“We are the largest college at Michigan State,” says College of Social Science Dean Rachel Croson. “We graduate 1500 students a year, more than any other school on campus. We have 12 departments and 8 centers and institutes with a really wide range. All the way from history to geography, including the traditional social sciences, economics, psychology, political science, sociology, anthropology, but we also include three professional schools, the School of Criminal Justice, the School of Social Work, and the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations, so it's a large and broad scope.
“Our vision for the college is that we use our science to transform the human experience and inspire leaders. It's really about applying what we know, doing research, making discoveries that are going to make people's lives better in a day-to-day way. That's true whether you're a psychologist studying brain waves of an individual, or whether you're a geographer studying climate change. Whatever scale, whether it's at the individual nano level or whether it's at the societal global level, if you're an anthropologist studying archeological ruins or small scale societies, or if you're a political scientist studying our current political system, the goal is to take the science and use it to make people's lives better.”
Croson describes the importance of the college’s “phenomenal collection of donors,” and says she’s seen students change during her time in higher education.
“When I went to college, there was much more of a sense of you should study what you're passionate about and then you'll find a job because you're passionate about that. You'll spend all your time thinking about it, you'll be better than other people at it, and that will lead to success. I think, over the last, I'm not going to say how many years, the mode has really changed to pick a degree in order to get a job, so there's been a much bigger increase in professionally oriented degrees whether it's business, or engineering, or in my college criminal justice, or social work.
“On the other hand, there's some evidence that shows that that strategy is not as successful as you might think. There's a recent poll that Gallup and Purdue ran where they looked at college graduates, and of course they asked them how much they earn, and what they did for a living, and where they lived, and all that type of thing. But they also asked them questions about how happy they were. How satisfied are you with your life? Do you have an emotional support system? Are you happy getting up every day and going to work? What they found was that while business students and engineering students earned the most in their surveys the students who were the happiest in their lives and the most satisfied majored in social science. I think that the shift toward professional training can be a good thing, but it also has a danger to it. If we're thinking just about earnings potential that's not necessarily the be all and end all of one's life.”
Nationally, adds Croson, “I think higher education is going through a crisis of confidence, that there's a general skepticism about higher education and why one needs to go to college. After all you could just start up a dot com. And there's a concern about what's being taught to students, whether they're being coddled, whether they're being given the opportunities that they need in order to succeed. I think we need to do a much better job as faculty and leaders at an institution and across the industry in communicating the importance of what we do, and showing not only what's going on at a university, but also the value that it creates for its students and for society. How the research that we do really does transform the human experience and makes people's lives better.
“As I mentioned, the work that we're doing is incredibly impactful not only for our students, but also for the world at large, so whether you're understanding the political system, or whether you're seeking to understand why marriages are successful, or why people are engaged with each other in positive versus negative ways, if you're trying to think about the economic growth of your region, or if you're trying to understand what makes people decide to get into debt, or to get out of debt, or to make various financial decisions, our faculty members are doing research on all of those really important and personal issues.”
MSU Today airs Sunday afternoons at 4:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.