The Above-Average Ratchet
Or, Why Scholars Fail Out in the First Term
My undergrad thesis supervisor was also the first-year department professor for one of the most competitive programs at the university. The entrance average requirements to be accepted to the program had ballooned significantly over the last 10 years, notably in the 5 since I started attending the university.
When I applied, a 90-average was more than sufficient to secure your spot. By the time I graduated, a 95-average plus extra-curricular activities was no longer a guarantee.
Our group would go for weekly meetings with our professor to discuss the project, and she would often say that our group gave her faith that these first-year students would one day be capable engineering graduates like us. She would tell us that we were her weekly restoration of faith in engineering education (and general common sense).
At one of our weekly meetings to discuss the project, we strayed off topic and were talking about her classes, and she mentioned the university was having a very serious issue: for the first time in its history, a significant percentage of President’s Scholarship winners (95%+ average from high school) were failing out in the first term.
She couldn’t understand why.
The same reason weddings are so expensive, nations invest in new weapons technologies, and management consultants make so much.
“We are above average.”
Seth Godin in an episode of Akimbo discusses the Wedding Industrial Complex, a variation on the Military Industrial Complex, and hints at trying to explain how Weddings, and ultimately culture, get ratcheted out of control.
The premise is simple: a wedding is a time for celebration amongst your closest friends and family. It’s a chance to demonstrate, in front of the people you love the most, the values and signals that have meaning to you.
But of course, there are standards.
As Seth often points out, “people like us do things like this”.
And so most weddings end up being different flavours of the same dessert. They have dinners and dancing and round tables and banquet halls, because that’s the average.
But as anyone who is married will tell you, a wedding is also about signaling. This is a chance to demonstrate your status amongst your peers. A wedding is a signal of status, in the most extreme way.
As Seth puts it:
Many people say ‘Oh, I don’t want something extravagant, I just want something slightly above average’. Because, after all, we’re slightly above average — our family, the message we are trying to send, the importance of this day — I’m not showing up to have a below average wedding, I’d like to have one slightly above average.
Well, in order to do that of course, you need to know what the average is — and the average is always going to go up, because most people want what they’re doing to be slightly above average.
There’s two important factors here: most people want above average, and it’s acceptable to want slightly above average.
On the first, to be specific, most people want above the current average.
As Seth points out, the average used to be what was seen in magazines or on TV, and changed about once every 3 years. There was a lag between what we understood as average, and what we decided was above average. Now, in the world of Instagram and social media, the average is what was above average 5 minutes ago. Most of the time someone gets married, in the context of average, they are trying to exceed what the wedding in the tribe did (at least in some way), and so the ratchet turns.
The second, of course, is a little more complex, as things with culture typically are — we only want to be slightly above average. If we decide to throw a huge glitzy glamorous affair and complete outshine the remainder of the tribe, we’re viewed as going too far. That’s not “People like us do things like this”, it’s showing off. So there’s a culture around what is an acceptable rate of change.
It’s okay to be above average, but only if you’re slightly above average. Otherwise, you can’t sit at our table anymore.
This mechanism, that of the ratchet of slightly above average, explains far more than why the average wedding for a middle-class couple in New York City costs $80,000.
This same mindset applies to the Military Industrial Complex, spending by politicians, and why businesses keep investing in management consultants despite the knowledge they often don’t provide meaningful results.
People like us, do things like this. But we are above average.
The best military needs the best weapons. But not just those run-of-the-mill weapons, the new shiny ones. This is exactly what Eisenhower warned us against — the Military Industrial Complex.
Management Consultants often understand that their clients are all world-class businesses. But in the competitive world of quarterly reporting, financial statements, and constant market pressure, any advantage is compounded. So let’s hire a team of experts to tell us how to be better. The other guys might have done the same, but they only got the Gold package. We’ll get the Platinum one. That will give us the edge.
When everyone is trying to be above average, the average, of course, goes up. This is how the ratchet turns.
So what does this have to do with entrance scholarships and students failing?
Everything. If every student thinks they are above average, and every teacher wants their students to appear above average — so they look like an above average teacher — the grades will become inflated. Inflated grades means that other teachers will notice they are falling behind, and so the averages will rise. And this trend will continue until universities realize that students with 90s aren’t what they used to be.
As Seth notes, in 1974, the equivalent of an $80,000 wedding would have been the most luxurious party of the year. Now, it’s about middle of the road.
Even more important, he notes that weddings, despite the increased price tag, haven’t become more fun.
In 2010 when I started university, the entrance cutoff was about 90. Now, the cutoff is closer to 96. Are those kids somehow 6% smarter than we were?
Possibly. But far more likely, the grades have just inflated.
When grade inflation falls victim to the same ratchet as wedding costs, you start to see students with high entrance grades not living up to their reputations.
That’s how you get someone failing out in the first year.
It’s not fair to the student, to put them in such a difficult position they couldn’t handle, and it’s not fair to the university, to have given the competitive spot to someone who really couldn’t handle the pressure.
So what to do?
Seth, as usual, proposes an answer: design thinking.
Who is it for? What is it for? Why are we doing this in the first place?
In the case of a wedding, my answer is simple (but long):
To share your values, in front of the people you care about the most, in the ways that have meaning to you. It’s about acknowledging the past — the family, friends and communities that helped get you there — the present — the act of being in the moment with those you love — and the future — the promise of a commitment to one another, graced by the presence of those who will hold you accountable, to a lifetime together.
The easiest way to avoid the Wedding Industrial Complex, is to answer those questions honestly, thoughtfully, and intentionally.
But as for university, I’m still not really sure.
Is it for an education? Prestige? Job prospects? Career validation? Signaling?
We’re still working on that.
So maybe we shouldn’t be so worried about the students who fail out right away. That’s a pretty clear signal that the Above Average complex has ratcheted out of control.
What I worry about is the students who make it.
What are they ratcheting towards?
Brendan is the Palette 2 Hardware Lead at Mosaic Manufacturing, and blogs about startups, mental models and why hardware is hard here. He’s a Venture for Canada alumni, coffee aficionado, and cookbook collector. If he were an action figure, the three items he would come with are: a coffee mug, a library card, and a chef’s knife.
