When I told a friend recently that I hated when I'm asked to do something in the name of "student success," she looked at me like I had just said the most blasphemous thing, and asked me, "but isn't that what we're all here for? Student success?"
It's like we're in a boat. Somebody (I won't name names. No need to get nasty. It's complicated anyway) poked holes in this boat. Then, those same people started asking us to plug the holes with the tool they know we will be unable to resist supplying in these moments of "crisis"-- our loyalty to students. Meanwhile, the boat is made of straw and there's a huge storm going on. No amount of love for our students will plug these holes, so please stop talking about how plugging the holes is going to do the trick.
Let me explain. Of COURSE I'm a professor because I like students and I like to think that the work I do helps them succeed. OBVIOUSLY. It goes without saying.
But I worry that institutions use "student success" to justify the demands they put on everybody who works for them. I worry they are taking advantage of the love we all feel for students.
Work loads creep further and further into all the corners of our lives. I know too many colleagues who work upwards of 80 hours a week, and are just crumbling under the pressure. They love their students. When asked to do more, they are convinced that it supports student success, so they can't say no.
Work loads creep further and further into all the corners of our lives. I know too many colleagues who work upwards of 80 hours a week, and are just crumbling under the pressure. They love their students. When asked to do more, they are convinced that it supports student success, so they can't say no.
Student success is hard to say no to. Who wouldn't want it? It can make all kinds of sacrifices seem worthwhile. "Student success" is used as the reason we are asked to increase our class size, take on more advisees, learn a new software for early-alerts, make ourselves compliant with loads of new pedagogical best practices, learn a new software for assessing student success, measure success better, do more, and more, and more... you get the idea.
Uwe Poersken, a Polish philosopher, describes "plastic words" as those that "silence" because they signal "science." That is, they are hard to say no to because they seem to be morally air-tight, unassailable, inherently good and right. Plastic words are "malleable" and have an "uncanny way" of being "used to fit every circumstance. Like plastic Lego blocks, they are combinable and interchangeable."*
In the context of my own work on a CSU campus, "student success" has become like "development" or "sustainability," a plastic word. It gets rolled out at administrative meetings and extolled as the justification for every decision, even ones that seem to undermine student success. Like, "In support of student success, we will need to go ahead and defund a great resource called the Institute for Student Success, which inspires the entire staff, faculty, and administrators to come together once a year to collaborate and get pumped up to start another year of teaching. Too bad it was working so well for you!" Or, "For Student Success (because that's all we care about), we will need to get rid of half our janitors."**
"Student success" seems to be used for all kinds of purposes that have either nothing to do with student success (although most students I talk to really do feel that clean toilets are essential to their feeling of belonging on a campus, and can you blame them?), or they seem to even undermine it.
It raises the question, "who's defining 'success' here?" Like all plastic words, success is subjective, and without really clear, concrete, and narrow definitions, it can just swallow everybody up.
"Student success" seems to be used for all kinds of purposes that have either nothing to do with student success (although most students I talk to really do feel that clean toilets are essential to their feeling of belonging on a campus, and can you blame them?), or they seem to even undermine it.
It raises the question, "who's defining 'success' here?" Like all plastic words, success is subjective, and without really clear, concrete, and narrow definitions, it can just swallow everybody up.
I hope it's clear that I'm not against actual student success in theory and as a worthwhile goal. I think people who pick it up as the beacon to guide all our budget cuts and programmatic decisions are genuinely trying to turn the university's focus toward students, in protest of the ways some universities have become about other things, like making money or building big (corporately-funded) research centers.
I appreciate that very much. Yes, please! Let's get back to why we're all here: students! How democratic and grassroots. How... refreshing. I wish this is the honest motive. For the most part, I think most administrators who cut student success initiatives in the name of student success, as crazy as it seems, genuinely think they're doing the right thing. But you can see the plasticity here, no?
I appreciate that very much. Yes, please! Let's get back to why we're all here: students! How democratic and grassroots. How... refreshing. I wish this is the honest motive. For the most part, I think most administrators who cut student success initiatives in the name of student success, as crazy as it seems, genuinely think they're doing the right thing. But you can see the plasticity here, no?
What I am against is how the term student success is used as a bludgeon to exploit my relationships with students to make me do more for an institution that keeps cutting resources. I am also against the fact that it seems like nobody sees how this is happening.
It feels uncannily like... home.
The reason student success is so hard to say no to is the same reason I have a hard time saying no to my kids. If I love them, I will do all the things they ask from me in order to prove it. This assumption about maternal love is at the root of patriarchy. Exploiting maternal guilt is how the world goes round. Just like moms in the arena of domestic labor and "care work" don't keep score about how much work they do to care for their kids (they'd seem selfish and heartless if they did), so too are teachers and staff at my university expected to go the extra mile without protest, for love of their students. Why ever would they not? Don't they want success for their students? Tisk tisk.
And, just like it is hard at home for me to say no to my family's requests for more mom, for fear they will not feel loved, it is hard for me to say no to any request made of me in the name of my students' wellbeing, happiness, good grades, full stomachs, feeling of being safe, access to educational resources, opportunities for mentorship, real-world applications of their education, fellowship, fun, clean toilets, and whatever else gets snuck under the plastic banner of "student success."
There's an analysis of power here that I'm trying to offer up. Those in power use emotional appeals to extract labor. Such appeals distract us from the structural sources of the problem.
I worry about being gaslighted for not caring about my students when there's an untenable structural arrangement that keeps pushing work onto the fewer and fewer people left standing after budget cuts.
I worry about being gaslighted for not caring about my students when there's an untenable structural arrangement that keeps pushing work onto the fewer and fewer people left standing after budget cuts.
It's like we're in a boat. Somebody (I won't name names. No need to get nasty. It's complicated anyway) poked holes in this boat. Then, those same people started asking us to plug the holes with the tool they know we will be unable to resist supplying in these moments of "crisis"-- our loyalty to students. Meanwhile, the boat is made of straw and there's a huge storm going on. No amount of love for our students will plug these holes, so please stop talking about how plugging the holes is going to do the trick.
As much as I wish it did, loving my students (or my kids) doesn't magically produce more time or energy in my life. Pressuring people with guilt is a classic move by people in power.
At some point, all of us who love students are going to get so burned out by the extraction of our care labor that we may start to ironically direct our resentment toward the very people "student success" is supposed to serve-- the students themselves. I, for one, confess to having started down this path more than a few times. Then, like I do at home when I get overloaded, I remind myself of the analysis of power: I don't have to sacrifice myself to prove my love of anybody. I cannot just love everybody's way out of these problems.
Maybe it's only the people who don't constantly battle internalized guilt about parenting who feel it's perfectly reasonable to weaponize love and guilt in work places. That's the only way I can explain why they think it's acceptable. When I hear the kinds of arguments at work that I hear at home to get me to do more stuff, I can't help but think there's something fishy going on.
At some point, all of us who love students are going to get so burned out by the extraction of our care labor that we may start to ironically direct our resentment toward the very people "student success" is supposed to serve-- the students themselves. I, for one, confess to having started down this path more than a few times. Then, like I do at home when I get overloaded, I remind myself of the analysis of power: I don't have to sacrifice myself to prove my love of anybody. I cannot just love everybody's way out of these problems.
Maybe it's only the people who don't constantly battle internalized guilt about parenting who feel it's perfectly reasonable to weaponize love and guilt in work places. That's the only way I can explain why they think it's acceptable. When I hear the kinds of arguments at work that I hear at home to get me to do more stuff, I can't help but think there's something fishy going on.
The problem isn't the students. Just like we shouldn't hate our kids for having needs, we ought to look at the structural conditions that make it hard to meet all of our students' needs. Why are we losing so many forms of support for them, and for all of us? We also need to challenge the myths we carry around in our minds that cloud our awareness of how those in power manipulate our emotions. Let's wake up to our own exploitation.
To be really for student success, we needn't just become obedient when the word is waved around at meetings. Instead, we can:
- Define what student success means in our own work and lives. Seriously, write it down! Even better, model student success and ask your students to define their own success for you. That'll blow everybody's minds.
- Hold yourself accountable to your own definition, not to the top-down terms laid out as some amorphous plastic concept that can encompass any and all policy decisions made by the powers that be to put smoke and mirrors up around unsavory budget goals.
- Take care of yourself so you can keep being there for students and not burn out or resent them.
- Work to protect and create, if not demand, structural forms of support for students and for us.
If the ship is sinking, it may not be the holes that need plugging.
*Thanks to Clare Follman for letting me know about plastic words. See her Evergreen State College Master's thesis, "The Art of Arguing Science".
** Examples are fictional.
** Examples are fictional.
