What Does a College Student Look Like?

The writer is a current president.

While reading the variety of daily higher ed electronic newsletters, one in particular was awash with stories about presidential moves, presidential firings, and governing boards making draconian new rules. I found myself looking for the cartoon section so that I could read something that wasn’t depressing. Alas, there was no cartoon section.

I wonder about the students in all of this. What do they think? Some are oblivious, because who cares about the president or any administrative changes; some are fired up and excited to support these ideological changes; some are horrified and do not support the same changes. Maybe some are just plain sad—sad that their college experience was marred and scarred by a political spotlight they never asked for or intended to encounter.

We have all seen Congress or state legislative bodies hold hearings about higher education, but rarely do these events talk about students. If they do, students become some pundit’s football.

Students are the reason we are all here. Last spring, I watched a mom and her two daughters participate in a pinning ceremony for phlebotomy. It’s a short program, and some may see it as inconsequential in the grand scheme of college education. As a dedicated trio of women, they persevered. For them, the pinning might as well have been a doctoral hooding ceremony. The lives of these three women have been positively changed by one short-term program.

Every year at graduation, I describe several identities that make up the graduating class at my institution. My list includes the following:

• Recent high school graduates,
• Those out of high school for a few years,
• Many who worked full-time or part-time while attending school,
• Single parents or two-parent households,
• Carers of aging parents,
• Military vets,
• The unemployed,
• Those in active recovery from substance use,
• The formerly incarcerated,
• Financially insecure people who lack food and shelter,
• First-gen college students,
• Products of the foster care system,

And finally, people who believed they would never succeed in the educational system.

After going through my list, I ask the students to stand up if one or more of my descriptors apply to them. Approximately 99 percent stand up. It is moving and overwhelming. I often tell my team that we must see the faces of the decisions that we make, and, yes, that can be painful at times and rewarding at other times.

How I wish elected officials, local, state, and federal, could see the faces of my students and how much is stacked against them when they enter the doors of my institution and come out the other side as a college graduate.