The Harm of Academic Competitiveness

Are Academic Rivalries Worth It?

Photo by Igor Rodrigues on Unsplash

A major part of education culture is academic competitiveness. Academic competition is the act of students competing against each other in an educational setting. It includes comparing a student’s academic performance to their classmates with the goal to outperform peers. Within a certain boundary, academic competition has benefits, such as engagement, motivation and academic success. However, once that boundary is crossed, competition turns more harmful than healthy. 

Competition reaps many benefits in schools, allowing a chance for successful students to be rewarded. It pushes students to work hard and makes learning more interesting. Additionally, experiencing a sense of success and failure through competition is important, as it teaches fundamental skills of humility. There should be a level of competition in schools, but it’s important to recognize the harm it could bring if there’s too much.

A hyper-competitive environment in schools can be harmful when students prioritize outperforming their peers rather than learning. With an overemphasis on things like making straight A’s or being number one in a class rank, students tend to focus solely on the numerical value of their schoolwork. This takes away the students’ ability to develop a comprehensive understanding of the material they are being taught. Students may shift the focus from creativity, learning and understanding to winning an award or having a perfect transcript. This environment inevitably causes students to define success by a small margin, just a numerical value. When this happens, students struggle to see the value in their interest and possible career paths that may not conform to conventional definitions of success. 

While a competitive environment is great for engagement in the short term, it has damaging effects in the long-term. Hyper-competitive environments with an emphasis on grades can cause students to do anything to get good grades, potentially leading them to commit unethical behaviors, such as cheating on tests, plagiarizing or lying. 

Competitive environments motivate and push students to work, but a potential threat in this is that students will begin to compare themselves to their peers as their only source of self-motivation. While this can work temporarily, the problem lies in the long term. If students leave the competitive environment they are in to enter one where their value isn’t defined by how they compare to their peers, they will easily lose self-motivation, which can even cause a dramatic decrease in their academic performance. Additionally, the comparison mindset can lower self-esteem, and the pressure to outperform classmates can lead to anxiety and depression. 

Healthy competition has its many pros, some of which are necessary for students to succeed. However, it has to stay within its boundaries. By making sure schools don’t promote a hyper-competitive environment, students can find motivation within themselves without overemphasizing their value as a number or in comparison to their peers.