If Uniqueness is Destroyed by Higher Education, Then What's the Point of Encouraging Uniqueness When Young?

"I don't think I have anything unique to say about myself..." I get this comment a lot when I speak to teenagers. Not that I am surprised. Not only did I not know what the future held when I was a high school student, I could not confidently that even now, 35 years old and half a dozen jobs later, I can clearly pronounce my passions in professional or private life. Scary as it might be, even more than twice as old as some of my students, I am often not in a position to provide them the one thing they are looking for – a simple, straightforward answer to narrow down their career choices based on their existing interests.

Yet, uniqueness, as defined by some critical thinking on one's own future directions, is often what top universities are looking for when they seek out mature students who can make a difference in the world. There is a wide assumption that those who can clearly say what they want to do at 16 or 17 and put together concrete initiatives to make that happen, will be the ones that lead society of the future. Better yet, if what they want to do is not bound by the mundane – say, making a lot of money, stability in career progression, or social prestige – they are even more worthy of adulation and support.

Having gone through the university process, and a decade of its aftermath, I have increased doubts about the merits of evaluating teenagers in such a uniqueness-centered fashion. As the teachings of the school campus, focused on the empowerment of potential, the declarations of "future leadership," and activities, both inside and outside the classroom, that supposedly turn the potential into abilities, I have become more skeptical of how elite universities take the most ambitious-sounding high school students and turn them into fully socialized members of the corporate, academic, and professional world.

In the application process, students are extolled for the particular values that they bring to the campus, new ideas to make the world a better place, new solutions to problems that long plagued society...but somehow, in the end, those unique views all become placed in an elite narrative, framed in the language of pride in being part of the top echelons of academic hierarchy. A few thousand students brought a variety of ideas to the Harvard campus, and sure, they might work on something that advances those unique ideas...but in the end, they all leave with "Harvard graduate" being an even more of a personal identity.

The situation begs the question of how elite universities, and by extension, our society that lap up those with degrees from top schools, really think about the value of uniqueness at a young age. Teenagers are told to dig deep into their psyches and explore different interests to find their unique niche within their communities. Some, at the advice of consultants like myself, examine intersections of different interests in a bid to really create never-before-seen ideas and identities. But if Harvard instills into them the same definition of leadership, success, and career progression, then such uniqueness is largely wasted.

Given this reality, let's rethink that initial doubt of "I don't think I have anything unique to say about myself..." In the world of college admissions, being unable to identify one's niche is a clear disadvantage. But in the long term, thinking of life beyond the university campus, is low expectations of uniqueness such a bad thing? Rather than having a distinct uniqueness that is then erased by the comprehensive education of elite leadership offered by the likes of Harvard, perhaps being outside of that education system may accentuate uniqueness.

After all, uniqueness in practice is, well, dependent on practice. Rather than dreaming up some ideas based on hypotheses of one's own special gifts, and then coming up with activities and initiatives to back that up, uniqueness may be found as more profound and lifelong if they are the result of what seem to be aimless activities in the beginning. By doing different things for many more years than the limitations offered by high schools and universities, one's niche in society can still be found and then realized through jobs, life experiences, and concrete output that benefit an employer, a community, and society at large.

Of course, not everyone will have the freedom, in terms of financial capabilities, courage, and imagination, to explore different options before realizing a uniqueness. But education can only be, at best, a limited substitute to real-world experience, when realizing uniqueness. It is not just that schools ultimately if inadvertently, provide a unified curriculum under a unified ideology, even if they speak of diversity and critical thinking under the liberal arts model. Worse, they encourage uniqueness first on paper but have little capability to help students keep them beyond graduation. If that's the case, then it's better not to be unique at a young age.