vae ignoratis!

This article just came out in today’s issue of Time Magazine. I won’t bicker with absolutely everything the author has to say, although I probably could. Instead, I’d just like to point out that Ramesh Ponnuru seems to censure the value placed on education beyond the arguably flawed K-12 system, and the various ensuing payoffs, much more than the often astronomical prices of higher education in this country. (Make what you will of the fact that we hold very different opinions, despite having graduated from the same university with the same honors in similar fields.)

It may be true that 40% of those who matriculate do not graduate from college within six years, but there are many varied factors that contribute to this statistic: some spend their nights partying and their days hungover, which happens at institutions of all tiers; others may actually not be “cut out” for the experience of post-secondary education; but the majority probably just can’t handle more debt than they already have. And while the author acknowledges that the purpose of higher education is not to secure jobs for its students, though any decent institution prepares them to find such work as is available upon graduation, “traditional college” is still blamed here for producing not much more than debt.


The fact of the matter is that post-secondary education is and has long been valued for good reason in this country (as around the world in general), and when financial problems threaten established social mores and values, it is the former, not the latter, which must be fixed. I realize that colleges and universities struggle to perform a difficult balancing act between their raison d’être as educational institutions (i.e. providing maturing adults with invaluable knowledge and experience) and their increasingly despised status as businesses which strive mainly to turn a profit - the financial crisis has made this abundantly clear. But giving up on the many benefits provided by the college experience - or worse, to contemn them as utterly insignificant next to the cost of college - is simply to let the bastards set on gouging a profit win.

There are indeed alternatives to the “traditional college”, but they naturally do not provide all the benefits of the traditional college experience. Employers may require a college degree for a wide variety of reasons, including a broad educational background. But this article tries to attack a liberal arts education by Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
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guing that engineers don’t need to read Shakespeare to learn how to build a bridge, thus missing the entire point of a liberal arts education. It isn’t that one needs a liberal arts education to be “well-rounded” (after all, how many colleges look for high-schoolers who are well-rounded to begin with?), but that a liberal arts education has long been considered a fairly sure path to a more mature individual, intellectually, socially and emotionally.

Online courses and certifications may arguably serve as an alternative to college courses with respect to hard facts, but consider what people who pursue these avenues instead of the “traditional” college experience miss: the making of new friends, the communal living, the social life, the new beginnings away from parents/guardians and (usually) hometowns, the irreproducible interaction between professors and fellow students in the classroom. People often describe college as the best years of their lives, and they aren’t (often) referring to the lectures. Ultimately, the goal of higher education is that students learn not simply raw facts or data, but how to piece such information together, how to make sense of the world around them, above all how to think critically for and then to express themselves. Of course, there are people who would prefer not to live and learn in such an environment, but they aren’t forced to go to college. If they wish to work, they may either take jobs that don’t require a college degree, or they can stay at home and stare at their computer screens for as long as it takes to earn a degree or certification online.

Those whose primary interest is to prepare for a decently paying job but who cannot afford college have other options as well, vocational schools being high on the list. (Despite the other options suggested in the article, I shudder at the thought of a less-than-rigorously trained chef, engineer or even journalist - language has become far too lax as it is, and eloquence has sunk far too low.) Vocational schools should not be thought inferior to liberal arts colleges, though that stigma persists in certain circles; rather, they have very different aims and should be considered accordingly. In sum, I would hardly advise anyone to go to college if it would lead to financial ruin, but it must be recognized that the college experience provides so much more than a mere sheepskin, which can very often open doors all on its own. (At this point we may recall the joke: “What do you call a person who graduates last in his class from medical school? A doctor.” This was modified in the Bush years to: “What do you call a person who graduates with a C average from Yale? President.”)

Finally, as one commenter suggested, the author of the article should perhaps take a moment to reflect on how many people regret going to college compared to how many regret not doing so - that might be a better indicator of whether the public believes higher education pays off. It is true that the financial situation has been less than ideal for some and outright ruinous for others, but we should not let reversals of fortune, however grievous, lead us as a society to abandon a long- and rightly-valued institution. Less of an education, to my mind, should never be a good thing.

A closing quote from Thucydides (1.84.4):

πολύ τε διαφέρειν οὐ δεῖ νομίζειν ἄνθρωπον ἀνθρώπου, κράτιστον δὲ εἶναι ὅστις ἐν τοῖς ἀναγκαιοτάτοις παιδεύεται.

It is not necessary to think that one man differs much from another, but that he is superior who is educated in the most rigorous [school].