Travel back through the mists of time to the year I was to start college with the smugness only a clueless 17-year-old can display.
My English teacher during my senior year in high school was superb. He covered works from Beowulf to Shakespeare and on to American writers, including Mark Twain and William Faulkner. Since Mr. Tate had taught me everything I thought a girl needed to know, I secretly believed there was no need for me to attend college. I would condescend to go, however, because I knew my parents would be upset if I did not.
All these years later, I am profoundly grateful that my parents prevailed over my young and foolish heart.
That is why I am so troubled by the results of a Gallup/Lumina Foundation poll released earlier this month. It found that only 36 percent of Americans express significant confidence in higher education. Less than 10 years ago, 57 percent expressed confidence. These findings crossed demographic lines including age, gender, and political affiliations, although Democrats and independents voiced more confidence than Republicans. The bottom line is that more than two-thirds of survey respondents, 67 percent, say that higher education is moving in the “wrong direction.”
Without question, there are problems in American higher education.
It is very expensive, even the public institutions, and many students emerge shackled by debt.
Many colleges and universities struggle with curricula, with some traditional subject areas losing student interest as newer fields of study emerge. In this era of polarizing political positions, colleges face darned-if-you-do and darned-if-you-don’t teach certain subjects in certain ways. In addition, many Americans have come to see college as not so much a way to become “educated” in the traditional sense but a way to get a job. As one Connecticut resident told the Associated Press about a recent high school graduate planning to go to welding school, “You graduate out of college, you’re up to your eyeballs in debt, you can’t get a job, then you can’t pay it off. What’s the point?”
Higher education is about getting a job — perhaps many jobs over a lifetime, but it is not a trade school that makes one immediately employable in a specific field such as welding. It is about understanding the world around us now and how the world got to be the way it is. It is about reading widely both for concrete information and to find knowledge and beauty in both natural and human creations. It is about understanding what has come before us so that we can emulate the positives of the past and avoid its pitfalls.
Perhaps because of Mr. Tate, I was an English major in college and later did graduate work in what is now called Communications. I did get jobs for which I was “prepared,” though not actually “trained” to execute right out of the gate. All along the way, my college education has provided the tools to understand much of the world around me and why change is always occurring. It has enriched my life immeasurably through reading and exposure to different arts and different cultures.
My parents were right. Despite obstacles, some built-in and some temporary, higher education is worth it. The poet Mary Oliver famously asked this question. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Higher education can help us answer life’s most fundamental question.