Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
What Should Twenty-Somethings Be Doing With Themselves?
I’m particularly thinking of the younger ones, who are still minimally employable and not terribly mature.
A lot of people are realizing that college isn’t a great deal for many (or most) people. But one of the reasons people send their kids to college is because they want them to have a pleasant post-adolescent/early-adulthood transitional experience. I’m not suggesting that colleges do a great job of providing this. Many people spend their college years wasting enormous amounts of time and money while eroding their moral character. Still, in broad terms, you can see how college seems like the right choice to many people. It offers some independence, but also some supervision; it has a natural starting and ending point; professors and counselors and friends will encourage students to spend their years there planning for some productive future to follow. And of course you get a degree (assuming you finish, that is).
One reason undergraduate education is hanging on despite its problems is because people don’t know where else to get those things. And I think it’s a legitimate question. The military is a great option for some, but not everyone is suited to it and the military doesn’t have space for every single 20-year-old anyway. Early marriage is another way to go (though newlyweds still need a livelihood), and I think it would be good if that were more socially acceptable. Realistically though, I don’t think we’re likely to see 21-year-olds racing to the altar anytime in the near future. It isn’t what they or their parents want. They want to feel more established and mature before marriage.
Part of the key to diminishing the influence of higher ed may be recognizing how much people want that type of transitional experience for their kids. They don’t want to get married right away, and they want their post-adolescent years to be challenging without being too punishing. Given that demand, is there another way to meet it that is less ruinously expensive and more productive? Could we turn vocational apprenticeships into more of a college-type experience? Create more service opportunities? Other ideas?
Published in General
What tales of human tragedy are wrapped up in those statistics! The 50% of youngsters inveigled into attending several years of additional schooling and going to institutions that were of no value, not even a degree. Quite apart from the indebtedness thrust upon these young people, could any system have more perfectly been devised to break their spirits?
(From Wikipedia, via Atlantic Monthly, so all bets as to accuracy are off.)
Intense study, as an activity, is not the sole preserve of universities. Learning to weld modern metals or install telephone systems or fix a 21st century engine or qualify to pilot a boat or… all take intense study.
Universities no doubt do useful things. They also do terrible things. They are huge money sinks. But most insidiously they have distorted the entire education system and how the middle class thinks about it.
All right, intense Scholastic study can do good things for people. Those other kinds can too, but not in the same way, and society benefits from having some well-read, articulate and broadly knowledgeable people.
I appreciate the truth of much of what you say, but doesn’t it seem that the solution is really to make universities more intensive and selective? In which case, you would not achieve your goal of educational credentials having no social significance. They would probably have a lot more significance, because they would mean a lot more. Of course that doesn’t require us to disrespect plumbers; social respect is not a rationed commodity. But a thriving society should recognize scholastic achievement for the good that it is, and support and encourage it as appropriate.
Useful at what?
Fifty percent of undergraduates show no improvement whatsoever in their writing or critical thinking skills. Forty percent of graduates are working jobs in which no degree is required.
A group of law graduates sued their law schools for misrepresenting post-graduation employment and wage statistics. They lost, of course, but they lost on the grounds that no reasonable person would trust what a college has to say about the usefulness of the degrees offered.
If 40% of a prison’s inmates were innocent, we’d say something was wrong with the justice system. If 40% of an airline’s planes crashed, we’d say something was wrong with their systems. So why is it that when conservatives think that 40% of college graduates are being cheated, it’s somehow proof of an unthinking animus against the Academy and not a rational complaint against a feather-bedded system?
But intense scholastic study is not required to get good grades and graduate. It should be but it isn’t.
Those who study are studiers by nature. They believe their grades are the result of studying. But that’s only because they’ve never tried not studying.
Now I don’t mean to say that studiers are fools. Studying well is a very good thing. It’s just that college does not make one a studier. Or even weed out the non-studiers.
Right, so fifty percent show no improvement in writing or critical thinking skills. Those people shouldn’t be in college (or in a few cases maybe should be but in a much more rigorous program). What about the other fifty percent?
You want to resist the idea that smart people can have their potential usefully developed by a liberal arts education. I’m very confident that they can and do; I certainly did. I emerged from college with much more drive, much more mental discipline, and a far better work ethic than what I had going in. And a far broader base of knowledge, which helps in all kinds of ways. I don’t think any of my successful, liberally educated friends would say differently.
There’s a reason why advanced societies have always wanted to have a significant core of educated people. They can draw on them in so many different ways. Who else supplies that if not universities? That’s what a university is supposed to be for. Granted, the system is bloated and wasteful and disorganized, especially at the lower rungs. But it’s still doing something important.
Of course something is wrong with the system. Many things! Have I been at all unclear about that?
The question at hand is: if we could torpedo it all tomorrow, would we lose anything valuable? I say yes. A lot of conservatives seem to think not.
Casey, agreed that we need more weeding and more focus to our universities. Send “non-studiers” off to do other valuable and rewarding things, with every good wish for their success! No argument about that at all.
But are you implying that “natural born studiers” would be just as successful without formal education? That I deny.
No, I don’t. I resist the idea that the *only* or *best* way to develop that potential is a liberal arts education, and I resist the idea that a liberal art education *necessarily* develops that potential, and I resist the idea that those people who have turned their potential into success did so *because* of their liberal arts education.
Oh, and I also resist the idea that the average student gets a liberal arts education in the average university BA program.
I don’t think there’s real disagreement here. I think we can all agree that too many people go to college and that there are many other (and should be more) useful and stimulating places to get an education and develop skills. But some people should go to college, which should cost a lot less than it does. We need to develop the skills and abilities of all people because there are so many types of jobs that need to be done in our society. Where’s the beef?
I agree but I’m saying that they don’t have a formal education system available to them.
Instead we have the studiers studying material that is beneath the level of serious study. And on the other hand we have non-studiers dabbling in courses that do require serious study. So we really have a system that, by trying to be all things to all people, is offering nothing at all.
Oh, I think there is real disagreement here, because I think some people are of the opinion that liberal arts study has only marginal value and is not the sort of thing almost anyone should do if they’re young and hoping to be employed.
Geneferi thinks it’s fine if we leave the study of liberal arts to an extremely wealthy and detached elite who will do it on their own dime and apply themselves to self-funded research… in other words, almost nobody should do it, and those who do should gain no particular social benefit from their labors. In this scenario, the liberal arts will have virtually no impact on mainstream society or culture; they will be effectively dead to most people.
Amy, meanwhile, doesn’t go quite as far as saying that liberal arts are absolutely and completely worthless, but pretty near. It’s not the best way to develop potential (anyone’s? that seems to be the view), and for those who succeed after liberal arts study, it had no or minimal causal role in their success beyond the piece of paper it got them.
That’s very significantly different from my view.
Except that some people do still get a pretty decent education at modern universities. Admittedly, the good classes are somewhat obscured. I’ve already said that when I was in college (at Notre Dame, so, a competitive institution that prides itself on high academic standards), I made a project of finding rigorous courses. It was possible and I think the rewards were substantial. But I did have to go out of my way to make it happen, and occasionally drop courses that seemed like they wouldn’t be very good. The people I know who are happiest with the results of their eduction would mostly say the same, I think.
It takes a good bit of initiative to make something worthwhile of your time in university. Most kids haven’t yet realized how or why they should do that.
Rachel said: It takes a good bit of initiative to make something worthwhile of your time in university. Most kids haven’t yet realized how or why they should do that.
Which is why “most kids” shouldn’t be wasting the time and money to go to university.
I overstated a bit there. It is not a universal best way to develop one’s potential. I’m sure for some people it is, like those who didn’t have to pay for it and had no other appealing opportunities they lost because they went.
A liberal arts education certainly shapes the kind of success a hardworking smart person becomes, so it certainly has a role in their success. If you only count being university educated as successful, it becomes a requirement for success.
I have a pharmacist friend who’s making $130K/yr. He’s stated that if he lived in a communist country, where everyone made the same wages regardless of the nature of the job, he’d be a ticket taker at a movie theatre. And he’d be the damn best ticket-taker there ever was, because he’s a smart hardworking person. Success comes from people, not education.
Rachel, I think we can bring peace and harmony between all the folks here by… identifying a common enemy!
The enemy (intending the term very mildly) are the vast number of bureaucrats, coordinators, and research-only professors clogging up the university system. They don’t actually teach, but their salaries are a major proximate cause that jacks up the cost of higher ed. (I say “proximate cause” because the root cause is the third party payer problem.)
If you prefer inanimate objects for enemies, you can also look at all the shiny new amenities and buildings that don’t contribute to actual teaching.
And cost is the major reason we’re on different pages. If the cost of a degree in Philosophy was a $1, most of the disagreement here would evaporate.
It’s probably fair to say that almost anyone who can make a success of a substantial education could have found some other appealing opportunities. Obviously there are questions about how much it should be worth to us in money, but those can’t be answered until we’ve worked out why it is valuable. Certainly many of the liberally-educated successful people I know did take on a substantial burden of debt to get through school, and they definitely don’t all regret it.
We can’t pinpoint the unique value of liberal education if we’re not agreed that it has one. Obviously I think it does, which is completely compatible with recognizing a large number of other ways to live a wonderful, productive and thoroughly admirable life. We all agree here that plumbers are important; we don’t all seem to agree that Shakespeare is.
Mostly agreed, Probable Cause, except that research-oriented professors aren’t *all* lazy louts. To be honest, most professors dream of shedding teaching responsibilities as much as possible. We’ve talked about students who don’t want to learn. How much fun do you think it is to teach them? I’ve dragged many a reluctant and passive-aggressive 18-year-old through a slice of intellectual paradise that he’d just as soon not have seen. Some researchers actually are doing valuable things, possibly more so than those who teach undergraduates.
But the administrators… amen. There are zillions of them, mostly better paid than professors, and even apart from their salaries, I’m convinced that the majority of them detract from education far more than they add to it. Infernal meddlers who make work for themselves so they’ll go on being paid, and in the process muck things up for those who are actually trying to learn or educate.
We can also do without all the fancy new buildings and gyms and snazzy teched-out classrooms. Chalkboards worked fine for me before they put that stuff in.
I have to say that I am grateful that I had the opportunity to study history extensively. I know I am lucky that I was first able to raise children and then able to study what I love, and further lucky that I can now do what I love full time. There was a lot of liberal bias in the history department, but I nevertheless learned a great deal. I couldn’t do what I do now without that education.
I know that scholars produce a lot of unworthy stuff, but everything is like that, isn’t it? A lot of people have to produce work of little value for the work of great value to come forth. And then there’s the stuff of middling value. We could certainly pare back what gets produced, but we need a lot of the scholarly output of our universities. In a way it’s like Ricochet writ large. It’s a conversation about who and what we are. Right now it is somewhat corrupt, I admit, but that has been the catalyst for a lot of valuable work as well. We wouldn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Within legality, hopefully whatever they want. Are we giving up on diversity of thought and endeavor now?
We’re talking about culture, not law. Does loving freedom mean we can’t have substantial discussions about the best ways to live a good and worthwhile life?
I think universities themselves bear a lot of the blame for people not realizing that. Lots of entitlement there. Still, that doesn’t mean we won’t miss them if and when they’re gone.
Clearly, I am too old for this conversation, since I am not twenty-something. Carry on.
They are pretty much gone. Like all institutions colonized by the Left, the tree bears ill fruit. Not even suitable for mulch.
To get back to the original questions – I don’t think we need to create new or different experiences and I don’t think we need to burn down the colleges.
I just think we need a clear understanding of what colleges exist for.
Thrusting kids who don’t know why or how into institutions that don’t know why or how is a recipe for disaster.
Coming to some agreement on the purpose of college will prove to be the most cost-efficient and productive solution.
Perhaps another way to look at it…
Altria used to hold the Philip Morris and Kraft food brands. When they were looking for a boost they did not try to find another product to add to the portfolio. Instead they looked at what they had and said “Does it really make sense to sell both cigarettes and food?” In the end, they spun off Kraft Foods and the cigarette company and the food company can each focus on what they do best.
Perhaps we just have 2 or 3 good college-ish ideas under one roof and each of those areas would be better if they stood alone.
This is going to sound snarky, but I intend it to be 50% as snarky as it will sound: I too dream of shedding my job responsibilities and still getting paid.
Remember Rachel, the value of a college education, the value that you have so vigorously defended, is inextricably bound up with the interaction between a professor and a student. So professors who aren’t teaching are by definition non-contributing overhead.
That said, they may be pulling in grant money or something which covers their activities. In which case they’re not hurting anything.
Obviously you do, because do to otherwise would be to think that you wasted your twenties and are now occasionally employed to help other people waste their twenties.
Your question was not “is a college education valuable?” but “what should young adults do?” My answer is simple — work and live independently. Maybe people lucky enough to not pay Notre Dame’s tuition themselves have the luxury and privilege to actually get a liberal arts education, but those of us who can only afford the local state university on borrowed money don’t. We need practical education that helps us get jobs to pay off said loans, and it only exists in a few specific programs. For anything else, four years of work experience is more valuable and more marketable than a vacation from reality we’ll spend the rest of our lives paying back.
I was discussing the value of college education for students. I never said that providing that was the exclusive purpose of universities. Some research is valuable, and some of the discussion that goes on in academia does bear fruit. Frankly, it’s hard to credit people who categorically declare otherwise, because how are you in a position to know? Are you up on the research being done in dozens of different fields?
People are able to shed their teaching duties when they’ve become fairly important within their field and gained a reputation. That doesn’t necessarily mean they do good and important work. But it may mean that. Not safe to dismiss research-oriented professors as useless.
I’ve already admitted many times that many/most of them are doing exactly that. It’s a little ungenerous to assume that the value I find in my own education and life activities is merely a defensive posture. Obviously among conservatives it’s easy to win applause by admitting that college was a waste of time for you. People do it a lot, including several on this thread. As I’ve already agreed, conservatives have some good reasons to hate academia, so they love hearing about how worthless college is. But it wasn’t. Not for me. You can sneer as much as you like about privilege, but that doesn’t change the intrinsic value of the education itself.
Obviously I understand why you’re fixated on the cost of college, but if it’s worthwhile for people to do it, then it’s worth making it more affordable so that they *can* do it (if they’re the right sort of person) without taking on mountains of debt.