35 years ago I was one of those college students who perfected the art of walking backward while giving tours of my alma mater. If you’ve participated in any of my trainings on making a strong case for support, you know I readily admit that while perfecting the art of walking backward I know now that I gave a really pathetic tour.
Granted, the world was very different back then. The stakes for school were much lower (most of us couldn’t get in today where we got in back then!) and the whole admissions process was a bit less professional.
So, I fully expected, when I headed off with my son to his first college visit, that the bar for college tours would be much higher. After all, it’s 2017 and a college education can cost up to $70,000 a year.
Boy, was I disappointed! The tour mentioned nothing about vision. Nothing about impact. It was mostly just a disjointed series of facts and figures, all of which I could have gotten from the school’s website and printed material.
How great it would have been to hear our student tour guide talk about what her vision for her future was and how the school fit in? What was she studying and how did that fit into her plan? Why was this school the ultimate incubator for her? What impact was the school trying to make on its students and in the world?
Instead, we learned how frequently the shuttle bus came by, that the new business school building was underwritten by one of the largest gifts ever to a university (ok, as a fundraiser I was mildly interested to hear that!), and that the campus church windows had an interesting history. If anyone chooses a school based on the provenance of a building’s windows, we’re really in trouble.
If we want people to invest in us – whatever we’re trying to “sell” – we need to inspire them. And we can only inspire them if we share our vision for the future, if we talk about the impact we are trying to make and how that will change outcomes.
So, attention campus tour guides. If you feel compelled to talk about the shuttle bus, at least talk about the importance of connecting students to the city around them. Talk about how that’s critical to having the fullest college experience. Tell us how going to a school near/in a city and not taking advantage of the city leaves much of your college experience on the table. Explain that by experiencing the city you learn so much that will inform your decisions throughout life, make you a more well-rounded person, give you a broader perspective on the world, and help you become the citizen, the employee, the spouse or parent you want to be.
As for the church windows, even I can’t spin that one into gold!
