‘ATM’ college? Ex Skidmore pres. explains
Got a kid heading to college? Philip Glotzbach, Skidmore College President Emeritus, says your budding academic might want an ‘ATM’ experience (hint: it’s what it sounds like, and it isn’t good).
Philip A. Glotzbach, Skidmore College President Emeritus, says that students often arrive at college with a simple expectation: pay tuition, complete the requirements, leave with a credential.
And that must be changed.
“We have a very transactional culture these days… [and] it’s produced what I call the ATM model of college,” he told members of the Saratoga Torch Club and Saratoga AI during the inaugural episode of Torch Radio (the public is invited). “You spend four years making deposits into the slot, and then four years later you withdraw a certificate. That’s a pretty thin view of what college can be all about.”
Soberingly, says Glitzbach, who retired from Skidmore in 2020 after 17 years as its president, “ATM performs its function efficiently, but no one expects it to shape their character.”
Ouch.
“The real question of college, then,” reads an article about the talk, “is not simply what students learn, but what they learn about themselves while learning it.”
Glotzbach has written down his thoughts in a new book, Embrace Your Freedom. He covers all kinds of modern issues in the world of academia (talk about a hot topic) and how it must prepare students for the real world — as it exists today, where work requires complicated solutions.
“Earning a degree is like earning a black belt,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you’ve finished learning. It means you’re finally ready to begin.”
Creating new urgency on this front: digital tools.
“The danger isn’t that technology exists,” he said. “The danger is that we stop doing the thinking ourselves.
“If you outsource the work of thinking, eventually you lose the ability to evaluate what you’re given.”
To read the full event coverage and find out about the next ones, visit torchclub.org. To buy Glotzbach’s book, visit northshire.com.