The Recruiting Paradox: Recruiting and teaching a new generation of graduate students

Evan Nelson, Recruitment Specialist, The Graduate School, The University of North Dakota

In the past decade, the size of North Dakota’s graduate schools has nearly doubled. The phenomenon is hardly isolated: Nationwide, graduate education is growing and growing. It’s also—and this is important—growing. This blog has been doing a great job exploring how to teach these new graduate students; I thought I would offer a connected perspective to your conversation. Those students, after all, have been recruited to come to your classroom.

Likely, you have been asked to do some of that recruiting. Probably in the hallways, between classes, during office hours. You are the professor, with authority vested in you by tradition and title, and students look to you on how to choose a grad school, how to get into a grad school, how to fit into grad school. You’ve been asked to recommend your students to grad schools and you’ve been asked to recommend grad school to your students.

When I recruit prospective students, we meet on their home turf. Students come to a fair on their home campus. They may or may not know that we will be there. I am one of hundreds of universities, each university defined only by table covering, photographs, flyers and logos. Should I lose their attention, students are seconds away from their normal life. Or the students are at home, on their computers, and they come to our Web page. Our homepage is surrounded by the students’ desktop photos, the students’ favorite songs play in the shuffle. The University of North Dakota is only a URL, only a banner, only a name on a list.

What’s important to remember is that they are taking time from their day to be recruited. At one fair, a student said, “North Dakota? Okay, I’ll give you a minute.” (I think the student was actually being generous. How many marketers would love a full minute?) And here’s the trouble: whatever we tell them, in those first few moments, sets their expectations for an entire degree program. We get a minute, a chat, a handshake, to prepare them for at least a few years of school.

Most graduate students have little idea what graduate school is. Recently, I gave a presentation on the “Dos and Don’ts of Applying to Graduate School.” I asked how many students had parents, or older siblings, or anyone in their family who had been to college. Everyone raised their hands. I asked how many had a family history of graduate school. Only two hands stayed in the air. For many current students, graduate school is the strange place where professors are hatched; it is only slightly less secretive and slightly less cloaked in bizarre ritual than The Illuminati.

Of course, this is not actually what graduate school is. A graduate classroom—done well—is electric with contention and counter, bristling with chance; exhausting, challenging. Rewarding. It is filled with smart people grappling with things they don’t understand. And the best learning comes from that struggle. It gives students ownership of their own ideas, and it is the central tenet of student-centered pedagogy.

Many professors on this very blog have written about the importance of establishing these learning environments, in the brave new world of online classes or with the eternal concern of not becoming boring. What hasn’t been asked, as much, is how to prepare students to willingly enter into such an environment. Because as soon as they do, they are ours to do with as we please.

Yes, we are student-centered. But only inasmuch as we define ourselves as student-centered. Keep in mind that no matter how much we tell ourselves that we are offering an education conveniently, or in a student-friendly manner, or however else you choose to frame it – we write the rules. The student must abide by our parameters to get a degree. The student must follow our schedule. The student must set aside a significant chunk of their lives in order to earn that education.

There’s nothing wrong with this. At least, it seems to have been working fairly well these past millennia. (Socrates may have asked questions, but he grew impatient when students didn’t follow the line of inquiry the way he wanted them to.)

With that in mind, then, let’s compare recruiting and teaching:

When recruiting:

We ask for a few moments.

We communicate on their terms.

When teaching:

We demand long months (at least).

We demand they submit to our terms.

This paradox guides the decisions I make when I speak with prospective students. If I wasn’t fair to either side of it, I would be doing a disservice to the students and the school. If I did not let students know that grad school will be hard and challenging and worth every ounce of achievement precisely because it is hard and challenging, I wouldn’t prepare the students for what grad school is like. If I didn’t speak to what the students want to hear, allowing them to air their concerns and granting them the space to make a decision to apply, I would scare away the students that our university would do well to have.

What I try to do—what we all try to do—is find a balance. I play salesman: I tell students that the lifetime earning potential is more for people who hold graduate degrees, that yes, the career opportunities open up; Yes, you too can ride the forefront of an exciting field! I play sage: I tell them that without a personally-defined conviction for attending, the necessary difficulties of graduate education can knock a student off course. I play stern: I tell students that the application process is competitive; I tell them that they must meet the admission requirements. I play kind: I answer student questions one-by-one, taking time to address all the concerns they bring up in an email, a phone call, a fair visit.

Because most students know nothing else about the University of North Dakota other than what they get from me, or from our Web site, (or from your department’s site), I think that whichever way I choose to speak with them will be brought into their first semester. When recruiting, then, I stress how hard work outside of class leads to energetic exchanges in class, and I use it as a selling point. I tell students that grad school opens up numerous opportunities, which can be met only by their own ambition. In short, while recruiting, I try to teach students what grad school is.

I invite you to consider this when you speak to prospective graduate students. Remember that your prospective students probably don’t know what to expect when they ask you questions, or for advice, about graduate school. Remember that your answers might then set the expectations the students bring into your classrooms later on. (The same goes for the emails you don’t answer.) Remember, your students’ graduate education began long before you handed out your syllabus.