds, thousands, millions of other people. So we need to help students thinking ahead in different ways than has been the case in conventional college guidance. While GPA and test scores still factor in when it comes to the college journey, the questions that will best help students solidify their sense of personhood are the ones we should place before them at this critical juncture in their lives.

A Biography of an Interesting Person

The best way for students to prepare themselves for this life calling or life mission is by cultivating the right mix of passion and discipline. While I have read numerous stories of college-bound applicants who have this kind of mix, I want to spell out what this looks like with a figure in a more remote past. What we will see is a person who didn’t have it all together at first, but pursued little passions that enabled him to develop key disciplines that eventually led to a big passion.

Scottish missionary Alexander Mackay (1849-1890) grew up just outside of Aberdeen. His father was a minister in the Free Church of Scotland and a farmer in the Aberdeenshire countryside. Alexander, therefore, grew up on a farm, and what he did on that farm was tinker with all the machinery on the farm. He learned how things worked. He took things apart and put them back together. In addition, he went into town on a frequent basis and the shops in town. He worked with the shop owners to figure out how to do different things with equipment, whether it was the printer shop or the carding mill. As this young kid tinkered with things, he had the opportunity to develop a lot of little passions. At this point in his life, he didn’t have a grand vision of becoming a missionary. In fact, his father worried about Alexander’s pursuits of worldly knowledge. These little passions, however, meant that Alexander developed a set of disciplines surrounding how to work on mechanical objects.

At 18, Alexander went to the University of Edinburgh and studied engineering there. The development of mechanical disciplines paved the way for him to attend a world class university. He continued to develop disciplines in mathematics and engineering. He had developed into someone very interesting in the field of engineering through this pursuit of little passions that enabled him to develop key disciplines. In fact, after graduating from Edinburgh he was recruited by a company in Germany to help them design steam engines for farm equipment. His work there earned him recognition for the development of innovative technology. Alexander went from little passions to developing disciplines, becoming a really interesting figure in the world of engineering. But he wasn’t done figuring out his life’s mission.

While he was in Germany, he met with other Christians there. He had grown up as a warm hearted Christian, but he had devoted most of his time and energies to learning about math, science, and engineering. In Germany, he learned about missionaries going to Africa, and his heart was taken with this idea of connecting his skill in engineering with sharing the gospel in Africa. So at the age of 22, he made a decision to go to Africa, and he spent most of the rest of his life in Uganda and the interior of the African continent. Sharing the gospel and applying these engineering skills, he helped develop the infrastructure of the interior of Africa. There are hundreds of miles of roads that were designed and developed by Alexander Mackay. This life mission emerged well after Mackay had developed key disciplines. Growing up on the farm, he cultivated skills. He developed disciplines that made him renowned as an engineer. And then he found a big passion. The reason God had put him on this planet was to become an engineer on the mission field.

Let’s break down the principles exemplified by Alexander Mackay. He pursued little passions, which enabled him to develop key disciplines that propelled him forward. These key disciplines led to a big passion that honored his sense of God’s call upon his life. This pattern – little passions, key disciplines, big passion – is a sound alternative to the prevailing advice given to students during their formative years. A leading thinker in this area has been Cal Newport. In his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, he spells out how the passion hypothesis (“follow your passion”) is misguided. He identifies two fallacies associated with the passion hypothesis. First, most students and young adults don’t have clearly defined singular passion to follow. This can lead to frustration if a young person takes on a career that they ultimately find they don’t really like simply because they were infatuated with a singular passion. Second, young people typically don’t have much data to support any sense of passion or interest. So they jump into a major and a career hoping for happiness, but lacking any evidence to show that they will actually find happiness following a singular passion.

Here’s where the little passions followed by key disciplines advice is far better than the passion hypothesis. Young people can flit about cultivating numerous passions: music, sports, science, literature, creative writing, computer coding, cars, economics. By trying on for size several interests, they are exploring their world in a way that matches their youthful inclinations. But accompanying the little passions is the development of key disciplines. The musician learns to practice effectively and perform before others. The athlete learns how to train efficiently and handle competition. The creative writer learns the discipline of writing regularly and delivering their work to an audience. What emerges in this little passion followed by key disciplines advice is a growing sense of life mission because they are accumulating evidence of not only what they like, but also what they are effective at doing.

Finding Opportunities to Develop Disciplines

In many respects, the journey to finding a vocation has less to do with the initial spark of interest and more to do with the development of disciplines. Consider the student who becomes interested in playing piano. Her parents sign her up for piano lessons. She is developing a small passion. That small passion is a pathway to develop discipline. The piano teacher provides coaching and mentorship. The student is not only given music to learn, but also practices scales and arpeggios. In order to perform well, there are disciplines that must be well rehearsed. And it is these well-developed disciplines that stand out when cultivated over time.

It might not be piano, but instead may be photography or computer programming. The pattern of identifying little passions that lead to opportunities to develop disciplines holds true. Learning the technical aspects of competent photography is a set of disciplines that impress others enough to be hired for a job. The aspiring computer programmer must acquire enough skill at programming so that people reach out to have their website updated or download an app. The pattern worth noting is that little passions lead to opportunities to develop disciplines. Only when disciplines have been developed do individuals get the opportunity to pursue big passions.

Now, I told the story of Alexander McKay to develop the pattern – little passions, key disciplines, big passion. This pattern, though, is not a thing of the past. I have seen this carried out by students who have been guided by these principles.

Consider a young person who in high school became really passionate about architecture. She spent time making architectural sketches, from high rises to houses to cathedrals. Her passion about architecture, drawing and design led her to develop disciplines in math and science. She ended up majoring in mechanical engineering at a Christian liberal arts college. The skills she developed enabled her to excel as an engineer after graduating from college.

Other students have followed a similar pathway. One student became interested in police work. After signing up for a ride along with a police officer at the local station, this student joined an internship program through the police station. When it came time to apply to colleges, her direct involvement in police work made her application stand out as she applied to several Christian liberal arts college. Choosing a criminal justice major is not the start of her journey, but simply the next step towards her sense of mission in life. Her interest was matched with opportunities to develop disciplines even as a high schooler to confirm her sense of vocation.

Flipping the Script

When it comes to conventional college guidance, I think we’re getting it all wrong. We often think about college guidance as completing the steps to get into the best possible college. What we need to do instead is flip the script. If we enable students to understand their sense of vocation or calling – if we disciple young people to discover why it is that God has placed them on this planet – we can encourage them to think differently about college. Instead of trying to accumulate a number of activities to stack a resume in order to become as attractive as possible to colleges, a better approach is to find these little passions that will enable them to develop disciplines in a few areas that make them an interesting candidate to a number of colleges.

When they develop one or two passions into disciplines, they are able to then demonstrate to these colleges that they have the ability to go deep in a those areas. They not only can articulate a sense of calling and direction in life, but they already have a proven track record of meaningful and tangible experiences. It all comes through a dynamic of connecting these little passions and these developing disciplines into a relationship with God where students are asking God on a regular basis, where are you going to take these things?

So college guidance is actually about helping students discover a big vision of what their life might be like. Here’s the reality, though. It’s impossible to be certain about a grand life vision at such a young age. This is why little passions are the best place to begin, because they can lead to a set of disciplines that point in the direction of one’s vocation.

The “Superstar” Thesis

A figure who helps to amplify the process described here is Cal Newport, professor of computer science at Georgetown University. In 2010, Newport published the last of his student books, a series of paperbacks oriented to providing advice to high school and college students. The title How to Be a High School Superstar may sound like clickbait. However, Newport packs the book with sound advice that hints at the ideas he unpacks in later works such as “deep work,” “craftsman mindset,” and even “digital minimalism.” Newport explains how the high school rat race to get into prestigious colleges entails excessive activities that make admissions candidates unimpressive while they work themselves into burnout. The alternative – the “superstar” thesis – is to do less while pursuing accomplishments that are “hard to explain.” Let’s unpack this a little further.

Newport delineates three laws that can be put into practice by students during their high school careers. These laws can be expressed in three words: underscheduling, focus and innovation. He writes:

“As my research into the relaxed superstars progressed, I began to notice three big-picture ideas popping up again and again:

The Law of Understanding – Pack your schedule with free time. Use this time to explore.

The Law of Focus – Master one serious interest. Don’t waste time on unrelated activities.

The Law of Innovation – Pursue accomplishments that are hard to explain, not hard to do.

These were the general laws that most of the students I interviewed seemed to follow on their path from average to standout.” (Cal Newport, How to Be a High School Superstar, xix)

I think these laws map well on the pattern spelled out earlier – little passions, key disciplines, big passion. Students need time to explore to find little passions. Then they need to take on the mastery mindset like a craftsman to gain skills and disciplines. These will then lead to something bigger in the accomplishments that can be difficult to explain. Let’s spell this out further.

Advising High School Students

The first message students need to hear is that they should give themselves the gift of free time. Sit down with your students and look over their weekly schedule. Identify pockets of time that can become opportunities for broad exploration. They need time to freely explore interests that could draw them into opportunities to develop disciplines. One word of caution, though. Free time cannot get absorbed into the internet. By underscheduling the student is using free time to cultivate interests, and social media and gaming will eat up all of that ability to cultivate interests. Instead of spending time on the internet, advise students to go outside and play. Just like Alexander went outside and played with farm equipment. He took things apart. He figured out how it worked. Advise students to read books. Find books at the library or at a local bookstore. The idea is to find things that genuinely interest the student.

The second message students need to hear is that they should remain cognizant of their time. It’s too easy to become overly involved in activities that will not help them to develop disciplines. Help make the connection between a few areas of interest and the skills they can develop within those. It could be that your role is to help them find specific opportunities to connect with an outside organization that takes interns. There may be mentors or coaches that you can help the family to find. The goal is to find interesting opportunities for the student to gain skills.

The third message students need to hear is that the modern economy has opportunities for them to share their gifts with others. Help your students to discover ways to share their interests through forums both within the school and more broadly. Consider how a student who starts a blog or a podcast or a YouTube channel can own their area of interest in ways that are unique and interesting. Most of the tools available in the marketplace are available to high school entrepreneurs.

The ultimate message students need to hear is that God is at work to accomplish his purposes through his people. When we cultivate our interests and disciplines within an understanding that God created us for his good purposes, it can ignite our passions to envision a life of service to him. Already in high school, students can develop a sense of gifting and calling while exploring interests and developing disciplines. As a counselor, continue to ask the question, “What do you think God is doing through this?” or “What’s your sense of what God is drawing you to?”

Putting It All Together

The goal of college guidance should actually have nothing to do with college at all. The guidance we provide aims at a life well lived. Our work with students ought to enable them to consider their own vocation or calling. Far from being a fanciful self-reflection, students who are guided to explore exciting interests that lead them to develop deep disciplines will gain real insights into themselves and their relationships with God and others. While it might be impossible to truly know one’s calling as a high schooler, I firmly believe that students who undertake these steps will have a greater ownership of their college choices and a fuller sense of what they are interested in pursuing in their lives.

If you have enjoyed these thoughts, be on the lookout for our upcoming podcast with Tami Peterson, founder of Life Architects. She and I discuss a wide range of ideas pertaining to college guidance. Subscribe to the Educational Renaissance Podcast on Spotify to catch all the latest episodes.

Training the Prophetic Voice by Dr. Patrick Egan is a must-read for classical Christian educators seeking to build a robust rhetoric program. Grounded in biblical theology, this insightful book provides a framework for developing students’ prophetic voices – the ability to speak with wisdom, clarity, and conviction on the issues that matter most.

As an experienced educator, Dr. Egan understands the vital role rhetoric plays in shaping the next generation of Christian leaders. Through time-tested principles and practical guidance, he equips teachers to cultivate students who can articulate the truth with passion and purpose.

Whether you’re looking to revitalize your existing rhetoric curriculum or lay the foundation for a new program, Training the Prophetic Voice is an invaluable resource. Discover how to empower your students to become effective communicators, courageous truth-tellers, and agents of transformation in their communities and beyond.

Order your copy of Training the Prophetic Voice today and unlock the power of your students’ voice in your classroom.

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On his return to Lystra during his second missionary tour, Paul had his eye on a potential companion to work alongside him. Previously, Paul had worked closely with Barnabas, but had parted ways at the outset of his second journey. Even though he had brought Silas along with him, a vacancy remained. So when he arrived at Lystra, he identified a young man full of faith to join in this gospel ministry. Timothy represents in many ways the central point of the book of Acts. The Jerusalem council had just met to delineate exactly how to blend new gentile believers into the church comprised mostly of Jewish believers (Acts 15). Timothy was of mixed parentage. His father was Greek. His mother was a Jewish believer (Acts 16:1). Raised in the faith of his mother and grandmother, Timothy would have already been familiar with the scriptures of the Old Testament. As one of the disciples from Paul’s previous visit to Lystra, what Paul found upon his return was a young man of profound faith. We cannot know for certain his age, but it seems likely that Timothy was still only a boy, around sixteen or seventeen years old.

Timothy joined Paul and Silas on their journeys, traveling throughout Macedonia and Greece. At times, Paul entrusted Timothy with the care of local churches, such as at Berea or Thessalonica. We can picture, though, that Paul valued Timothy as a close companion, referring to him as his “true child in the faith” (1 Tim. 1:2). At various points, Paul commends Timothy to various churches, such as when Timothy was sent to minister at Corinth (1 Cor. 4:17 and later 16:10), or when he was sent to minister at Philippi (Phil 2:18-23). Timothy was included as a co-author of several of Paul’s letters, including 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, and Philemon. From all of this we gather that Timothy was a gifted and capable companion, even during his earliest days traveling with Paul.

What Timothy exemplifies is a young person exhibiting spiritual gifting in a powerful way. Later in his life, even after many years accompanying Paul, he was still a young man when Paul advised him to “let no one despise you for your youth” (1 Tim. 4:12). The point I am making here is that spiritual gifting can be evident and powerfully expressed by young people. Therefore, I believe that we can begin exploring gifting during the high school years, enabling students to begin a process of discernment and practice that will put feet to their faith in powerful ways.

Learning about Spiritual Gifts

In this year’s Bible class taught to freshmen, we walked through 1 Corinthians 12-14. Here we get one of several lists of gifts in the New Testament. Compare, for instance, the list in 1 Cor. 12:7-11 with that in 12:28-30 as well as with those in Romans 12:4-8, Ephesians 4:11 and 1 Peter 4:9-11. Each list contains different gifts. This means that no single list is comprehensive or exhaustive. So the first lesson to learn about gifts is that they can be tricky to pin down and define with exactitude. This points to the need for discernment and dependence. By discernment, I mean the process of continually asking the Lord for clarity as to how he desires to work through someone to edify the people of God. And by dependence, I mean that the gift itself is not actually the most consequential part of what we are learning. Instead, using a God-given gift is really the training ground for prayerfully and faithfully connecting ourselves to his work in and through us. 1 Corinthians 13 shows us that the gift itself will pass away (13:8-10). It is the love that is expressed through the gift that will endure forever.

Walking through the three chapters of 1 Corinthians 12-14, we are presented with three major ideas. First, we learn the nature of spiritual gifts in chapter 12. Here we get a couple listings of the gifts, but also ideas such as the unity of the body of Christ and the empowering of the Holy Spirit. In chapter 13, we learn about spiritual gifts as the “homework” we receive to practice loving one another. Paul anticipates that we will one day see our Lord face to face, so our current practice should be a training ground for learning how to live a serving and sacrificial love towards our brothers and sisters in Christ. Then in chapter 14, Paul teaches about how gifts ought to be exercised in an orderly and considerate way. Here we get the principle that gifts are meant to build the church up (14:12).

There are challenging points of discussion that accompany these passages. It can be difficult to walk through these chapters without tackling one or two of the controversies contained in them. For instance, we encounter topics such as the availability of all gifts today (some Christian traditions view the miraculous gifts such as tongues and prophecy as no longer available). There are topics pertaining to authority in the church, which can erupt into differences in church polities in a multi-denominational setting. Perhaps the most difficult controversy to tackle is the roles of women in the church. A teacher resource I found to be extremely helpful is D.A. Carson’s Showing the Spirit. He carefully lays out different theological positions and proposes reasonable solutions to thorny issues.

Learning to Own One’s Faith

One of the chief goals in learning about spiritual gifts is to help students make the connection between their emerging biblical faith and the practical outworking of that faith in their lives. To accomplish this, it is imperative to lay a strong biblical foundation. One must know what one believes. Some students will have a very detailed and robust knowledge of the Bible and theology, while others will have less knowledge. So, I advise a program whereby students come away with a good grasp of the storyline of the Bible and the essentials of the faith. As high schoolers, students can be entrusted to read on their own and begin practicing disciplines such as daily prayer, regular Bible reading, and so forth. Learning about spiritual gifts, then, gives them further ownership of their faith and new avenues to put feet to their faith.

Having students take a few spiritual gifts tests is the next step in their learning. After laying a strong foundation in the biblical text, we then have them explore by way of tests some potential giftings the Lord may have bestowed upon them. Here are two tests I found online. The website Spiritual Gifts Test is run by the ministry of Jeff Carver. I like this site because it has a test geared towards youth. To take this test and receive results, students must create an account. I found that this site has really solid definitions of the gifts for students to learn about their personal gifting and connect that to solid biblical teachings. Another site is giftstest.com, a free online tool produced by the Rock Church in San Diego. There are other tests available out there, but these are two good examples of questionnaires aimed at elucidating an individual’s possible gifting. I want to emphasize the word “possible,” because no single test can definitively tell a person what the Holy Spirit is accomplishing within a believer.

This is why we need to spend time reflecting. Once students have taken a couple tests, they have some results to read and digest. They now begin a process of writing up what they think their gifting is by listing the top results and using scripture to clearly define their gifting as best as they can discern. For students who may not have had much opportunity to serve in any ministry context, it is important to consider moments when they have experienced genuine joy, or times when others have commented on their potential gifting. I also spend time working one-on-one with them in order to hear their thoughts and provide my own insights.

I also have students write up plans they can make now that they have discern one, two or three possible giftings. These plans might be along the lines of learning more about spiritual gifts, or speaking with a youth pastor about spiritual gifts. They might consider opportunities to use spiritual gifts in a ministry at church, or to join a missions trip. In other words, having considered what the Lord is doing through them, they should now follow Paul’s teaching that these gifts are for the edification of the church.

Learning about Life’s Mission

Having spent the better part of a decade providing college guidance, the major framework I use with students is to consider their life’s mission. I can think of no better way to think about college than to view those years than within a context a long-range vision of why God has placed this person on the planet. It can be difficult for students to have a clear vision of this life mission, so it takes time and good counsel to draw this out of them. Here’s where I think learning about spiritual gifts can be a moment of clarity for students. By gaining an insight into their relationship with God, and a sense of where God wants them to serve, they begin to understand that their life has a mission, and that whatever kind of schooling they do, it should be intimately tied to that mission. It is imperative that counselors use effective questions to draw out of students their own values and sense of their life mission. We must restrain ourselves from inserting our own vision or coaxing them into a preconceived notion of what they ought to want in their lives. Only when they have come to their own conclusions can they genuinely be satisfied with this vision of their mission in life. Some of the questions I ask have to do with what kinds of values to they hold, what kind of person do they want to be when they are 20, 30 or 40, and what kind of parent would they want to be.

This does not mean that one’s spiritual gift is somehow tied to a college major or career. That being said, it could be that discerning a spiritual gift could lead some students to pursue training in ministry. For many or even most students, they can start to map out a mission where their interests, talents, and giftings come together into a clearer life plan. The aspiring architect can now see how their talent in physics intersects with their interest in design as well as their spiritual gifting of mercy. How these come together is very personal and unique to that person.

Whether a unit on spiritual gifts is explicitly connected to college guidance or not, teaching students about spiritual gifts can be a key moment in their growth as young Christians. During the high school years, most of these students will learn how to drive and work their first job. Shouldn’t we also hand them the keys to a deeper walk with Christ that gives them a start in how to practically live out their faith. Just like Timothy was entrusted with responsibility at a young age, we can likewise guide our students toward a mature faith.

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In this article, my aim is to explore an array of alternatives to four-year colleges that ought to be on the radar of guidance counselors. In the past some of these alternatives would have been geared towards students who lacked the grades or finances for college. But more and more students are seeking these alternatives not because they lack the academic credentials or cannot afford college, but because their vision for their future questions the value of the four-year college experience.

Some of these alternatives are not mutually exclusive to each other or to a college education. As we guide students, knowing that there are alternatives can go a long way towards equipping young people with the tools they need to find pathways towards their goals, ambitions and callings.

Gap Year

Taking a gap year is not really an alternative to college per se. Instead, it delays the matriculation to college by a year. A well-planned year can be a great way for teenagers to gain life experiences outside of school where they can discover new interests, deepen their faith and learn more about the world.

There are a number of great programs out there. One such program is the Worldview Academy at the Abbey. Located in beautiful Cañon City, Colorado, students participate in courses that integrate discipleship and apologetics. At programs such as this, students gain rich life experiences that can inspire them towards a deeper walk with God and a clearer sense of his calling. Often gap year programs have an application process and cost associated with them, but are far less expensive than college tuition, room and board.

It is pretty normal for students to attend a four-year college after their gap year experience. They often enter college with a passion for learning and more maturity than their peers. Some data shows that students participating in gap year programs earn higher GPAs during their college years.

Military Service

A rewarding experience for some high school graduates is military experience. Whether the goal is to attend a service academy or to enlist, military service can be a pathway to opportunities not available at typical four-year colleges. (Keep in mind, that numerous four-year colleges have ROTC programs that combine the typical four-year college with military training). Many of the students I’ve known who pursue military service talk about the leadership training and personal development that come through the rigors of military training.

The application process for the military academies is both rigorous and competitive. Not only do the academies require solid academic performance as represented on a typical transcript and standardized test scores. They are looking at athletics, extracurricular activities, community service, and leadership experience. A congressional letter of recommendation is also required for most military academies. Families who are seeking placement at one of the academies ought to begin the process early, with plans in place beginning Freshman year.

Another pathway some students choose is to enlist in the military. These students attend basic training and serve for at least a term of four years. Enlisted soldiers find they can have a military career, receive G.I. Bill funding for college and have a post-military career that sets them on excellent footing to achieve their life goals and calling.

Trade Schools and Apprenticeships

For students who are discerning a calling to a trade, there are some excellent trade schools that are usually two-year programs that can be cost effective when compared to the four-year undergraduate degree. Many trade schools have local presence in cities around the country, so finding a place to get training in cosmetology, HVAC, carpentry, or automotive can usually find a place close to home. There are some residential programs, such as Crown School of Trades or Williamson College of Trades, both of which are Christian schools requiring students to attend chapel and have some campus life requirements. What this means is that students can still experience the spiritual and social aspects of college even though they are choosing an alternative to the four-year degree program.

Along the same lines, apprenticeships are full-time jobs that combine on-the-job training with classroom work that leads to certification in a number of industries. Formal apprenticeships can be found through the Registered Apprenticeship Program, a government organization that recognizes apprenticeships that have been validated by the Department of Labor. The obvious advantage of an apprenticeship is that high school graduates can start earning money right away and can see incremental increases in wages as they achieve qualifications.

International Colleges

The next alternative is not exactly an alternative to the four-year college, it is an alternative to U.S.-based higher education. There are a number of high-quality universities outside the border that can both provide rich multi-cultural experiences and be cost-effective alternatives to American schools.

For students with good command of Spanish, the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina is one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America. US students can attend without paying tuition costs.

Germany is strong in science and technology and many universities in locations such as Berlin, Bonn and Munich offer inexpensive tuition. Several German universities have three-year bachelor’s degree programs, many of which roll directly into an additional master’s degree.

The UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand are countries where students can find inexpensive universities of good repute providing instruction in the English language. With any of these magnificent countries, one can find cultural exchange even without having to learn a new language.

For any of these international options, keep in mind that travel costs alongside room and board can remain a substantial investment. But for students who are interested in international studies in business, ministry, law or politics, getting outside the US border can be a major contributor to the sense of calling and accumulated skill in navigating the wider world.

Start a Franchise

An interesting strategy that was shared with me by a parent really stirred my thinking about the cost and value of a college education. Her son was interested in going into business. Instead of having her son major in business and economics at a four-year college, she invested those tuition dollars into a franchise. By managing a local business, this young man learned important business skills and economic principles in an environment where the stakes were real.

There are nearly 200 nation-wide franchises with an initial start-up cost of around $40,000. Comparing that to tuition, you can see why this parent weighed the value of practical experience running a business against the value of a college education. As with many of these alternatives, starting a franchise does not mean that this child couldn’t eventually go on to earn a college degree at some point.

Set Up a Side-hustle

Back in the day it was endearing to see children set up a lemonade stand. It might involve a weekend of making lemonade, marketing it to local passersby with a flimsy posterboard sign, and generally selling to a few neighborhood families. Today, there are opportunities for those same children to set up a side-hustle business online through Shopify, Etsy, Ebay or Amazon. Entrepreneurial high schoolers are learning that their handcrafted items can earn them substantial money through this amazing access to a global market.

The side-hustle, whether it is selling fan art, drop shipping t-shirts or designing coloring books through Amazon KDP, students can learn to produce businesses that earn passive income while pursuing a career or education. Other students have found that access to YouTube or Tik Tok have enabled them to become influencers promoting brands or products. While there are obvious examples of young individuals who present themselves as inauthentic and attention seeking, there is actually a great opportunity for classically trained students to promote great ideas, simple living, and Christian discipleship.

Guiding High School Graduates into the New Economy

As I conclude this series on college guidance, I think it’s important to understand that we are graduating students into a new economy. The current system of higher education was in large part a creation of the industrial economy. The New Economy, built with industrial technologies, is actually a post-industrial environment. Every individual has a plethora of choices to choose new and exciting career paths that were unheard of in previous generations. Access to information over the internet, the ability to reach an audience through podcasting or video content, and the global reach of sales portals makes it so that every student can be an entrepreneur. In many ways, every student must become an entrepreneur, even if they pursue traditional careers, simply because the marketplace is requiring creative twists on traditional careers. We are seeing more and more doctors, lawyers and bankers appearing on YouTube or writing long-from articles on personal blogs. These avenues help them standout amongst their competitors because they are adding value by providing the rare value of what Cal Newport calls “deep work.”

As guidance counselors, we need to be aware of the New Economy that we are graduating our students into and then equipping students and parents with the options available to them. For most, the four-year college experience remains the most likely outcome. However, for a growing number new pathways are being explored as alternatives to the four-year college experience. This requires a shift in our thinking from how do we get these students into college to how do we enable these students to understand their options as well as empowering them to pursue these options.

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In this article, we will do a little bit of cost analysis to determine whether students, parents and schools should continue to aim for college placements. We will also look at how financial aid works with some guidance on how to navigate a fairly complex set of factors that determine the actual cost families pay.

Unlike admissions, where one can look at a few sets of numbers to determine whether a student meets the admissions criteria, the financial picture is highly individualized. Each school approaches awarding differently and each family represents a unique financial situation. With this in mind, guidance counselors ought to be wary of a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to the financial component of college guidance. That being said, hopefully this article will provide some insights and perspectives that will help you with both students and parents.

Does Rising Cost Mean Lower Value?

It is incontrovertible that the cost of college tuition – not to mention fees, room and board and books – have increased substantially over the past half century. An abundance of sources tracking college tuition costs from the mid-1970s to the present find that college tuition has tripled. A college education has become one of the most expensive items one will pay for in life, with only a house being more expensive according to financial planners.

One question to be asked is whether college has retained value as in investment. To answer this, we must consider two facets of what a college education is. The first facet looks at the role a college education plays as a lever for economic mobility. This facet takes into consideration the earning potential of college graduates in comparison to students holding only a high school diploma. A recent study done by the Postsecondary Value Commission was reported in Inside Higher Education. This study analyzed the comparative advantage of college graduates over high school graduates. “Institutions meet Threshold 0 if their students earn at least as much as a high school graduate, plus enough to recoup their investment in college, within 10 years.” In other words, the study is asking whether graduates are finding a return on investment within a decade of graduating. The study found “that threshold is within reach for about 83 percent of colleges, according to the report.” This indicates that most colleges see their alumni realizing a greater economic advantage only a decade after graduation. In terms of actual dollars, “The typical postgraduation earnings for alums of such institutions are about $8,981 above the threshold minimum.” (“Is College Worth It? Recent Analysis Says Yes,” Inside Higher Education, June 22, 2023)

The second facet has to do with economic adaptability. This concept is similar to economic mobility in that it encompasses how an individual with a college degree can move upward in terms of earning power. However, economic adaptability has more to do with the ability to change direction in light of changing economic circumstances. The concept here is that a college degree opens doors otherwise inaccessible without a degree, in some cases substantially more lucrative opportunities. A significant factor that contributes to these economic opportunities has to do with the network effect of joining a college community, including fellow students, professors, alumni, donors and companies that might prefer graduates from certain colleges. Ivy League schools immediately come to mind when we consider the network effect. However, many smaller schools enjoy similar advantages. So, it is not the case that attending a lesser-known school impinges upon this network effect. Instead, many of these smaller schools enjoy highly active networks.

These facets indicate that colleges and universities have retained good value as an investment despite the rising costs of tuition. Understanding the true value of a college education can be a very personal consideration. Multiple factors can contribute to what one genuinely values in life. Be careful about college rankings or marketing that emphasizes superficial aspects of college life. If a student truly values Christian formation, fellow students who are intellectually engaging, and professors who care about student learning, then finding a school that has these traits will end up being more valuable than a school that has a higher ranking or costs less.

Before moving on, it is important to be aware that the advertised tuition for colleges and universities—the “sticker price”—is rarely what typical families actually pay. Most students receive some form of financial aid, which can substantially change the price comparison between colleges. Even when we factor in financial aid, some families may still find that the cost of college outweighs their estimate of the value of a college education. There are some significant alternatives to higher education, a topic we will cover in another article.

Funding the College Dream

With a few exceptions – such as Hillsdale, Grove City, New Saint Andrews and Patrick Henry who do not accept federal funding – the first step to funding the college dream takes the form of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or the FAFSA. This form determines eligibility for financial aid based on a family’s income and assets. Colleges may use alternative or additional forms to determine institutional aid, but the FAFSA has become the norm for the vast majority of college applicants because it is tied to federal aid such as grants, loans and work-study. Because everyone’s financial situation is unique, providing guidance to students and families wanting advice on college planning can be tricky. This brief overview should help advisors think through the different categories most colleges are operating with.

Let’s think about financial aid as filling up different buckets. All of these buckets will contribute to the total cost of attendance at a college. In other words, we need to pour all of these buckets into the larger pool of the cost of attendance (COA), which comprises tuition, fees, room and board, and miscellaneous other expenses. The FAFSA determines an index number that is used to assess the financial need of a family. This index number used to be called the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) but will now be called the Student Aid Index (SAI) starting in 2024. The financial need of a family is then the COA minus the SAI.

The two big buckets that go towards a family’s financial need are need-based aid and non-need-based aid. Non-need-based aid is often referred to as merit-based aid. In other words, these are scholarships or grants that are awarded based on a student’s performance in some area, such as academics, athletics, leadership or some other category. Often these are awarded by the institution, but some scholarships are available by independent organizations such as denominations, private trusts, or guilds.

Need-based aid is another big bucket in the financial aid picture. Here we have grants, loans, work study and institutional funds. These funds are distributed based on the need assessment that is generated by the FAFSA. Since many of these funds are sourced by federal programs such as the Pell Grant, Federal Work-Study, subsidized and un-subsidized loans, and PLUS loans, they are regulated by federal policies. This means there are limitations on how much of any source a student will be eligible to receive. These regulations and policies can change over time, so families with multiple children may find it confusing and frustrating to keep track of all the details of their award package.

Knowing about these two big buckets provides a substantial orientation about what families can expect in terms of paying for college. Most families will not pay full price for college. However, the full price still needs to be paid from some source or another. So typically, a family will receive a financial aid offer letter outlining multiple sources of funding contributing to the total cost of attendance, with a bottom line that expresses the remaining amount to be paid by the family.

An aspect of this picture is that colleges have different processes for how they determine the aid eligibility. Some colleges emphasize merit-based awards. Some colleges are need-based only. Some colleges offer guaranteed four-year packages. Some colleges issue new awards each year. Some colleges begin with merit-based awards and then fill in the remainder with need-based sources. Some colleges issue their final offer in their award letter, while other colleges expect some amount of negotiation. All of these factors make it so that comparing offers from different colleges can be comparing apples to oranges. Because of this, it is important for parents and students to develop open dialogue with both the admissions office and the financial aid office at the colleges they are applying to.

This is a complex picture, but hopefully it also provides a positive outlook that funding is available for students to be able to access colleges that fit their profile. I have seen over the years that the financial component of college guidance is complex and at times frustrating. Yet, when we prioritize the student’s vision for what God is calling them to, and then finding the right institutions to support them on that journey, I have found that the financial picture comes together nicely. In some cases, families choose to send their child to the more expensive option because they have been convinced that the school is the best place to develop their child. In other cases, I have seen ways that God has moved in mysterious ways to make a financial pathway available for a student to attend a great school that seemed a remote possibility during the early days of the application process.

If a family has special circumstances that the FAFSA does not accurately represent, or if the amount the family has to pay after receiving aid is still beyond their ability to pay, they should contact the financial aid office. There may be an appeal process where adjustments to the FAFSA can be made or additional funding the student may qualify for. It is always worth asking and having a conversation with the college to see if there’s anything more that can be done. As college guidance counselors, knowing that this process is available can be a way to enable families to speak up for themselves, especially when they have found a college that is an ideal fit for their child.

Thinking Differently about the Cost of College

Having looked at the value of college versus the cost of college, I think it remains the case that a college education has retained its value as an investment. When we consider how there is funding that can go a long way towards defraying the cost of attendance, it still seems like there are great opportunities for families to identify schools that fit their financial profile.

Here is where I think it is worth considering a different perspective on the cost of college. All too frequently, college finances pit a family against a college. The family wants to keep as much money as possible. And the college wants to receive as much money as possible. This framework actually makes the whole college journey about money and not about higher values. Now let’s be clear, we’re talking about a lot of money. So I don’t want to be flippant about how important a life decision it is for a family to choose a college for their child.

Yet, I believe there is a different way to think about the relationship between the family and the college. If we have begun the college journey by identifying the student’s gifting, passions, vision for their future, and God-given calling, then what we want to do is back that mission-driven impulse with a partner college that will enable the child to flourish in carrying out this mission. What this means is that our search process becomes less about how a school ranks on the US News and World Report rankings or about the relative costs of the school. These numbers become far less important if we’ve found a location where a child will be mentored, nourished and trained to enter the world well supported on their journey.

What I am talking about here is a framework where the college becomes a partner. We’re looking for schools where the family would feel like they would want to donate to their cause. That the tuition cost makes sense as an investment not only in their child, but in the institution that is going to promote the wellbeing of their child. This framework does not pit the family against the school, but instead sees a high degree of alignment. It is my firm belief that there are schools out there that families will find that fit this framework once we cut away some of the marketing around colleges and some of the fears families have about the college search.

Speaking to college guidance counselors, it may be that your most important work is to uncover for families some hidden gems that really fit what they are looking for as a college experience. In some cases, it is the role of a college guidance counselor to help change the perspective of a family who might have cheered on a college football team for generations, who actually need to fall in love with a new college that will do a better job of cultivating their child’s talents. In some cases, it is the role of a college guidance counselor to get the student and parents talking with each other about values, goals and expectations. I think the vision of college partnerships is sound and compelling, and this idea will help you to provide good counsel.

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For some students, they adeptly navigate these rules of the game from the outset. They understand that getting good grades contributes to their college entrance profile. These students often approach teachers about their grades and have a decent understanding of their cumulative GPA. They often prep themselves for standardized test either by watching YouTube videos, attending a Khan Academy class or find a local tutor who might promise to boost their test scores by a certain amount. More often, however, students enter high school unaware of these pieces of the puzzle, and they need the support of a guidance counselor to understand how these fit into the big picture of college entrance, college choice and career ambitions.

What this article aims to do is equip college guidance counselors with a good understanding of the typical rules in the game of college admissions. These come down to the big three items: the cumulative grade point average (GPA), test scores on standardized college entrance exams (SAT, ACT, CLT), and the application essay. For each of these items, I will offer some advice for how to coach your students.

The High School Transcript and Calculating GPA

Let’s begin with the high school transcript, the place where college admissions counselors will find the first item of interest, the cumulative GPA. Every grade received in high school is calculated on a scale, multiplied by the amount of credit that class is rated for, and averaged amongst all classes.

Here’s an example of a typical Freshman courseload:

The B+ this student received in her humanities class is equivalent to 3.3 points on a 4-point scale. This 3.3 is multiplied by 1 credit, the value of this class during fall semester. The B+ in biology is likewise earning 3.3 points, but this time is multiplied by 0.5 credits. The C in geometry is then calculated as 2.0 times 0.5. The A in Latin multiplies 4.0 times 0.5. The same happens for the rest of the classes for fall semester. The product of each calculation is then added up, totaling 11.95 grade points. This total is then divided by 3.5, to total credits earned during the semester to arrive at a grade point average of 3.41.

If you were able to follow all of those calculations, you’re doing well. Over the years I have taken time with many students and parents to walk them through those calculations, and there are always questions about how the calculations work. Calculating GPA is not an intuitive process. Just like any other game, you have to immerse yourself in the rules and conditions. Consider how these calculations compare to the rule sets for, say, chess or cribbage. All of this to say, as a college guidance counselor, it is worth your while to provide students and parents with basic information about your grading scale, how grades are converted into grade points and the calculations involved to arrive at GPA. And, having gained their audience, help these parents and students avoid fixation on GPA, instead show them that quality of classes and quality of work are what really matters.

Notice how the GPA of 3.41 tells us very little about the quality of courses taken during fall of freshman year and is disconnected from the rest of this student’s academic performance over her four-year career. Here’s where you come in as a college guidance counselor. You can tell the story in your letter of recommendation. Is this the typical freshman year for students at your school? Is this an academically challenging courseload? Did the student improve over time? Insights like this are ideal points to make in your letter of recommendation because it sets a context for an admissions committee to make sense of the numbers. In other words, a transcript tells a story of an academic journey. But it requires explication in order for that story to come across to the admissions counselors who receive the transcript amongst hundreds of transcripts from different high schools who all have differing grading scales, point scales, course options and calculation methods.

Telling the Story through the Letter of Recommendation

Speaking of admissions counselors, it is worth knowing that despite all your hard work to accurately calculate GPA, many colleges recalculate GPA. They have to compare many diverse expressions of GPA received from high schools across the country. This recalculation attempts to level the playing field so that they can get as accurate a point of comparison as possible to assess their incoming freshman. As a college guidance counselor, you can help these admissions committees understand your transcript by writing letters of recommendation that tell the academic journey of the student as well as how challenging the overall program is. For instance, does a transcript tell the story of increasing GPA each year? In the example provided above, you can already tell that the student has increased her GPA from one semester to another. If that trend continues, then there is a story to tell of increasing aptitude and college readiness. Parse out for the admissions officers reading your transcript courses that might be new or different to their ears, such as rhetoric, humanities, Bible or theology classes.

As you are writing your letter of recommendation, go above and beyond the academic transcript. Tell the admissions counselors about opportunities students have for leadership and mentorship in the school. Were there service projects or events where this particular student demonstrated tangible qualities? Did this student participate in any sports or performing arts? Even for courses that are core curriculum such as fine and performing arts, mention their participation in shows or on the crew. Tell about how this student is a well-rounded individual who will be engaged in the wider community of whatever campus they step on next year.

Now, you cannot possibly remember all these details about every student. So one of the items I have all juniors complete is a bullet-point resume of all of the activities they have participated in during their high school career. This includes school activities, but ought to go beyond school to include jobs, clubs, music or dance lessons, sports, missions trips, church participation, volunteer work, scouting badges, etc. I will come back to this bullet-point resume in the future, but for now it is important to see how this document will help you write a letter of recommendation that really captures the qualities of the student beyond what the transcript can say.

A Very Basic Overview of Standardized College Entrance Tests

The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) first appeared in 1926 as the first test to incorporate intelligence testing as a means of verifying the innate ability of students entering top universities. The College Board, originator of the SAT, had been providing essay exams for the previous two decades. These were hand-written and hand graded, taking weeks to complete and assess. Now with a single test, students could be compared to other test takers across the nation, with the hope that colleges could assess the merits of entering students in an unbiased manner.

Prior to the founding of the College Board in 1899, universities in the United States had students sit entrance exams either on site or at testing locations in major urban centers across the country. As an example of the rigor of exams at the time, the Prince University Archives notes in an example of a typical exam from 1880 that, “the exams included English grammar and composition, world and U.S. history, geography, Latin grammar and literature, Greek grammar and literature, and mathematics” (Course Examinations Collection (AC054), Box 1). It is interesting to see how fundamental a classical education was at the time.

After World War II, the was a rapid increase in the use of the SAT, reflecting the influx of new students taking advantage of the G.I. Bill. An alternative to the SAT was created in 1959 called the American College Test (ACT) administered by ACT, Inc. Even more recently the Classic Learning Test (CLT) was created to provide an alternative utilizing classical literature and historical texts for its reading selections on the test.

Today, students are able to take any of these tests or all of these tests. In fact, students are permitted to take these tests multiple times. Unlike the original vision of the College Board in the 1920s, these tests are far less markers of individual intelligence than they are about the ability of students to achieve scores in keeping with the amount of work they have put into preparation for these tests.

The Scoring of College Entrance Tests

Beginning with the SAT, a student takes three subtests: Reading, Writing and Language, and Mathematics. The Reading and Writing components receive a combined score out of 800 points, which is then added to the Math section with a score out of another 800 points totaling 1600 possible points.

The ACT comprises four subtests: English, mathematics, reading, and science. Each subtest is calculated by taking the raw score as a percentage and then scaling that score in a range of 1-36. The composite score is the average of the four subtests, with a 36 the highest possible score on the test.

Finally, the CLT provides three subtests: Verbal Reasoning, Grammar/Writing, and Quantitative Reasoning. Each subtest is scored taking the percentage correct and then scaling that score in a range of 0-40. The overall score is the sum of each scaled subsection, with 120 begin the highest possible score.

All three tests offer an optional essay that is graded separately, meaning that the essay results are not factored into the composite or overall score. Because the subtests and scoring are so different for all three tests, each test offers concordance tables to show the equivalencies between the tests. For instance, a student earning a 110 on the CLT has achieved the equivalent of a 1520 on the SAT or a 34 on the ACT.

When it comes to guiding students, know that each test has its own peculiarities, making it such that some students perform better simply as a factor of the mechanics of the test. Students can take all three tests are allowed to take any of the tests multiple times. Many colleges offer “super scoring” which means that they will take the highest score of each subtest and create a super score from those multiple test results.

Since COVID, many colleges have made test scores optional. I think this has revealed the limited value of test scores in the decision-making process for many admissions committees. Gone are the days when you could chart GPA and SAT on the X and Y axes to determine both the admissions standards and the scholarship award. Still, the entrance test remains one of the essential tools used by schools to differentiate applicants. As you advise students today, the optionality of the test might mean that a student is better served by not submitting their scores. In the next article, I will help to build a framework for guidance that will enable you as a guidance counselor to provide insight into whether to submit scores. In most cases, they should still submit scores. And in all cases, they all should take at least one test.

Telling the Student’s Story on the Application Essay

The final component of the standard college application process is the essay. The essay must be well written, personable, authentic, and help the applicant stand out amongst thousands of candidates. It needs to convey the qualities of the student’s personality, his or her academic potential, and itemize some of the accomplishments achieved during high school. The essay obviously needs to showcase the writing abilities of the student, demonstrating the capacity to engage in college-level work. In addition, it needs to show awareness of the programs and characteristics of the college to which the student is applying. An excellent essay even develops themes about life and meaning. All of this in the space of 300-500 words.

When we develop a framework for guidance in the next article, we will return to the application essay to capitalize on this opportunity to say something meaningful to an admissions committee. For now, it is important to understand that most applications provide an essay prompt. Popular prompts might ask a student to share about learning from an obstacle, or to describe a person he or she admires. Christian schools might ask for a personal testimony. Non-Christian schools might prompt a student to describe a situation where they challenged a belief. Often these prompts are open-ended and general in nature. This can be very frustrating for students who find that the prompt gives little guidance on what the committee is actually looking for.

As an individual providing guidance, have your students write sample application essays during their junior year. Give them a few typical prompts so that they get a feel for what will be asked of them. Provide feedback about how they can convey the story of their life’s journey and how the potential college will be the next step on their journey. In essence, this is the simple maneuver of the application essay. It’s a succinct piece of communication between a student and a college. It needs to speak in the language of the college. And it needs to tell the college why this particular student would thrive at that location.

A good portion of the time you will spend with students during the application process is reviewing application essays. Coaching students in this way can be a great moment of connection as you help them craft their story and envision themselves at the next stage of their career. Sometimes these personal details are the hardest for them to express in terms that are authentic but not overly vulnerable. So carve out time to meet with your seniors early in the school year to go over application essays. If you have a large senior class, you may need to deputize some of your faculty to do some essay coaching. These moments of guidance are critical to the success of their applications. But I have also found that these moments also strengthen their relationship with the school.

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As we go into this historical review, we will keep in mind that much of what our educational renewal movement has been about stands against the erosion of values that came with industrialized education. I think there are great opportunities once this history is understood to guide students to colleges and universities that will be excellent destinations for students to build on their educational foundation at our schools and homeschools.

Universities Prior to Industrialization

Let us begin by considering how higher education became what it is today. We can go all the way back to the medieval universities. With the founding of the University of Bologna in 1088, numerous intellectual centers were established throughout Europe including Paris (1150), Oxford (1167), Cambridge (1209) and St Andrews (1413), among many others. These universities were representative of the Aristotelian scholasticism of high middle ages. Our understanding of the trivium and quadrivium within the modern classical education movement is significantly shaped by the medieval universities. Renaissance humanism, far from being a break from the universities, was an outgrowth of these universities which became centers of scientific and humanistic thought.

The word “university” is a composite of “unity” and “diversity.” The goal of the liberal arts curriculum was to find unifying principles across the diverse arts and sciences learned at these institutions. This unity of diversity was also seen at places like Oxford where multiple colleges were federated as a university, something that modeled the federation of states, such as the United States. Taking Oxford as an example, the career of a student began with oral examinations. All students entering Oxford were required to know both ancient Greek and Latin (this was true even into the early 1900s). The first year ended with an examination on the classics. Most students then went on to study degrees that would place them in law, politics or the church. In essence, they received the education of a gentleman as they were the sons of gentlemen who were to be placed in the positions of civil leadership.

The university model struggled to keep up with changing times, as advances in technology and medicine occurred largely outside these centers of learning. Thus Spencer Walpole took a dire view of the education on offer at Oxford, writing:

“‘The education imparted at Oxford,’ wrote the Oxford University Commissioners in 1852, was ‘not such as to conduce to the advancement in life of many persons except those intended for the ministry of the Established Church.’ Few medical men, few solicitors, few persons intended for commerce or trade, ever dreamed of passing through a university career.”

Spencer Walpole, History of Twenty-Five Years, Vol. 4: 1870-1875 (Longmans 1903), 136-137.

From Walpole’s perspective, the old medieval model was not suitable to meet the demands of a more technical age. In many ways he was correct that advances in scientific research were neglected in favor of the liberal arts, which had eroded into a status-confirming exercise for the aristocracy. Walpole was expressing the prevailing opinion in British society as educational reforms substantially overhauled the system from the 1870s to the 1940s.

As an aside, the widespread educational reforms in Britain set the backdrop for authors such as Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton and others who lamented the loss of the liberal arts. Chesterton, for instance, lamented how modern reforms gutted education of any philosophical insight when he wrote, “But there is something to be said for teaching everything to somebody, as compared with the modern notion of teaching nothing, and the same sort of nothing, to everybody” (Chesterton, All I Survey, 50).

The same story as laid out here for the British educational system can be repeated as it regards American education. Harvard, Princeton, Yale and any number of schools underwent similar kinds of reforms, leading colleges to shift their emphasis from liberal arts education to technical job training and scientific research. To be fair, there is certainly a place for science and job training. However, as Chesterton astutely recognizes, the loss of the liberal arts was not simply about a change in the curriculum, but about sweeping social changes that emphasized secular atheism, gutting education of its life-giving ideas that empowered learners to consider what it means to live with meaning and purpose.

The Emergence of the Educational-industrial Complex

Already in the mid-1800s higher education saw significant reforms shifting colleges and universities towards research in medicine and technology. As mentioned above, this came at the expense of the liberal arts. Then in the first half of the 20^th century, higher education exploded. According the census data, the number of college degrees awarded in 1950 (432,000) were over ten times the number in 1910 (37,200). There were several factors leading to this massive expansion.

During the great depression, colleges and universities struggled with finances as did the rest of the economy. Roosevelt ignored the pleas of leaders in higher education to offer federal aid to colleges and universities, but he did create a New Deal program offering federal word-study grants to students. This opened the door for a new segment of society to enter higher education, bring greater economic diversity into American schools.

After World War 2, the G.I. Bill enabled millions of returning veterans to gain access to higher education. Just this influx of new students alone accounts for the massive expansion of colleges and universities in the mid-1900s. In addition, college campuses began to expand from small institutions to massive campuses with some state universities hosting tens of thousands of undergraduates.

Finally, the Great Society under Lyndon B. Johnson set the expectation that a college education was part of the American dream. Federal grants and loans subsidized this expectation in the Higher Education Act of 1965. From this point forward, higher education saw in influx of hundreds of thousands of new enrollment each decade.

The sheer size of higher education meant that it represented a significant sector of the economy with a huge federal budget allocated to support it. Combined with the reforms of the late 1800s, higher education was no longer about the lengthy process of forming students for leadership positions in society in the liberal arts tradition, but was now centered on technical job training. The industrial economy needed workers. It also needed consumers. Thus, going to college became a hallmark of American life where teenagers would expect to live in dorms, eat cafeteria food and tick the boxes of graduation credits. The combination of technical training and consumerist mentality. In his manifesto to change our conception of education, Seth Godin critiques what higher education had become by the latter part of the 1900s, “The mission used to be to create homogenized, obedient, satisfied workers and pliant, eager consumers” (Godin Stop Stealing Dreams).

It was Dwight D. Eisenhower who warned Americans of the “military-industrial complex” in his 1961 farewell address.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell address” (January 17, 1961).

The threat of an education-industrial complex mirrors Eisenhower’s warning. True, it doesn’t wield the same kind of destructive power, but an educational-industrial complex places its citizenry under the “unwarranted influence” of “misplaced power.” It raises the question as to whether it is worth placing our children in the institutions of higher education. What is the value of a college education? Have the rising costs of undergraduate education matched our perception of its value?

A New Post-industrial Economy

I have probably painted higher education in a rather poor light thus far. It is true that I have benefitted from my college education and regularly guide our high school graduates in the college selection process. I do not want to leave you without hope in what is becoming a rather bleak landscape when it comes to higher education broadly. There are two reasons that I am hopeful as it regards higher education for our students.

One, there remain numerous colleges and universities that offer excellent liberal arts programs. Students graduating from high school are not without great options whether they want to pursue specialized degrees or desire certain kinds of campus environments. It is actually an exciting time to be searching for colleges as classical school kids and their homeschooled compatriots are highly attractive to these colleges and universities. They know that generally speaking these are students who write well, think deeply and care about their learning.

Two, the demographic cliff colleges and universities are facing means that there is a simultaneous winnowing of small colleges and improvement of quite a number of collegiate programs. The recession in the early 2000s has meant that there are fewer students graduating in the 2020s. With lower enrollment, many colleges are needing to tighten their belts and make themselves more attractive to the smaller pool of applicants. While this might not mean savings for families paying for college, it can mean that tuition dollars are being invested in programs offering better value.

Conclusion

Having looked at the history of universities and capturing a sense of the current state of affairs, we are now better positioned to understand many of the mechanisms that exist in higher education today. In the next article we will delve into the way the game has been played for the past eighty years or so. Ultimately, we will promote a program of guidance that plays a different kind of game. Yet, understanding these rules will enable us as guides to understand the processes and procedures of higher education as it currently stands. We cannot go into college guidance naïve to the inner workings of topics such as federal funding, standardized tests and grade point averages.

For now, hopefully I have left you with a strong sense of how important the liberal arts tradition has been within the history of higher education since the middle ages. Figures at the start of the 20^th century cried out against the erosion of the liberal arts, figures such as Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Lewis. Yet, situating the liberal arts within the broader framework of scientific research and technical training remains a significant question today. For instance, the debates between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois addressed this very question. While this question may remain prominent in our minds today, new questions are emerging with the rising costs of a college education. Is it worth spending so much in tuition only to have significant loan debt for decades afterward? Is the value of a college education worth the cost? I think these are actually significant questions parents and students today are asking when they begin asking for college guidance. Hopefully with the perspectives gained in this historical overview, some answers have emerged that address all of these questions.

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“You’ve got to find what you love….[T]he only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle.” (as qtd in Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, 3) 

There are few premises more ubiquitous in our career counseling world than this passion mindset; and, as Cal Newport demonstrates, there are few ideas more misleading and damaging. Stories of people who quit their day-job to pursue their dreams often end in financial ruin, as well as the dashing of those same dreams. Interviews of people like Jobs who have ‘found their passion’ actually reveal that “compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the simple idea that all you have to do is follow your passion” (13). This is because passion for a career often coexists with quite a bit of drudgery and comes as the result of a great deal of effort expended in developing rare and valuable skills or what we might call arts. In fact, it is the “craftsman mindset,” Newport explains, that is the surest route to work you love.

What is the craftsman mindset? It is to focus on a job as an apprenticeship in a tradition of artistry as a means to offer some valuable good or service to the world at a high degree of excellence or mastery. Perhaps you can see how his insight connects with the apprenticeship process that leads to Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of craftsmanship or artistry (in Greek techne). Newport contrasts the craftsman mindset with the passion mindset this way:

Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you…. When you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperaware of what you don’t like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness. This is especially true for entry-level positions, which, by definition are not going to be filled with challenging projects and autonomy—these come later…. The craftsman mindset offers clarity, while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambiguous and unanswerable questions [like]…. “Who am I?” and “What do I truly love?” (38, 39)

Ironically the advice to pursue your passion in work ends up resulting in a hyper-critical and self-focused spirit that makes it almost impossible to enjoy your work. Instead, if a person allows their consciousness to get lost in the hard work of creating value through deliberate practice of their craft, they are more likely to experience flow and over time earn the career capital needed to negotiate the details of their work to their own liking. Newport draws on the research of Anders Ericsson on deliberate practice and applies it to the professional world of not-so-deliberate pathways to excellence. 

This excursus on career counseling paradigms has a purpose in our overall evaluation of apprenticeship in the arts. Newports’ compelling case for the craftsman mindset sets in stark relief the modern school’s marginalization of artistry and craftsmanship, for all our elite stadiums and flashing performing arts centers. One of the major effects of Bloom’s Taxonomy’s abstraction of intellectual skills is that it has severed the life of the academy from the artistry of the professional career world. In addition, the passion hypothesis is one of the plagues of the postmodern buffet of potential selves that students are being subtly and not so subtly indoctrinated into in our contemporary schools.

In this article we will explore how to restore this link through a recovery of artistry in our schools without embracing either utilitarian pragmatism on the one hand, or the ivory tower separation characteristic of many modern and postmodern schools, whether they call themselves classical, progressive or otherwise.

The Liberal Arts as Pathways of Professional Preparation

In endorsing Newport’s craftsman mindset, I am very aware that I will sound like a utilitarian pragmatist to many classical educators. What, after all, hath Career to do with the Academy? Isn’t the entire purpose of the classical education movement to throw off the tyranny of the urgent and the capitalistic reduction of education to career preparation? The Academy should focus on the timeless and perennial things, not STEM and training for the jobs of tomorrow. 

While I understand and acknowledge the importance of this type of polemic against K-12 education as mere college and career preparation (in fact, we have engaged in it on EdRen from time to time, even or especially at the opening of this series countering Bloom’s Taxonomy), this argument in its bare form ultimately resolves itself into a false dichotomy. It is not either the case that education is all career preparation or that it involves no career preparation at all. In actual fact, a proper education ought to prepare a student for many different careers: as John Milton said in his tractate,

“I call therefore a compleat and generous Education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and publick of Peace and War.” (see “Of Education” in the John Milton Reading Room managed by Dartmouth College)

Just performance might correspond to Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis), while magnanimous might gesture toward the enlargement of mind or soul characteristic of a person who has attained some measure of philosophic wisdom (sophia) through the long cultivation of intuition (nous) and scientific knowledge (episteme). But skillful performance corresponds to apprenticeship in those arts which undergird all the professions. 

While training in artistry is, then, not the whole of a “compleat and generous Education,” it constitutes a fundamental core of training in productive intellectual virtue. This can be illustrated further through recovering the liberal arts themselves as pathways of professional preparation. In our zeal for the ivory towers of the Middle Ages and Classical Era, we too often forget the origins of the liberal arts themselves as professional arts. It may be true that the liberal arts are used to discover and justify knowledge (see e.g. Clark and Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition 3.0, 39-43), yet they began their traditional life as practical skills for prominent professions. 

• Grammatical training prepared the scribes of the ancient world in using the technology of writing to assist in marketplaces or business transactions, the religious affairs of a temple complex or the administration of a royal bureaucracy. 

• Rhetoric came to prominence in classical Greece largely because of a democratic city-state polity which relied on public speakers and trial lawyers to decide the city’s political strategies and legal cases. 

• Dialectic might be Socrates’ own invention, but his art of discussion arose in a rich context of traveling public intellectuals and built on the tradition of wise men and sages who functioned as professional teachers and purveyors of wisdom, developing into the tool or art of the philosopher.

• Arithmetic is the characteristic art of the household manager, the merchant and the treasury official. The earliest written documents in many societies are more than likely numerical records and calculations of goods and services.

• Geometry is the architect’s and the general’s art, because both building and war require the exact mathematical calculations involved in creating sturdy and dependable use of resources, whether wood, metal or stone, or else in coordinating the movements of regiments of armed men, cavalry or assault weaponry. 

• Astronomy, likewise, concerned the military general, as well as the merchant or ship captain, since charting the stars enabled one to travel from place to place reliably.

• And finally, the art of music was practiced by musicians who provided entertainment and the cultural transference of stories and values through soothing sounds and melodies, along with the poetic words that often accompanied the playing of an instrument. 

Apprenticeship in these liberal arts, just like the common and domestic arts, or other professions and trades, functioned as pathways of preparation for a life of service to the community. Even if they could be contrasted with servile arts as more fitting to a free man in ancient cultures, they nevertheless performed important functions for society that were remunerated, in one way or another. Therefore, drawing too strong a dividing wall of hostility between the Academy and the working world strikes me as historically inaccurate. Students today may choose between a technical college (remember that techne is Aristotle’s term for artistry) and a liberal arts college, but that does not mean the liberal arts are unconnected to the professions. 

This argument may be complicated by the fact that few modern professions require a person to practice only one art anymore. The modern equivalent of a blacksmith (i.e. a member of a company that forges metallic tools) might engage in several arts in a given day: computer programming (a development of grammar and arithmetic?), project management (rhetoric and dialectic), engineering and design (arithmetic and geometry), and checking and responding to email (grammar and dialectic). Of course, there are the specific sub-skills of using particular computer programs, machine maintenance, etc., that might be unique to a specific profession or company. But the point stands that the liberal arts, like all other arts, are not absent from the working world of production but are deliberately preparatory to its tasks. 

Artistic Training in the Academy

All this follows naturally from what we have said in earlier articles on Apprenticeship in the Arts. Since arts are living traditions with an originator, they are constantly being updated and adjusted to new contexts and technologies. Navigation is not now what it once was. The arts are culturally and historically situated; they may carry with them the memory of their traditions, as painters now must reckon with the styles and movements of the past. But the traditional nature of the arts entails their vital connection to their contemporary expressions in many professions or by their elite performers. Apprenticeship in the arts is one of the ways that the Academy draws its lifeblood from the working world. 

As such, the Academy is most likely to excel at cultivating the virtue of techne in various arts when it draws some of its strength from the professions of the surrounding community. This is part of the brilliance of John Milton’s call for connecting what Chris Hall calls the common arts with the mathematical arts in his “Of Education”:

To set forward all these proceedings in Nature and Mathematicks, what hinders, but that they may procure, as oft as shal be needful, the helpful experiences of Hunters, Fowlers, Fishermen, Shepherds, Gardeners, Apothecaries; and in the other sciences, Architects, Engineers, Mariners, Anatomists; who doubtless would be ready some for reward, and some to favour such a hopeful Seminary. And this will give them such a real tincture of natural knowledge, as they shall never forget, but daily augment with delight. (see “Of Education” in the John Milton Reading Room)

The idea that it is unclassical to share with students the experiences of the working world with all its goods, services and products is a pernicious one. We should be wary of falling into the trap of trying to prove that our education is unpractical to distinguish it from modern pragmatism and utilitarianism. Ironically, we will have to subvert the nature of the liberal arts themselves, as well as other arts to truly accomplish such an ivory tower task. It is all well and good to argue for schole or leisure as the basis of culture (see Josef Pieper’s book Leisure: The Basis of Culture, or Chris Hall’s reference in Common Arts Education, 41), but it is not quite accurate to blame the modern white collar and blue collar divide for a utilitarian view of the liberal arts, as Hall does: “these liberal arts were harnessed less for their ancient purposes, and more for their utilitarian ends” (41).

Leisure may have more to do with the philosophical act of contemplation, or the cultivation of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues of intuition, scientific knowledge and philosophic wisdom, than it does with the liberal arts. After all, this would seem to do better justice to the context of Pieper’s work. The liberal arts, like all other arts, are productive and savor more of the workaday world, even if they can be pursued for their own sake or as ends in themselves, as I have argued at length in The Joy of Learning: Finding Flow through Classical Education.

I absolutely concede the danger on the other side of reducing education to mere career preparation. This, however, is easily avoided by making the other intellectual virtues of Aristotle major ends or objectives of education as well. Prudence is not developed by time spent drawing a painting, nor is philosophic wisdom attained through an internship at a local company. But time spent being well coached by practitioners of various arts, in athletics, games and sports, common and domestic arts, fine and performing arts, the professions and trades, and the ever-present liberal arts themselves, will prepare students for the working world. 

By showing them how these arts are currently practiced and drawing inspiration from these contemporary contexts, students will look out at their future selves as producers and will be inspired and ignited with the passion necessary for deliberate practice. This is why Comenius places as the first step for training in artistry that the instructor “take them into the workshop and bid them look at the work that has been produced, and then, when they wish to imitate this (for man is an imitative animal), they place tools in their hands and show them how they should be held and used” (The Great Didactic, 195-196). Human beings by nature desire to create; we are imitative culture makers!

Comenius’ vision of turning schools into “workshops humming with work” has this outcome as one of its goals: the invigoration of the learning environment through a proper overlap with the working world. Creative production has a power in it that can be harnessed for educational purposes. Then at the end of a productive apprenticeship session, “students whose efforts prove successful will experience the truth of the proverb: ‘We give form to ourselves and to our materials at the same time’” (195). Students are internalizing the craftsman mindset focused on honing their craft in productive service to the world.

This is not a carrots and sticks based motivational method, but the second level motivation of what Daniel Pink calls “mastery” in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. He quotes Teresa Mabile, a professor of Harvard University, as saying, “The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it’s in the arts, sciences or business” (116). Pink goes on to associate this level of intrinsic motivation with Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow, the enjoyable experience of appropriate challenge in a meaningful pursuit of mastery. Connecting students organically to the real-world mastery of the working world, not trying to motivate them to perform well through grades and the threat of a menial career, is the real way to engage them delightfully in their studies. It also cultivates the craftsman mindset now that will help them experience work they love later. 

It is worth pausing to consider what percentage of an ideal school day would involve training students in arts. When you add up art class, music and PE, the language arts, math, and the training aspects of science, Bible, and the humanities, not to mention the sports, extracurriculars and other artistic lessons that students have after school, along with the practice regimen of both homework and these side pursuits, we might see the majority of a student’s day as engaged in some part of the apprenticeship process. It is imperative that we get this aspect of the Academy right. It is not just the training of students’ metaphorical hands that is at stake. 

In the next article, I will discuss the spiritual implications of how to capture students’ hearts through the apprenticeship model by creating a culture of craftsmanship. Building on our understanding of the importance of apprenticeship in artistry to connect the life of the Academy organically with the working world, we will delve into the example of the Renaissance guilds. This will help us consider macro-implications for the organizational structure of our schools, including the role of curriculum, academic events, and programs for specific arts in the Academy’s broader apprenticeship process.

Earlier Articles in this series:

1. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Purpose of Education

2. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s

3. Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science

4. When Bloom’s Gets Ugly: Cutting the Heart Out of Education

5. What Bloom’s Left Out: A Comparison with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues

6. Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education

7. Moral Virtue and the Intellectual Virtue of Artistry or Craftsmanship

8. Practicing in the Dark or the Day: Well-worn Paths or Bushwalking, Artistry and Moral Virtue Continued

9. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 1: Traditions and Divisions

10. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 2: A Pedagogy of Craft

11. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 3: Crafting Lessons in Artistry

Later articles in this series:

13. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 5: Structuring the Academy for Christian Artistry

14. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 6: The Transcendence and Limitations of Artistry

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In addition to being educational philosophers, we are also teachers – educational practitioners. What we talk about in our weekly posts we are also trying to live out in the classroom every day. Even though we write from a place of deep thought about educational ideals, sometimes the reality of the daily classroom means we get to workshop how those ideals play out with the students God has given into our care. And believe me, there are days that are less than ideal.

It’s perhaps satisfying for some of our readers to know that sometimes our students struggle to understand why we even have to learn Latin. Sometimes our students don’t wear the correct uniform shirts. Sometimes the lesson we planned that was going to help apply some deep work flow for our students just falls flat. We have to live in grace, knowing that our educational renaissance is carried out by very human beings for very human beings.

This is all preface to the concept I want to play with in this article: school as a place for play. The week before I wrote this in December was final exam week in the upper school. This means there are pockets of time during which students don’t have a class, they don’t have an exam, and the motivation to study for another exam has been depleted. And so they pull out a game to rejuvenate together for a spell. For one such game, the students requested I join them, and my own motivation to grade my exams was just about as low as their motivation to continue studying. Therefore, we played a game together.

Game Play in School

I think it’s very important for games to be played in school. I have played many rounds of four square in my day with my students. My shoulder is permanently sore from epic dodgeball games with middle schoolers. I can’t count the number of dress shoes I’ve gone through playing soccer with the kids. There are any number of card and board games that enrich and enliven the classroom, especially on rainy and cold days. Games teach innumerable lessons, and what is school but an environment for lessons?

The game of choice during exam week was Monopoly Deal. I had never played this before, but apparently it was a favorite of the students. It’s a card-based variation on the Monopoly board game we all grew up on. However, whereas the Monopoly board is rigidly bound by the property squares and has the inevitability of one expected outcome (whoever buys the earliest color group is most likely to win), the card game ebbs and flows as different players create new positions, altering strategic advantages constantly. After one round face up, I figured I had the hang of it. Interestingly, the game itself soon faded into the background of my consciousness as I observed the individuals playing the game. I was fascinated by new insights into the personalities of individual students and the group dynamics that emerged as alliances were made and broken. Who played fair? Who knew the rules best? Who was suspected of peeking at others’ cards? Why gang up on one student when a different student clearly had a stronger position? Something more than game play was going on here.

It just so happened that my humanities class recently focused on the concepts of finite and infinite games, as written about by James Carse in his book Finite and Infinite Games. Two voices that raised my awareness of these concepts are leadership guru Simon Sinek and Seth Godin, both of whom have talks that are easily searched on YouTube. In our discussion, we noted how finite games are dependent on some kind of limited resource, and the winner is the one who accumulates the most of that limited resource. It means there are clearly defined winners and losers. There are established boundaries and a clear set of rules that dictate the course of play. Infinite games are far different. They can go on indefinitely because the purpose of the game is not about winning a limited resource, but merely to keep on playing. The rules can change, the boundaries can change, the players can change. We explored how life is comprised of both finite and infinite games, largely embedded within each other.

To explicate this, Monopoly Deal is a finite game. There is a clear ending dictated in the rules. Once a player has completed three property color groups, that player has won. Game over. A limited resource, established boundaries and a clear set of rules make this a finite game. Monopoly Deal, however, is embedded within an infinite game called, “Let’s play together.” Students play together not because there are limited resources, established boundaries and a clear set of rules dictating that students shall play in exactly certain ways, under certain conditions and according to certain norms. Students play games because it is in our human nature to play. There isn’t a winner for the game “Let’s play together.” The game exists in order to continue being played. You might be the winner of Monopoly Deal this time, and I might be the winner of Monopoly Deal next time. But who’s keeping track? That’s not the goal of the infinite game. The goal is just to play together. The dichotomy between the finite and infinite games struck me as I simultaneously played the finite game with my students but observed them on the infinite game level.

Ludus: Is It a School or Is It a Game?

The Latin word ludus is peculiar. It simultaneously means two seemingly different things. The term ludus in one sense means “play, game, or sport.” It’s fun to think about ancient Roman children playing athletic games, like running races, as well as board games. We have artifacts of games that were the forerunners of chess, checkers and backgammon (ludus latrunculi, calculus and tabula). Such artifacts help us to clearly picture what this word ludus means.

The other sense of ludus is “school,” predominantly primary school. The Romans had designated buildings for ludi, with headmasters, desks, writing tablets, etc. The school day started early and ended after children had been exercised in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The Roman world is one we can readily recognize because it contains so many of the trappings of our day. How many students moaned to go to school (ludum) because it meant they couldn’t play games (ludos)? What a peculiar word, then, to describe these two seemingly dichotomous things? Unless, of course, the word itself reveals that “school” and “game” are not after all dichotomous. If school is actually a place to play, and play is a place of learning, maybe the word ludus reveals something we are prone to miss about the reality of education.

Life Is a Game

It shouldn’t surprise us that school is a game. Life, after all, is a game, or at the very least has game-like qualities to it. There are limited resources, boundaries and rules in all kinds of areas of life. Getting into a college, finding a job, and landing a promotion are games we play. Many of the games we play are set up with winners and losers. He got the job, and I didn’t – winner and loser. She got the promotion, and I didn’t – winner and loser. We even make games out of trivial matters. How often have you been in a conversation where the goal is to share a more extreme experience than your friend? Who got less sleep last night? Who had the worst commute? Ironically, we often become the winner by accomplishing better than our opponent a losing strategy.

However, when we apply the concept of the infinite game, we can see that these little finite games are nested within a larger infinite game. Too often we get so caught up in the finite games we play that we lose sight of the infinite game. The infinite game considers such concepts as my long-term happiness, living a meaningful life, and being driven by purposeful relationships and events. The infinite game makes the finite games irrelevant. I might not have gotten that promotion, by my infinite game wasn’t dependent on that promotion. For many, the competition to get the promotion fits into only a narrowly defined finite game. But what if the promotion is not aligned with, or is even contradictory to one’s long-term, infinite game strategy?

Thinking in terms of finite and infinite games has been a rather essential aspect of my college guidance strategy. The approach most students take regarding colleges is to play the finite game. What is the best college with the top-ranked degree program in the field of my choice? Can I boost my GPA and my college entrance exams just a little bit more to not only get into college, but to land the highest merit-based scholarship? Now it is not that these games aren’t worth playing. Those limited resources are out there and some students thrive on the competition that comes with finite games. Yet most students aren’t best served by playing the finite game. There’s an infinite game that can be played instead that flips the college-choice question on its head. It begins by having the student work through their own vision for their lives. What kind of skills, passion, calling or agenda do they sense for their lives? When students start to envision a meaningful and purposeful future, they can start to see that college exists to enable the student to fulfill that vision. You can hear the infinite game being played now. When I play the finite game, the college sets the agenda and the student has to fit the criteria of the college. When I play the infinite game, the student sets the agenda and the college now has to fit the criteria of the student.

Let’s be clear, this means we’re playing a different game than most college-bound students are playing. The finite game player might say that you just lost the game by not going to the highly-selective school or not going for the top scholarship. But the infinite game player can swat that gadfly away by saying she’s playing a completely different game, a long-term strategy that has more to do with crafting a meaningful life rather than getting a notch on the belt. Obviously we aren’t dealing with diametric categories. You can go after the elite college and the top scholarship as part of a long-term strategy. Perhaps that’s part of how an individual plans to shape his or her meaningful and purposeful life. Great! It’s just that most who play the finite game miss the larger picture and blindly pursue a gambit without thinking through the long-term priorities of life.

To Become a Game Master, You Must Master the Rules

I think understanding school as a game can be helpful in many respects. We can see how school is supposed to have a playful aspect to it. There should be a deep and abiding joy as teachers and students make discoveries together. Learning is fun. We don’t need to hype it up by superimposing games on the classroom. Instead, we can see how game play is part of learning.

School rules are often handed down (or at the very least received by students) in a less than joyful way. One way to help students reconsider the rules is to see how all games have rules. The rules establish order and justice. Our post-game discussions of sports more often than not come down to the rules. We complain when a ref misses a call. We cry foul at a perceived bending of the rules, placing our local team at an unfair disadvantage (rarely does this feeling get applied to the opponent’s perceived unfair disadvantage). A school has to have rules as well. Fair, balanced, equitable game play is the result.

As I write my eBook on habit training, it strikes me that schools are playing an essential role in the infinite game of students’ lives. The fundamental goal of habit training is not to create automatons, but to enable the student to live a pleasant and easy life. The more a student gains a sense that they are creating for themselves a meaningful life, the more purpose any and all of the rules of the game take on. Moreover, the teacher is not merely there to enforce the rules. Instead, the rules (or a more worthy concept – the habits) are there to promote life skills.

As we enter a new calendar year, I hope this reflection on school as a game renews your commitment to playing the infinite game with your students.

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