In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably point out that I have been teaching in a college prep private high school environment for 18 years, and have dabbled in the college setting as well. Perhaps this will be an exercise in "biting the hand that feeds me."
By all accounts, college education has become onerously expensive, to the point of unreality for many people. The only reason that so many people continue to be able to afford it is the prevalence of government loans, which have now put Americans in debt to the tune of over 1 trillion dollars. Parallels to the housing bubble are obvious. Remember that there too many people were given loans at low interest to purchase stuff they couldn't afford and would probably never pay back.
As someone committed to private education, even I have to wonder about what is happening. Is any education really worth 200,000 dollars or more? Should a young person enter life with 25k or more in debt? And that doesn't even account for grad school and post grad work, which is becoming all the more necessary since the BA is now practically a high school equivalency.
I am as much an advocate for the original purpose of the bachelors degree as anyone. The purpose is not to simply train for a functional role in society, but to become a whole person, a capable and informed thinker. There are many elegant defenders of this laudable aim in education. The only problem is that college is no longer taken seriously, or should not be, as the only environment where becoming such a thinker can occur. I lived before the current boom in education and I can say that most of my intellectual growth came before and after college. Mass produced classes with mass produced minimalist student outcomes did little to furnish me with new ideas or new paradigms of thought. They were often obstacles to negotiate; not opportunities for intellectual growth.
Today in high school education one can witness everywhere a steady and unremitting polarization in the general education of the mass of students. It is a fascinating phenomenon to witness. We don't want to go back to education for the privileged few anymore, so we continue with broad exposure to education for the masses, but then do things that cause this polarization anyway. For example, in most high schools, even in exclusive private ones, there will be the AP and Honors track students and the "general diploma" students. We are teaching high level mathematics earlier and earlier, and advanced programs in science and the humanities to students at a younger age as well. The effect here is that there are two schools in most every school. There are the academics, and their corresponding excellent teachers, and then there are the students who want an education without becoming the thinkers that we understand classical thinkers to be, and they get their teachers as well (often the same teachers who are excellent for excellent students). Surely it is obvious that the latter group is the majority. They want all the privileges of high level education without the academic costs classically associated with it. And they can bring in a lot of revenue. It only makes sense to market education to both the academics and, well, the pragmatists.
For our pragmatists who go on to college, it seems clear that attending a four year college in America may be little more than a four year experiment in hedonism. It is true that there will be an occasional class thrown in here and there as a distraction from the endless party, but most students find a way to overcome that distraction.
Perhaps the greatest case to be made against universities is the actual products of the universities in our day.
I give you Bob (named changed because I have some sense of grace). Bob had the misfortune of encountering my wife, a brilliant HR executive for a high tech company here in Bakersfield (yes, they have those). On interrogation, Bob had the audacity to say to my wife that the reason he should make six figures is that "he is from the bay area," and he has "a college degree." Note that this was a 23 year old, fresh out of his humanities degree from the University of the Redlands. To say that my wife showed the pinnacle of restraint in not laughing in the face of The Prince of Entitled Narcissists is to understate the case. Clearly any "Me Monster" (thank you, Brian Regan) from the bay area deserves all that he requires! He is an architect of society! An alpha male! Let us all write our checks in humble obeisance to his brilliance in pushing forward human evolution.
I also give you Jaime (name also changed), whose brilliance at 25 is so profound that she requires a 10k increase immediately. Don't get me wrong. Jamie is a serviceable employee, perhaps even a great employee, but she is easily replaceable. She is one of those alpha women whose life experience does nothing to justify her sense of confident entitlement. She literally told them that if the company did not reward her, then she was going to leave and take her genius to those who would appropriately recognize it. Perhaps she could marry Bob and together they could produce a new generation of divas and douchebags.
I've complained of this elsewhere, but ethically it seems clear that the modern university produces a steady stream of relativists, egoists and sophists. And often one student displays the stunning trifecta of all three. Just pray you don't have to listen to them pontificate about the current political scene, or any political issue for that matter. You will be required to offer deference.
But how on earth can we be surprised that the modern university is doing this when it has become thoroughly secularized and has summarily jettisoned every hint of a Christian or even theistic philosophy in every possible way, including in common discourse in dorms and cafeterias?
There is one place where Zarathustra's prophecy has come true in near universal fashion, and that is the modern university. God is surely dead there!
Today in high school education one can witness everywhere a steady and unremitting polarization in the general education of the mass of students. It is a fascinating phenomenon to witness. We don't want to go back to education for the privileged few anymore, so we continue with broad exposure to education for the masses, but then do things that cause this polarization anyway. For example, in most high schools, even in exclusive private ones, there will be the AP and Honors track students and the "general diploma" students. We are teaching high level mathematics earlier and earlier, and advanced programs in science and the humanities to students at a younger age as well. The effect here is that there are two schools in most every school. There are the academics, and their corresponding excellent teachers, and then there are the students who want an education without becoming the thinkers that we understand classical thinkers to be, and they get their teachers as well (often the same teachers who are excellent for excellent students). Surely it is obvious that the latter group is the majority. They want all the privileges of high level education without the academic costs classically associated with it. And they can bring in a lot of revenue. It only makes sense to market education to both the academics and, well, the pragmatists.
For our pragmatists who go on to college, it seems clear that attending a four year college in America may be little more than a four year experiment in hedonism. It is true that there will be an occasional class thrown in here and there as a distraction from the endless party, but most students find a way to overcome that distraction.
Perhaps the greatest case to be made against universities is the actual products of the universities in our day.
I give you Bob (named changed because I have some sense of grace). Bob had the misfortune of encountering my wife, a brilliant HR executive for a high tech company here in Bakersfield (yes, they have those). On interrogation, Bob had the audacity to say to my wife that the reason he should make six figures is that "he is from the bay area," and he has "a college degree." Note that this was a 23 year old, fresh out of his humanities degree from the University of the Redlands. To say that my wife showed the pinnacle of restraint in not laughing in the face of The Prince of Entitled Narcissists is to understate the case. Clearly any "Me Monster" (thank you, Brian Regan) from the bay area deserves all that he requires! He is an architect of society! An alpha male! Let us all write our checks in humble obeisance to his brilliance in pushing forward human evolution.
I also give you Jaime (name also changed), whose brilliance at 25 is so profound that she requires a 10k increase immediately. Don't get me wrong. Jamie is a serviceable employee, perhaps even a great employee, but she is easily replaceable. She is one of those alpha women whose life experience does nothing to justify her sense of confident entitlement. She literally told them that if the company did not reward her, then she was going to leave and take her genius to those who would appropriately recognize it. Perhaps she could marry Bob and together they could produce a new generation of divas and douchebags.
I've complained of this elsewhere, but ethically it seems clear that the modern university produces a steady stream of relativists, egoists and sophists. And often one student displays the stunning trifecta of all three. Just pray you don't have to listen to them pontificate about the current political scene, or any political issue for that matter. You will be required to offer deference.
But how on earth can we be surprised that the modern university is doing this when it has become thoroughly secularized and has summarily jettisoned every hint of a Christian or even theistic philosophy in every possible way, including in common discourse in dorms and cafeterias?
There is one place where Zarathustra's prophecy has come true in near universal fashion, and that is the modern university. God is surely dead there!
2 comments:
This is definitely a topic that has weighed on my mind heavily in the recent months, and it has produced much discussion in my senior English class, from college to the existing American educational system as a whole.
I definitely agree on the divide in high schools today. As a student at a school of almost 2,100 students who has participated primarily in GATE/honors/AP classes in high school, I was shocked to arrive at a "CP" class at the beginning of last semester and recognize next to no one in the class, even though almost all of them were seniors too. As the class went on, I realized more and more the extremities to which my educational career had gone compared to theirs. It seems that we have veered in two very different philosophical ideas of education, mine centered on the idea that knowledge is a constant uncovering of Creation and the Creator that can only help me in the long run, and theirs centered on education being merely a means to make money, because sadly, that may be their (perceived) most immediate need. This is not necessarily a fault of theirs (although in some I would say that is the case), there is a rampant dehumanization occurring in the education system that reinforces their mindset, with SAT scores and programs like No Child Left Behind reducing every student to an ID, a test score, or a grade level, instead of evaluating every student as their own person, which is absolutely necessary if one is to learn how to learn in the first place.
As for the college experience, I am not yet at that stage, so it would not be smart for me to observe on something I have never experienced. I do, however, want to comment that I do not believe a formal education system should ever be the only source of intellectual growth. Education is as much a lifestyle choice as personal hygiene or creative expression: constant application in and inspiration from all areas of one's life. An applicable quote was given to me by my English teacher just this week, from psychoanalyst Dr. Smiley Blanton: "A sense of curiosity is nature's original school of education." This curiosity, if fed properly, should extend beyond the classroom, the lecture hall, bleeding into every activity and every attempt to grow in our lives. The pursuit of intelligence, ideally, only begins in the classroom, sprouting beyond into any and all facets of society.
Excellent points, Brian! I'm wondering how much what you say reinforces or undermines the worthiness of formal college education.
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