I’ve presented a number of views related to the Education Bubble, views which (as a chorus) present arguments that the secondary education industry is a economic bubble, that Colleges are fundamentally so corrupt (as a system) that there is a desperate need to work on finding worthwhile replacements for the beloved baccalaureate degree, and other bah humbug views of the status quo on college campuses.
In the spirit of fairness, I have a couple articles worth reading which present perspectives, and viewpoints supporting the value of a liberal arts education. Since there is so little of this stuff (i.e. views proselytizing the value4 of a liberal arts degree) out there, I suggest that readers who have all possible viewpoints on this topic read these links…it may help.
The Value of a Humanities Degree: Six Students’ Views
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Value-of-a-Humanities/127758
Amid the clamor this past year surrounding the crisis in the humanities, the voices of two groups—colleges and professors—have dominated the debate. Some say the humanities are saving students; others say humanities students are wasting their time and money on their degrees. Only occasionally mentioned in those arguments are the students themselves.
Alex Romanczuk, major in comparative literature and mathematics: I’ve derived no tangible benefits from my study of comparative literature. I have no intention of pursuing a graduate degree in the subject, and no employer will ever hire me because of my knowledge of early 20th-century German poetry. Hegel’s dialectic won’t feed a hungry child, and pretending to understand Finnegans Wake won’t somehow give me the moral power to stop the evil scientists from unleashing their killer robots. To think so is dangerous, incorrect, and insulting. A comp-lit degree is really quite useless, which is exactly what I find so appealing.
Literature is beautiful, and even if it is nothing more, I study literature because of an insatiable desire to expose myself to beauty. I enjoy the moments of stillness that that beauty induces. I enjoy listening to myself in those moments.
Is dedicating 65 units of my Stanford career to cultivating stillness an arrogant, privileged, and irresponsible thing to do? Maybe. But it sure makes it easier to do those problem sets. You give to society what you gather in solitude. I’ve never understood why there’s a tension between those who study useful things and those who study beautiful things. We can and should study both.
Karmia Cao, English major with a concentration in creative writing: The week I declared my major in creative writing, an old friend told me that she had purchased a gift for me: a button pin that reads, "I majored in English. Would you like some fries with that?"
Yet I have found creative writing to be a sanctuary in the humanities, an observatory of the human conscious. In my studies the objectives are not, as the pin from my friend suggests, viewing the world with hypercritical eyes, affect a petty-witty or inaccessible style, or brace oneself for a life of mismatched, unsatisfactory careers. I am a student of the humanities because I stand by what G.K. Chesterton foresaw as the "cult of progress," in which misguided societies stumble down a dangerously futuristic road while wearing blinders that exclude a vision for self-knowledge, ethics, history, cultural understanding, and the excavation of the resource-rich human mind. Though I admit that not having a formulaic, secure career trajectory can be daunting, I am also reminded that the science of "the more"—more convenience, more speed—is hollow and hollowing without cognizance and interpretation. What we do springs forth from who we are.
I study the humanities to become a cartographer of histories, a physician of social inequity, and a rocketeer of cultural fluidity. To stand truly independent and informed. And if I succeed, I will leave that button on my mantelpiece. And ketchup beside.
Professor: Value Of College Extends Beyond Paycheck
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/11/137093258/professor-value-of-college-extends-beyond-paycheck?sc=tw&ft=1&f=1001
Many American families are asking whether sending their children to college is worth it if they end up in jobs that pay less than the cost of tuition.
Mike Rose, a professor of education at UCLA, says it makes complete sense for people to be concerned about the economic benefits of college.
"We respond to the threat that’s most imminent, right?" Rose tells Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon.
But, he says, there are many other reasons to get a college education.
Rose, the author of Why School? and other books, cites the idea of intellectual growth — "not just learning things to make a living, but also learning things to enable you to do things with your life, to enable you to find interests and pursuits that may in some way or another expand the way we see things."
There are also social benefits, he says: learning to think together, learning to attack problems together, learning how to disagree.
"One of the great things about bringing so many people together in this common space," he says, "is that you’re almost forced to have to deal with and encounter people who see the world in a very different way from your own, ways that you maybe never even thought of."
Rose points to the Jeffersonian ideal that having a functioning democracy requires having an educated citizenry. The concept may be difficult to appreciate when one is working as a barista, he says, but that might be exactly the time when a person should be thinking about it.
"You know, to be able to think about our economic situation in some kind of an analytical and sophisticated way is not something that comes easy," he says, "and I think it does come with study."
Rose says that if we preach only the economic payoff of education, we affect what and how we teach.
"It ends up affecting the way we define what it means to be educated," he says. "That’s pretty important stuff to be thinking about in a free society."
