The YouTube age takes over
March 11, 2010 9:00 AM
“Hey University recruitment peoples, I just cranked out this wicked sweet vid you should check it out because its sooo cool. Youll really like it for sure i know, so ya just look at it, and ill be seeing you ‘round in Sept!”
Oh the wonders of being a part of the generation that grew up on the internet. This year, as thousands of high school students across the nation compose essays and fill out lengthy applications to post-secondary institutions, a few are getting out their webcams.
They’re doing what is natural to them; summarizing their lives by making YouTube videos. As no stranger to unconventional application processes, Tufts University is pioneering this new trend of allowing students to supplement their application with short youTube videos that they have created.
A report in the New York Times indicated that out of 15,000 prospective students, around 1,000 created video submissions for Tufts University. Clearly with the popularity of youTube increasing at an unstoppable rate, and the younger generations becoming only better acquainted with such technology, this seems to be the start of a trend that will grow exponentially over the next few years.
This is where my personal academic alarm bells start sounding, and I begin wondering if anyone else thinks this change makes the application process just a little too similar to that depicted in the movie Legally Blonde.
Who knows, maybe I am just a little too old school in my views on what academic skills are necessary for success at the university level.
Perhaps thinking that the ability to compose an essay that clearly expresses why you feel you are suited for life at a given academic institution is an outdated idea.
Maybe it is now the case that the ability to compose a short YouTube submission is more representative of the requirements for the average student coming into the world of academics. Perhaps, but I am not willing to accept that as the case just yet.
The university life is supposed to encourage a search for knowledge and truth, for students to communicate their new found ideas clearly and concisely in a variety of forms.
Using internet videos may be a useful way to communicate in future endeavours, perhaps in the workplace that is increasingly becoming permeated by such information formats.
However, written expression of ideas remains central to the academic world, and to give the impression right from the start that this is not the case will simply set these new students up for a terrible fall.
Let me say that as a current student, I still marvel at the fact that each time term papers are assigned, there remain some students who seem paralyzed by the thought of developing a thesis and planning out an argument.
To allow students to express their qualifications for consideration to a university in any way other than through writing seems to be completely undercutting the basic elements of the academic life.
I love the idea of creative expression from prospective students as they attempt to lay claim to a spot at the post-secondary institution of their choice; I simply believe that if these students belong at a university, they should be able to easily express themselves in writing.
