Hilal Nakiboglu: Autonomy at Deep Springs

"I transferred from the University of Pennsylvania. During my time here, I've learned more than I ever did in two years at UPenn," former undergraduate student Dan Shu is quoted as boldly saying on the Web site of his new, preferred college.

Dan is referring to a place that accepted 12.5 percent of its applicants last year. A college which boasts that 94 percent of those it extends an admissions offer to accept. The student body here has an average combined SAT score of about 1450. These are hard-working students, all of them being in the top two percentiles of their high school graduating class.

Yet Dan has not gone on to one of the Ivies, or Stanford, even. Rather, he is enrolled at a place called Deep Springs College.

Tucked between the remote Inyo and White Mountains, the school is a short desert drive from the Nevada border. The closest nearby attractions include a nuclear testing plant and the Cottontail Ranch brothel 100 dusty miles away.

With an average class size of four, Deep Springs is home to just 26 students, all of them male. Matriculating here means agreeing not only to the regular fare of coursework, but also to a distinct way of life. Described as an "academic boot camp for the future leaders of the nation" by the Smithsonian Magazine, Deep Springs is said to not only "educate minds" but to "build character" as well.

To achieve this end, Deep Springs requires that its students run the place. Literally.

The student body at Deep Springs is responsible for hiring and firing the college staff. It is also tasked with admissions decisions, determining who will be a part of entering classes. Deep Springers collectively decide what courses should be offered, what major requirements should be and even which texts ought to be included as part of a course reading list.

Matriculating here also means agreeing to no small amount of manual labor. Twenty unpaid hours a week's worth, actually. Students are up at sunrise to milk the cows. They ensure that the college's watering system is operational. They even wash the dishes after dinner.

Chores and cows are not quite what most admissions officials have in mind when it comes to college marketing. What, then, would make Dan and his classmates choose Deep Springs over the comfort, indeed luxury, of a place like Penn?

The answer lies in what Penn State Professor William Tierney calls "education for empowerment." Deep Springs is unique in having created a culture where students are true participants and active members of a community. By making heady decisions and collectively running their institution, students here decide firsthand what being a socially responsible, good citizen means to them.

In the words of former Deep Springs student Rob Monk, "Students learn to work closely with the professional staff to ensure that the needs of the college are met, they learn to plan and execute diverse practical projects and they learn to take roles both as leaders and as followers."

The idea at Deep Springs, then, seems to be one of education coming alive. It is one thing to passively learn about democracy and quite another to actively engage democratic values in one's daily life. Reading about organizational strategic planning is presumably much different from sitting across from your college president, debating how the institution's budget ought to be handled.

When Deep Springs founder Lucien L. Nunn established the modest school in 1917, his vision was one of preparing young men for a life dedicated to serving others. Nunn felt that in order to prepare for future leadership roles, the students needed to seclude themselves from civilization and worldly influences, merging their intellectual quests with humbling labor.

At the time, Nunn's campus was hailed as a radical experiment. Today, decades later, the question is whether the "experiment" has been successful and even whether or not it still has relevance.

Nunn's exclusion of women from public leadership consideration and subsequent admissions to Deep Springs could be reconsidered. The monastic conditions that define Deep Springs might also be rethought -- is banning students from leaving the valley during the academic year really necessary?

Yet there is certainly something to be learned here. Involving students in such a substantial way allows for a true ownership of one's education to develop. It fosters a sense of community and personal responsibility for the institution's future. Such elements are lacking at a place like Penn.

In an era when students are increasingly passive in their processes of education, Deep Springs offers a breath of fresh air, showing us what things would be like if students were given authority, agency and a powerful voice.

Hilal Nakiboglu is a second-year doctoral student in Higher Education Management from Ankara, Turkey.

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