Does College Matter?

Does College Matter? A Philosophical Debate
By The Liberal Arts Dude

I recently saw a blog entry that attempted to answer that question. I invite you to check it out here. I’d like to take a stab at answering that question myself.

Does college matter? I would say it depends on what perspective you look at the issue. If you consider, for example, that a college degree is pretty much your ticket to the professional, white-collar world:

1) So you can obtain your first entry-level job
2) Once you are at that job, the credential that will justify your being promoted
3) When you are in competition for the same position with a non-degree holder, will be the deciding factor in you getting the position.
4) So you can go to graduate school if you would like to do that

So from a strictly utilitarian perspective of being your ticket to the world of work, college does matter. As a credential that is needed to gain entry—like a passport, social security number, or some other important document you need to make things easier in negotiating the Real World.

There is also a school of thought, most recently represented by this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that has a different perspective on education. Proponents of this point of view say that an education, particularly a Liberal Arts education, should be considered more than a ticket to the world of work. More than just job training, an education should teach people how to lifelong learners, how to be intellectually curious, expose them to the diversity of other cultures and intellectual perspectives that they otherwise would not encounter in life, expose them to works of art, literature, social thought and other great products of our civilization. Does this perspective of college matter?

I would say that this is an old-fashioned perspective. A classical view, even of what an education is supposed to accomplish—a thoughtful, intellectually curious, sophisticated and worldly individual. My question to the proponents of the classical view is this: are the thousands of dollars in student loans the student will collect in the process of getting an education enough to justify what they actually get? I don’t mean what they can theoretically get or potentially get—but the quality and intellectual depth of the education they actually get? Does college still matter if you put a dollar amount in the equation as the price tag of your education?

I ask these questions because part of the equation missing from the classical view is that (at least in the US) college education costs thousands and thousands of dollars. Most students take out hefty student loans and work throughout their summer breaks just to raise enough money to attend college. Is becoming a more well-rounded and sophisticated person worth all those thousands of dollars? I don’t know. But I want the proponents of the classical view to be honest about what they’re selling—and that is exactly what they do when they say these benefits of college—they’re selling the university experience as something worthwhile. Yet they often gloss over or totally ignore the fact that this worldly sophistication comes at a premium.

Sorry for being so strident but I usually encounter proponents of the classical view as looking down or even being dismissive of people who hold the utilitarian perspective. They say boiling down the benefits of college strictly along the lines of a ticket to a job is crass. I say: what happens when the job market doesn’t have a place for you after you graduate other than washing dishes, serving food in a restaurant, or flipping burgers? You can be the most erudite, sophisticated, worldly and learned person out there but if you end up at the bottom of the service economy in the job market—and with 40 grand in student loans to boot—the theoretical value of an education put forward by the classical proponents sure as hell won’t matter. You’re still making barely above minimum wage at the very bottom of the job market.

So my answer to the question “does college matter?”—yes it does. But I favor the utilitarian perspective of having your ticket punched to enter the world of work. The classical view of producing learned individuals—I would say cool if you come out of college more knowledgeable, worldly and sophisticated. More power to you. However, in seeking your intellectual bliss, don’t forget that you will eventually graduate and you will enter the job market so you can pay off your student loans. The best educational experience should have prepared you for that eventuality. If it hasn’t then there is something terribly wrong.

Copyright 2005