What's college for?

Since we've been talking about colleges and universities over the past few weeks, I've been meaning to write a bit on this notion of the liberal arts education. We had this one fascinating discussion in class a week or so ago about the McUniversity. That conversation is going to stay with me for some time. What struck me was the way that the class was so shocked about the McDegree. And yet, given the career-minded focus of most college students today...why would a McDegree not make sense?

There was something I read recently that said that something like 70% of college students consider career preparation to be among the most important reasons for their decision to go to college. This number was up, I think, from maybe somewhere in the 30% range in the 1980s. There are a few things I want to say about this. First, if I was consuming a product valued at $35,000 per year, I would probably want to make sure that what I was consuming was going to help me get a job when I graduated as well. $35,000 x 4 = $140,000. That's an insane amount of money to pay for a college education.

So, in some ways, I can't blame college students for their singular, career-minded focus. At RWU, I notice this especially--with all the "construction management," "justice studies," and "architecture" students. These are all very practical and pragmatic programs of study, as is, say "education" or "teacher training" and we've got a couple of those students in our class as well. They're all good students.

Having said this, what I think is amazing is that some students don't know or can't imagine college or the university as existing for any other reason than career preparation. This is the sort of strange thing. They've been hearing for so long that you go to college to prepare for a career that they're like those horses w/blinders that you see in cities that pull the carriages--they are incapable of seeing the university as having any other purpose than preparing them for work.

There are two things to say about this. First, it's sad that we have taught our young people that colleges exist for them. Yes, part of what colleges/universities do is educate students. But they have a larger mission--to foster discussion, to create debate, to further knowledge, to provide a service to the community, state, nation, to provide a social good to the society and, hopefully, to create opportunities for groups of people who might not otherwise have had opportunities and who have been restricted from a college education in the past. And these purposes have little to do with individual students who come to colleges and universities expecting to get trained to become an architect or teacher or...whatever. If students don't understand this, and I'm not sure I understood it when I was an undergraduate, we have no one but ourselves to blame.

Still, right here at RWU, we've got important work going on that has nothing to do with career preparation. We've brought an Iraqi teacher over and we're providing him with a place to work while he pursues a doctorate (at Brown). We have labs and facilities that conduct marine research, given our unique location and the accessibility of the ocean. We have featured speakers galore...all these interesting people coming to campus to talk about their experiences and the world. We have a group of Afghan students to whom we've given scholarships so that they can obtain a college degree--a virtual impossibility in their home country. The mission of the university, of this university, RWU, is so much LARGER than what students imagine it to be. Too many students see the university as a place that exists to service their needs. Somehow, I think we've got to do a better job helping them see that colleges and universities are about a lot more than just job training. Again, I don't necessarily blame students for their ignorance. We, professors, administrators, must finds ways to make discussions about the mission of universities and colleges more clear to students so that they don't just think of this place as...something very small, selfish, and limiting.

Second. The focus on job training obscures something else that should, I think, be taking place on a college campuses: learning for the sake of learning. Ideas for the sake of ideas. Discussion for the sake of discussion. For so many students, they want to know how they're going to "apply" what they are learning. Well, on one level, I can't blame them. Students are always wondering about this--not just in college. They want to know: what is this good for, this thing you're asking me to learn. Why should I learn it? What am I going to need it for?

These are important questions--but the thing is, it's hard to explain why everything you are asked to learn you are going to "need." I remember being frustated, as a student, when taking classes that didn't interest me. I remember that same feeling: why do I need to know this? It's an important question for teachers and professors to keep front-and-center. Too often, teachers just drag students through material and/or information without conveying why they are doing it. Sometimes teachers are charged with teaching "intro" courses in which they must teach a large body of "background" material to students who are newcomers to a discpline, in which case they have no choice but to do their best and "cover" as much as possible.

So, perhaps students have a right to demand to know why they are learning something. IN fact, I think they do have a right to demand to know. And teachers have an obligation, I think, to try to convey why learning something is important.

But I guess what I'm getting at is that that thing you're learning may not have an applicability to your life...tomorrow, or the next day...or ever.

And I want to argue that that's okay. That not everything we learn needs to have an immediate application. That that's not what education is for or should be for.

And besides, there is the ludicrousness of setting up a system in which you educate people in a discipline or subject area in which they "think" they have interest, but at 18, having never worked in the field that the discipline leads to...how do they know? And given how fast workplaces change these days, and how much workplace training the average worker experiences over the course of his lifetime...well, this is just another argument against setting up college as "career preparation."

In the end, I get discouraged sometimes by students' lack of curiosity about the world. How is this going to help me become a... (fill in the blank)? That's what so many want to know. Well. Fine. But what questions do you have? And what should you know as a citizen--not as a worker. What should you know in order to participate effectively in this democracy in which we all live? We rarely frame our discussions of what college is for in terms of educating "citizens." And what about just a person? What about students' emotional and psychological growth? Students want to talk about future workplaces and teachers, I suppose, want to talk about their academic disciplines. What I want to know is--what are you curious about? And where can we go from there?

Sorry this was so long...as you see, I got on a bit of a roll here!

mm