I once was sitting in a humanities class — a required elective at Penn State on the history of thought. One one day, as if a switch had been thrown in the subterranean control room in my brain, I felt as if I had “leveled up.” I felt my mind getting stronger in much the same way that one knows he is getting stronger when he puts up a goal weight on the bench. It was that obvious to me.
And this is what I think college is for. My uncle, a lifelong educator, once said: “At some point, college turned from a place to develop one’s mind into vocational school.” He was right.
Now, people see college in terms of what it will do for them in the employment marketplace. “Will my degree be worth it?”
Short answer: No; owing to the obscene — and it is obscene — cost of modern college, it will most certainly not be “worth it.” If you see college (as most do) as job preparation — as a vocational school — the cost simply does not balance out with the potential financial benefits, in most cases.
Because of this, people have jumped from Mike Rowe’s very balanced campaign proposing that one does not need college to be successful, or to get job, to: college is a complete waste of time and money.
But it is not a waste if one goes to college for the wacky reason that I did. Ready? I went to college…to learn. To build my mind. To study a thing I loved (literature) and, through studying the observations of some of the gretest minds in history, to improve my understanding of the world around me.
Many will say: “But Chris, $70,000 per year just ‘to learn’ is not worth it.” Well, I say it is. We shall have to agree to disagree on that. Philosophically and idealistically, becoming better is certainly worth a high price — if one can possibly afford it. Most of our world’s problems exist because people don’t know how to think. Higher education (especially in the liberal arts) teaches one how to think clearly. (Hence, my epiphany at PSU).
I don’t mean to be facile about this. College education is, I again admit, ridiculously unaffordable. I’m not brushing that off. Some simply can’t swing the finances for such an education. I couldn’t! Not today. I went in as an undergrad when college tuition, out of state, for Penn State was around $8,000 per year (in the mid 80s, so adjust for inflation, etc.). I excelled as an undergrad and got paid to go to graduate school — as a teaching assistant. I found a path that my modest-income, middle class family could work out.
(There are paths like that today, as well. My eldest son went to community college for two years and graduated from Rutgers, cutting his and our expenses significantly. He majored in history because he likes it, so you can be sure I am not hypocritical. And
while we are at it, I supported my younger son in majoring in “Writing Arts” and he decided not to pursue college after a bit. I love them both. I am proud of them both, but I add this so you will see that I practice what I preach.)
I’m just saying that we’d have a more mentally (and politically) healthy country if people would go to school to learn about the world around them or if they would simply pursue things about which they are passionate. (My emphasis in grad school was British Romanticism. You might be able to tell.)
Is it worth it? If it is worth it to you, then yes. From a vocationa standpoint: You want to teach? You need college. You want to be a nurse? College. Law? College…etc, etc, etc… You want to learn about philosophy and literature? College is the best place to do it. The financial results will, of course, differ. If you want to study with the best, you will pay more: Johns Hopkins for medicine? — Rutgers Law? — NYU for film making? Up to you.
If you just want a job, get one right out of high school. God bless you if you are happy to work jobs that require no college and that carry no deep mission. I am not saying this with any trace of intended sarcasm. It’s just that, from the earliest age, though, something within said I’d need to do something that really mattered to me — the proverbial “making a difference.” I’d be miserable as a cook in a diner. You might not be. Niether one of us is better.
I concede that one can make a good living either working in a toll both or as a carpenter. And while I can see loving carpentry (I want to learn it when I retire) I can’t imagine being passionate about taking tolls at the Walt Whitman bridge. (How ironic would that be?) That said, there are some who are content with that sort of job. Not a problem! I admit I don’t understand it, but I am not judging it. Sometimes, I even wish I felt that way. Being wired differently doesn’t necessarily make us superior or inferior.
But…I would ask non-college people not to label college as useless simply because they are joining the bandwagon of the warped, post-Rowe trend. I won’t slam people for not going to college, so I would expect the same respect in return. If we don’t respect both opinions, we are going to bias our young people into maybe making the wrong decision for themselves. A young poet might be better off with college; a mechanical genius might flourish as an apprentice. But mechanics can write verse and poets can rebuild transmissions. We need to keep that clear. I know it is easier to pidgeonhole, but it is a disservice to our kids and to our futre to do so.
For some of us, college is what made us who we are. The poetry of Keats, Pound, Eliot and Wordsworth; the fiction of Steinbeck, Carver and Morrison; the plays of Shakespeare, Miller and O’Neill — these works were the water that quenched the glowing sword of my young, freshly-hammered brain. And now, I teach high school kids. Every day, I go to a job I believe in. Every day I try to open the eyes of young people to the beauty and profundity of the English language and its literature. I could not have done this without the guidance of some wonderful college professors nor without the companionship of others in school who shared my passion.
In short, let’s encourage kids to “find their tribe,” either in academics or in the work world, but let’s also teach them that there is no need for tribal warfare and judgmentalism.