What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain (review)

Ken Bain is provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of the District of Columbia, and he attributes the success of What the Best College Students Do to the collaborative support of his family, research team, editors, administrative staff, and colleagues. A sequel to his 2004 best seller, What the Best College Teachers Do (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), Bain's newest scholarship was awarded the 2012 Virginia and Warren Stone Prize for Outstanding Book on Education and Society by Harvard University Press. What the Best College Students Do draws from multiple theoretical frameworks; Bain bridges the stories of highly successful college students with research-based qualitative inquiry to present a common-sense narrative, easily portable for students, educators, and policy makers.

Although organized in eight uniquely titled chapters, What the Best College Students Do lacks a traditional introduction and may initially seem disjointed. As Bain discusses the organizational structure, he queries participant selectivity, research limitations, and who or what is marginalized in the narrative. In response, Bain proposes the importance of educational foundations and creative self-expression. The mentorship of professor Paul Baker resonates throughout the text; Bain ultimately proclaims, "I interviewed people who had rooted themselves in communities rather than in themselves" (175).

One of the unique contributions of What the Best College Students Do is the breadth of national and international histories. Equally salient are how students appropriate the "qualities and achievements" of others in their journey for self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-confidence (5). Bain's didactic approach is grounded in "thirty to forty years of research," and he echoes strengths-based pedagogies of leadership and transformative learning (11). Bain also describes intrinsic motivation as a characteristic of highly effective students, and each case study exemplifies how belief influences behavior. Bain asserts that as students find their purpose, passion, and voice, their contribution to society exponentially increases.

Bain also integrates historical inquiry with autobiographical reflection, inviting the reader to challenge social inequity as a process of leadership. According to Bain, value-driven students contribute judiciously and globally to the freedom of others. Student narratives also reveal historic systems of power, privilege, and oppression, challenging notions of educational equity. Bain proposes that highly effective students foster communal responsibility beyond their socioconcentric circles. As noted by one participant, "I realize that I am a product of certain historical contingencies that shape what I've done and how I look at the world" (58). Grappling with disappointment, students often defied their fears to pursue excellence: "They acknowledged the need for growth in themselves while appreciating the work of others" (57). Bain further demonstrates that creativity and discipline were paramount to students' success. "These best students discovered how to explore human society, the arts, and nature, and how to find links among their interests" (47). Through holistic self-care, "They sought a meaning and purpose for their existence" and the world around them (48).

Bain argues that "people who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge their failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them" (100). Historical memory also impacts perceptions of success and how students reappropriate their experiences. Much of Bain's reflection in What the Best College Students Do parallels other scholarship on leadership development, learning styles, and best practices. Uniquely, however, this book offers a glimpse into the lives of highly effective students whose "stories illustrate…the findings of thirty years of empirical research" (111). Emerging as highly effective thinkers, students accomplished extraordinary feats by practicing success principles. Consistently self-reflective, "They…generate[d] new theories from what they [knew] already, and then imagine[d] ways to test their hypothesis" (156). In essence, their desire for purposeful learning produced action-oriented results. According to Bain, "This book is about creative…dynamic and innovative men and women who changed the world" (4). What the Best College Students Do holds significance not only for students, educators, policy makers, and practitioners, but also for...