Family Weekend Misses the Mark
(Jenell Theobald/The Santa Clara)
Santa Clara University’s Family Weekend, which took place from Feb. 20–22, 2026, was filled to the brim with all sorts of activities for families to participate in, but largely excluded events pertaining to actual academics. It’s almost as if the University read my article that satirized our community’s professionally obsessed culture and is trying to provide more material. “Be the Link: LinkedIn Coaching for Families Who Want to Help Their College Student Make Professional Connections” was just one of many career-focused events offered, while there were zero—yes, zero—faculty lectures, and very few truly academic-centered activities.
This is the latest example of Santa Clara University’s persistence in advertising itself as a premier option for those looking to attain stable, high-paying careers. It is somewhat strange to me how frantic the University acts in trying to prove this. Family Weekend is certainly a good time to make clear their reputation—because familial approval matters—but I think it’s well understood by almost everyone who knows anything about Santa Clara University that a primary reason that students attend is because the University is known for inducing great outcomes after graduation. If this reputation was somehow fraudulent—which data proves it isn’t—I think the school would be much less popular!
This all being true, the University’s unique appeal is not its ability to help a student network their way into a nice job. As I wrote recently, its potency is rather that our students are set up to attain ‘success’ in the professional world while also being nurtured with a strong liberal arts style education.
We have to represent both sides of this equation, because at the end of the day, we’re a university—not a corporate workshop. It’s true that a primary reason students seek higher education is because it’s a path up the socioeconomic ladder, and the University should be applauded for providing such an opportunity. Admittedly, we are a private school and bring in many students from wealthy backgrounds, but a degree is life-changing for many families. I don’t want to dismiss this, but I also think it’s far from the only thing worth celebrating about our University.
I can imagine a culture that still includes and promotes the strong career-focused support system available to students while also recognizing that what we do here is centered around fostering academic and personal development. We get fed a lot of statistics about outcomes after graduation, but let’s not forget this fact: The 2026 U.S. News and World Report listed Santa Clara University at No. 23 for best undergraduate teaching.
Being located in the Bay Area, Santa Clara University is right in the midst of some rich intellectual tradition. We pull great faculty from some of the elite institutions nearby, and we’re also an attractive option for highly-respected thinkers around the country and around the world. We as students get to experience this everyday in our small classes, so it feels right to showcase it to parents.
I doubt that parents would become skeptical of the University’s goal if there was more of a balance at Family Weekend. For some families, networking might be of an increased importance, but I’d assume that they’d also want to learn about the ways in which the University is facilitating their child’s intellectual development. That’s something that happens largely through the experiences they have in the classroom with the great minds that surround them—not necessarily on their quest for an internship.
But, it’s possible that the University is anticipating some anxiety from parents about the utility of their child’s college education. There is a lot of skepticism in our current times about the value of a college degree. It’s true that a bachelor’s degree does not have the same bargaining power in the labor market as it did some years ago; as more people hold one, more jobs require it. Rising tuition and debt numbers also complicate decision making for some families. But this doesn’t mean that going to college is a bad deal—that’s far from the truth. As of 2023, the premium to a college degree had been settling at a historically high level for a decade. The Public Policy Institute of California reported that workers with a bachelor’s degree earned on average 61% more than high school graduates.
If you subscribe at all to the signalling theory of education, which posits that a degree can hold power in the labor market regardless of how applicable its qualities are to a specific job, it might be silly to obsess so much about how a student is being prepared for the professional world. Networking tactics are certainly useful for learning how to market your degree, but purely in terms of seeking high-paying employment opportunities, the most valuable thing for a University student will be the paper they walk away with after graduation. In the meantime, there exists a wonderful opportunity for families to be included in the ways in which the University is helping students grow as thinkers and people.
Dr. Jeanette Estruth, a professor of history, was present at the College of Arts and Sciences Student Research Showcase during Family Weekend, one of the few academic-centered events that took place. When asked how she envisions Family Weekend, Dr. Estruth emphasized the celebration of the intellectual exploration her students are doing. “I can think of no better example of academic achievement than my stellar thesis advisee, Ben Chu, who represents the brightest, most hardworking, and most original archival undergraduate history research that Santa Clara has to offer,” Dr. Estruth said. You can find student research like Ben’s here.
What I’m suggesting for Parent’s Weekend—and future events like it—is not for the University to relent in its marketing of the school as the great outcome-producer that it is. Instead I imagine a way for the solely academic aspect of the school to be respected as the integral part of the community that it is.