“Why do you want to go to college?”
“To get a job.”
This conversation, of which I’ve been a part well over a thousand times with my college counseling clients, is exactly backward. Indeed, the reason to go to college, the only reason to go to college, has always been because–wait for it–you don’t need a job in the first place.
Before the Second World War, Harvard admitted two out of three applicants. This year, their admit ratio dropped from 6.9% down to 6.1%. About one in 16 win the lottery. In the competitive admissions cycle of today, applicants to Harvard write a composition of some 500 words for the common application as well as a shorter “significant activity” essay. Then there are supplemental essays.
Two generations ago, the entire Harvard application was only one question: “Does your father own land?”
Because if he did, Sonny was welcome to attend Harvard and to study philosophy, rhetoric, Greek, Latin, and other practical subjects.
“Honey wake up! I know it’s two o’clock in the morning but we have to call our philosopher!”
The purpose of college was the exact opposite of finding employment. The very act of going to college–liberal arts colleges anyway–defined students as people who didn’t need jobs.
Jobs were for the working class. People who studied business, as opposed to liberal arts, needed to support themselves and their families. Why did they need to work to support themselves? Because their fathers didn’t own land. Money was a taboo subject, never discussed. “How much are the pork chops?” “Lady, if you have to ask, you can’t afford them.”
Don’t believe me? You think that people went to college to get skills to make a living? Then answer this question: How many Ivy League schools in 2011 offer an undergraduate business major?*
Do you want fries with that?
We all know that kid who has an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Swarthmore–heck, for the purposes of this essay, let’s give her a PhD in art history from Princeton– who can’t get a job. “What are you going to do, teach?” is the equivalent of “Gee, for a fat girl, you don’t sweat much.” This question attacks the value of undergraduate education and undergraduates themselves and is offensive and demeaning at the same time. I’m a teacher, my wife is a teacher, my mom is a teacher, my mother-in-law is a teacher. We do OK.
Aristotle was asked by a student what he would profit from learning. “He wants something for his learning,” the teacher repeated. “Give him a penny.” A scant 2300 years later, the conversation hasn’t changed.
“But we spent $250,000 dollars on Skidmore,” parents of a recent Saratoga Springs grad lament. “And she’s trying to find a job that pays 12 dollars an hour.” At that rate it will take her just over ten years to earn back the cost of her education. If she lives at home. And never buys another ap.
With the same quarter of a million dollars, here’s what you could have done instead of “buying” a liberal arts education: You could have invested in a year of instruction in plumbing or another technical trade. Your daughter cold be a skilled plumber and have a completely outfitted truck completely paid for.
I had a plumber here the other day. He was here for nine minutes. I wrote him a check for $230. Well worth it.
The purpose of a liberal arts undergraduate experience involves thinking about the questions that have engaged us these past few millennia. Neither Nero, Nietschze nor Nash (Ogden or Graham) is part of the plumbing curriculum. We need to wake up and smell the pipes: Plumbing is where the money is. College is where the value is.
The worth of an undergraduate liberal arts education can be valued but can not be measured. There is no Emotional Return on Investment.
* Answer: Only one Ivy League School offers an undergraduate business major: The University of Pennsylvania. The closest Dartmouth and Brown come to anything that could be mistaken as practical is a four year degree in economics. Neither one even has a finance degree.
