It’s happening. Higher education is getting serious about creativity in addition to academia. Check out this story about what Tufts University is doing with their admissions process. Rather then over-analyze this—I’ll simply pull a few choice quotes:
“This year, applicants to Tufts will also have the option of answering very different kinds of questions. They might be asked to write a short story to fit the title “Confessions of a Middle School Bully” or “The End of MTV.”
“Or they could create an advertisement or ad campaign for a product that doesn’t exist. Other exercises might be timed and prompted by videos. They could watch a film about a situation they might face in college — such as going to a professor to ask for a recommendation only to realize that the professor doesn’t know you — and write a short piece about what they would do.”
“To be sure, some colleges are more creative than others with their essay prompts. But at Tufts, these various essays and exercises won’t be evaluated as a new way of judging mastery of vocabulary or history, but with specific tools to measure creativity and other factors that aren’t strictly academic.”
“The idea is to change the admissions process from one that focuses only on a subset of analytic qualities — the kinds that can be measured by grades and test scores — and to look more broadly at ways to measure creativity and leadership potential. The approach is based on the work of Robert Sternberg, a psychologist who specializes in measuring intelligence and promoting creativity.”
“Several leading advocates for reforms in college admissions were thrilled to hear about the Tufts experiment. “Colleges say that they want to educate people to be creative about knowledge and society, but the things that they look at in admissions don’t have anything to do with that,”
“Tufts is undertaking this experiment at a time that it is attracting more and more applicants. More than 15,000 students applied this year and 27 percent were admitted, to produce a class of 1,275.”
“It’s not that the analytical skills measured by the SAT aren’t important,”... “But they aren’t enough. We have to stop putting so much emphasis on only a sliver of the abilities that kids can bring to college.”
Are you still thinking about creativity as an “exclusive” gift that only a select group of individuals have? What about the role of creativity in business? In building brands and experiences?
Creativity. Stay Tuned.
