The Institution’s Fixed Mindset

In my first Substack in this series, I wrote about Carol Dweck’s work on growth and fixed mindsets, focusing primarily on students. This time, I want to shift the focus to institutions. Or, more accurately, to the people students experience as the institution.

Institutions don’t have mindsets. People do.

For most students, the institution isn’t a mission statement, an endowment, or the glossy Instagram page showing smiling students on the quad. It isn’t the championship banners or the university’s strategic plan. The institution is the advisor helping them register for classes, the professor who welcomes them on the first day, and the admissions committee they never meet but whose decision changed the direction of their lives. Those individuals rarely receive much attention, yet they often determine how much the institution will adapt to the particular human being standing in front of them, or whether it will adapt at all.

Some people are naturally curious about the student sitting in front of them. Others feel as if they have to be gatekeepers. They enforce rules because enforcing rules often feels safer than exercising judgment. Judgment can be questioned in a way “policy” rarely can. Others become bridges. They don’t ignore rules or pretend they don’t exist. They use the discretion that’s already built into those rules in service of the person in front of them rather than in service of their own comfort. The difference isn’t warmth. It’s whether the rule is treated as a tool or as something that defines the person enforcing it.

A mentor of mine once shared something that has stayed with me for years.

“Institutions don’t love you.”

I’ve thought about that sentence often. In fact, I think about it almost every time I watch an institution try. Recently, I came across a story on social media that reminded me why. A mother described her daughter earning admission into one of those elite academic programs that almost everyone dreams about. A few weeks into the program, her daughter called home exhausted. During a classroom discussion about poverty and hardship, several classmates spoke about people “like that.” Not from experience, but from observation. One student casually remarked that they’d “heard of people like that.” Nothing about the conversation was openly hostile, and that was precisely what made it so significant.

She had already cleared every academic hurdle the institution placed before her. She had been admitted, yet she still didn't feel like she could be fully herself in that room. Her mother signed her out for the day, and they spent the afternoon together. Admission is an institutional decision, while being seen is a relational experience. Those are two very different things.

I think about that story because, in my own classroom, I ask students to engage in conversations that most people spend their lives avoiding. One activity I use in my first-year seminar is called Stand and Declare. Students respond physically to a series of prompts that begin fairly innocently and gradually become more personal. “Stand if you’re the first in your family to attend college.” “Stand if you or someone you know has experienced homelessness.” After twenty or so prompts, we debrief. What were you most proud to stand for? What made you uncomfortable? Now that you know these things about yourself and your classmates, what responsibility comes with that knowledge?

I usually joke that I doubt anyone asks these kinds of questions while waiting for the slow elevator in the residence hall. Then I stop joking. I tell students that nothing revealed during the exercise will be used against them, and I ask them to extend one another that same respect. If we’re going to have difficult conversations, trust has to come before vulnerability.

During the activity last fall, one of the prompts asked students to stand if they had ever heard an anti-LGBTQ+ slur used casually. I read the prompt exactly as it appeared in my script, apologizing beforehand as I always do. Nearly everyone stood. After class, one student waited until everyone else had left before walking over to my desk. They weren’t angry, and they weren’t confrontational. They simply told me they were offended. What struck me most was that they also made it clear they understood exactly what I was trying to accomplish. They weren’t questioning the purpose of the exercise. They believed I could accomplish that purpose differently. I thanked them, told them I heard them, and then did what I suspect many educators do when feedback doesn’t fit neatly into the way we’ve always understood our teaching. I pocketed it and moved on, at least outwardly.

Walking back to my office, though, I already suspected something I didn’t fully want to admit. I thought they might be right. More importantly, I suspected they weren’t the only student who felt that way but simply hadn’t said anything.

Months later, I caught myself reaching for a much easier explanation. Maybe students today simply aren’t as comfortable sitting with discomfort as previous generations were. It’s an explanation that shows up regularly on social media and in conversations about education because it’s neat, convenient, and asks very little of us as educators. It also would have protected my teaching far more than it would have helped my students.

Looking back, I realized I was reaching for the explanation that required the least from me. If I convinced myself that students simply weren’t comfortable with discomfort anymore, I didn’t have to reconsider the exercise itself. I could leave it exactly as it was. The easiest way to protect our teaching is often to explain away the feedback that asks us to change it. That’s what I mean by an institutional fixed mindset. In that moment, it wasn’t the university demonstrating one. It was me.

One of the mistakes we make in higher education is confusing rigor with harshness. I don’t think they’re the same thing. Over the years, I’ve come to believe that rigor is relational. Students are far more likely to stay engaged long enough for rigor to do its work when they trust the person asking it of them. Harshness may communicate authority, but it doesn’t necessarily develop capacity.

So here’s what I’ve changed.

I no longer say that particular anti-LGBTQ+ slur aloud, for the same reason I’ve never spoken the N-word aloud in my classroom. Students don’t need to hear the word itself to understand exactly what we’re discussing. Before the exercise begins, I explain more clearly the kinds of topics we’ll cover, and I tell students explicitly that no one owes an explanation for remaining seated. I don’t think those changes solve everything. I think they reflect what I know today that I didn’t fully act on last fall.

The older I get, the less interested I become in defending my teaching simply because it’s mine. I’d rather understand where it can be better. Every time a student trusts me enough to tell me I’ve missed something, I have a choice. I can defend the version of myself that already exists, or I can become the kind of educator I’m asking them to become.

Institutions don’t have fixed mindsets. People do.

Every advising appointment, every admissions decision, every office-hour conversation, and every classroom discussion presents the same choice. We can become gatekeepers who protect procedures, or we can become bridges who exercise judgment with care. Long after they’ve forgotten the policy itself, they’ll remember whether the person representing the institution made them feel seen.

Mission statements don’t build trust. People do.

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