30 October 2011
Do Too Many People Go to College?
I watched an interesting debate on PBS yesterday in which two teams argued whether it was beneficial for over 90% of Americans to carry their education through four years of college in order to obtain a bachelor’s degree. By comparison, many innovative societies in the world make do with a much lower percentage of college graduates, even only ten percent of the population. The winning side in the debate convinced a bare plurality of the audience that it is not worth the cost or enrichment of lifestyles for American individuals to divert four years or more of their lives from earning a living or attaining certification in a specific profession to experience the mind-broadening, socialization, and analytical skills that a liberal arts education is said to offer.
My greatest disappointment in the debate and ensuing discussion came from the absence of consideration for the epidemiological effect of so common an experience as a four-year college education has become in American society. Just as the near universality of polio and smallpox inoculations makes those diseases near extinct, the broad exposure of Americans to a level of discourse and analysis that characterizes even the least elite of four-year colleges must raise the amount of critical thinking that goes into every decision made by the society’s members to pursue or support changes in living, the arts, and production. That is the reason that so many educated members of other countries find it most fulfilling to pull up their stakes and come to an American society where their skills and ambitions can thrive in a fertile intellectual environment.
The external economy of college’s wide commonality places a costly burden on Americans buying their membership in that intellectually rich community. Perhaps the judgment can be made that the public benefit of a high general level of critical thinking merits devotion of a greater portion of tax revenues to the subsidization of college tuition and other expenses. To be fair, therefore, it may become necessary to charge immigrants for the cost of having created such an inviting field for them to pursue their dreams.
I watched an interesting debate on PBS yesterday in which two teams argued whether it was beneficial for over 90% of Americans to carry their education through four years of college in order to obtain a bachelor’s degree. By comparison, many innovative societies in the world make do with a much lower percentage of college graduates, even only ten percent of the population. The winning side in the debate convinced a bare plurality of the audience that it is not worth the cost or enrichment of lifestyles for American individuals to divert four years or more of their lives from earning a living or attaining certification in a specific profession to experience the mind-broadening, socialization, and analytical skills that a liberal arts education is said to offer.
My greatest disappointment in the debate and ensuing discussion came from the absence of consideration for the epidemiological effect of so common an experience as a four-year college education has become in American society. Just as the near universality of polio and smallpox inoculations makes those diseases near extinct, the broad exposure of Americans to a level of discourse and analysis that characterizes even the least elite of four-year colleges must raise the amount of critical thinking that goes into every decision made by the society’s members to pursue or support changes in living, the arts, and production. That is the reason that so many educated members of other countries find it most fulfilling to pull up their stakes and come to an American society where their skills and ambitions can thrive in a fertile intellectual environment.
The external economy of college’s wide commonality places a costly burden on Americans buying their membership in that intellectually rich community. Perhaps the judgment can be made that the public benefit of a high general level of critical thinking merits devotion of a greater portion of tax revenues to the subsidization of college tuition and other expenses. To be fair, therefore, it may become necessary to charge immigrants for the cost of having created such an inviting field for them to pursue their dreams.
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