60 minutes had a great profile tonight of Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Hrabowski is churning out a large number of excellent math, science, and engineering students. I appreciated his emphasis on high expectations, realistic optimism, hard work, and cooperation over competition.
He’s right: telling college students “look to your left, look to your right, one of you won’t make it” can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as those lacking confidence conclude they’ll fail. The opposite danger is to suggest success comes easily, a perspective which stunts effort, and therefore leads to poorer outcomes (even if educators seek to hide the results by lowering standards or inflating grades). Hrabowski strikes the right balance between being nurturing and supportive, but also setting very high standards.
Science, engineering and math counted for 41 percent of the bachelor’s degrees earned at UMBC last year – well above the national average of 25 percent.