Will Barratt, PhD
The world of college and success is a rigged system. Once you have been seduced by the upward mobility career success trap, you will actively resist any criticism of the success and upward mobility system.
This is basic cognitive psychology. We all resist challenges to our ego identities. And if one of your ego identity is wrapped up in success, then, well, any criticism of that success system will feel like a personal criticism.
There is a giant conspiracy created and managed by all the people in the system. This is a collaborative cooperative, the ultimate in social control because the inhabitants run the system that imprisons them. No one person or agency is in charge, the success system is self sustaining by people invested in that system.
The College Confidence Game
Edward Smith, in Confessions of a Confidence Man, has six stages to the con, but he notes some stages can be omitted. David Mauer in The Big Con has nine stages. Here, I will use stages used in campus recruiting, retention, and graduation programs.
Setting the Stage. This is the well established role of college in the 'successful life' narrative. This con game is old and well used. "The bigger the trick, the older the trick, the easier it is to pull. You believe it can't be that old, and it can't be that big for so many people to have fallen for it." (Ritchie, 2005). The narrative intertwines college, success, work, and consumption. The stage is not set evenly for all people in all social classes. The appeal of college, the college=success narrative is middle and upper-middle class targeted.
Recruitment. In the con this is roping the mark, on campus it is recruiting, pre-admissions, school counseling, vocational tracking, and many other things. The mark, the pre-freshman, is guided into the game. Tales of research on college graduate earnings, on career success, and visits from successful graduates feature here. These are all real, not illusory, benefits. The best propaganda is mostly true. The reality is that not everyone receives college benefits in the same amount. The key to recruiting, and retention, is to show the winners.
Retention. Retention programs are an example of keeping people in the game with success and the promise of more success. Colleges need students to keep playing, to stay enrolled, to keep payi8ng tuition. Like in computer games, colleges will celebrate the little wins and help students level up. Success in college, during classes, during out-of-class experiences is the key driver to keep people in the game. How many certificates did you get as a student? (See Bourdieu on Cultural Capital.)
The small payout used to keep the player in the game, the student in college, usually comes not as money, but as other forms of capital. In the con game the 'coin of the realm' is cash. Using Bourdieu's ideas of capital, campus uses cultural and social capital as sources of pay out. Presidential scholars on campus get to meet and chat with high prestige people, for example. The illusion of building social networks of successful people is useful. One interpretation of the success of students from high prestige colleges is that success is not about the education, but about the network of friends, or
Social Capital.
Many cons have a manufactured crisis, a limited time offer, to have the mark invest money. College does not have a manufactured crisis because education for success is the long con. Coin of the realm on campus is not money, but time, cultural capital, and social capital. However, there are exceptions, like limited time offers of scholarships and graduate assistantships. Scarcity is a widely used recruitment and membership tactic.
The Pay Out. Graduation and jobs. All too often students are not guided well into the world of work, or have been guided into majors with limited job prospects, or with job prospects with low pay. The barista with an Art History degree is a common counter-narrative in the success in college discussion. There should be a long discussion about college as vocational training - study for a job, or college as gaining generalized knowledge and learning how to learn - study for life. (I lean toward the learning how to learn side of this complex problem, given the rate of change in the world.)
Oh, and the college has your tuition. The student, or government, continues to pay to play. College has been commodified. While US students may owe money, they don't owe it to college. Campus leaders have already cashed the check.
The Challenge. When the con game is challenged, when problems arise, the system rises to respond. Often shifting the narrative. After all, the members of the media reporting on the system are themselves embedded in the success system, seeking the next big news story to bolster personal success. Yes, that is a critical problem. While there are counter narrative voices, like Mike Rowe (The Dirty Jobs person), these voices are drowned out by the volume of college=success choruses.
Challenges often occur in any con game, as they do in college. The campus debt crisis currently clouds the idea of economic payout for college. At least until you look closely at payout. There is differential payout for college graduates, there are differences in family financial literacy about saving for college, there is a dynamic employment market (Occupational Outlook Handbook).
However, these challenges are a vocational/income view of college that is seen in most of the world. Students, in most of the world, enroll in a specific major and cannot change. Enrollment is often determined by standardized test scores so the highest scorers go into medicine, less high go into engineering. This tactic is just another incarnation of the college=success con game.
Coda
This analysis is interesting, in part because all marketing uses features of a con game. Alternatively the primary form of power in use today is education, it is not reward or punishment. The reality is that college is, for the most part for most people, a good thing.
tl;dr college is a con game, and is a good benefit to students
References
The world of college and success is a rigged system. Once you have been seduced by the upward mobility career success trap, you will actively resist any criticism of the success and upward mobility system.
This is basic cognitive psychology. We all resist challenges to our ego identities. And if one of your ego identity is wrapped up in success, then, well, any criticism of that success system will feel like a personal criticism.
There is a giant conspiracy created and managed by all the people in the system. This is a collaborative cooperative, the ultimate in social control because the inhabitants run the system that imprisons them. No one person or agency is in charge, the success system is self sustaining by people invested in that system.
The College Confidence Game
Edward Smith, in Confessions of a Confidence Man, has six stages to the con, but he notes some stages can be omitted. David Mauer in The Big Con has nine stages. Here, I will use stages used in campus recruiting, retention, and graduation programs.
Setting the Stage. This is the well established role of college in the 'successful life' narrative. This con game is old and well used. "The bigger the trick, the older the trick, the easier it is to pull. You believe it can't be that old, and it can't be that big for so many people to have fallen for it." (Ritchie, 2005). The narrative intertwines college, success, work, and consumption. The stage is not set evenly for all people in all social classes. The appeal of college, the college=success narrative is middle and upper-middle class targeted.
Recruitment. In the con this is roping the mark, on campus it is recruiting, pre-admissions, school counseling, vocational tracking, and many other things. The mark, the pre-freshman, is guided into the game. Tales of research on college graduate earnings, on career success, and visits from successful graduates feature here. These are all real, not illusory, benefits. The best propaganda is mostly true. The reality is that not everyone receives college benefits in the same amount. The key to recruiting, and retention, is to show the winners.
Retention. Retention programs are an example of keeping people in the game with success and the promise of more success. Colleges need students to keep playing, to stay enrolled, to keep payi8ng tuition. Like in computer games, colleges will celebrate the little wins and help students level up. Success in college, during classes, during out-of-class experiences is the key driver to keep people in the game. How many certificates did you get as a student? (See Bourdieu on Cultural Capital.)
The small payout used to keep the player in the game, the student in college, usually comes not as money, but as other forms of capital. In the con game the 'coin of the realm' is cash. Using Bourdieu's ideas of capital, campus uses cultural and social capital as sources of pay out. Presidential scholars on campus get to meet and chat with high prestige people, for example. The illusion of building social networks of successful people is useful. One interpretation of the success of students from high prestige colleges is that success is not about the education, but about the network of friends, or
Social Capital.
Many cons have a manufactured crisis, a limited time offer, to have the mark invest money. College does not have a manufactured crisis because education for success is the long con. Coin of the realm on campus is not money, but time, cultural capital, and social capital. However, there are exceptions, like limited time offers of scholarships and graduate assistantships. Scarcity is a widely used recruitment and membership tactic.
The Pay Out. Graduation and jobs. All too often students are not guided well into the world of work, or have been guided into majors with limited job prospects, or with job prospects with low pay. The barista with an Art History degree is a common counter-narrative in the success in college discussion. There should be a long discussion about college as vocational training - study for a job, or college as gaining generalized knowledge and learning how to learn - study for life. (I lean toward the learning how to learn side of this complex problem, given the rate of change in the world.)
Oh, and the college has your tuition. The student, or government, continues to pay to play. College has been commodified. While US students may owe money, they don't owe it to college. Campus leaders have already cashed the check.
The Challenge. When the con game is challenged, when problems arise, the system rises to respond. Often shifting the narrative. After all, the members of the media reporting on the system are themselves embedded in the success system, seeking the next big news story to bolster personal success. Yes, that is a critical problem. While there are counter narrative voices, like Mike Rowe (The Dirty Jobs person), these voices are drowned out by the volume of college=success choruses.
Challenges often occur in any con game, as they do in college. The campus debt crisis currently clouds the idea of economic payout for college. At least until you look closely at payout. There is differential payout for college graduates, there are differences in family financial literacy about saving for college, there is a dynamic employment market (Occupational Outlook Handbook).
However, these challenges are a vocational/income view of college that is seen in most of the world. Students, in most of the world, enroll in a specific major and cannot change. Enrollment is often determined by standardized test scores so the highest scorers go into medicine, less high go into engineering. This tactic is just another incarnation of the college=success con game.
Coda
This analysis is interesting, in part because all marketing uses features of a con game. Alternatively the primary form of power in use today is education, it is not reward or punishment. The reality is that college is, for the most part for most people, a good thing.
tl;dr college is a con game, and is a good benefit to students
References
Smith, E. H. (1923). Confessions of a confidence man: A handbook for suckers. Scientific American Publishing Company.
Mauer, D. (1940). The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man.
Ritchie, G (2005). Revolver.
