Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone? The Value of Higher Education
Teaching Nick was the Pitts. I disrupted class frequently and did my homework sporadically. Despite their best efforts, I didn’t give mine. But I would be in the pits were it not for teachers. Their creative persistence eventually tapped into a wellspring of curiosity, which in turn changed my name (Dr.) and my perception of education. They didn’t give up on me but many today are beginning to have doubts about them.
A Harvard researcher predicts that half of all colleges and universities will close or go bankrupt in the next decade. More than 100 for-profit colleges have closed since 2016; 20 nonprofit colleges shuttered during that period.
Many colleges are closing their doors while a growing number of individuals distrust those inside the doors. Similar to my freshman year GPA, there has been a precipitous drop in trust levels. In 2010, 58 percent of Republicans believed that colleges and universities had a positive impact on the course of the country. Today that number sits at 33 percent, with the majority of the drop occurring from 2015 to 2017. In comparison, 67 percent of Democrats and democratic-leaning respondents had positive views of higher education. Overall, 50 percent of U.S. adults said they had positive views of postsecondary education.
As distrust grows, the number of students has dropped. The number of higher education students studying on campus dropped from 18.3 million in 2012 to 17.1 million in 2016. Relative to international students, the foreign student population fell approximately 7 percent last year to roughly 271,000.
After the Great War, J.F. Roxburgh assumed the role of headmaster of the famed Stowe School. He was asked what was his goal of the school. He responded, “to turn out boys who would be acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck.” Today, a growing number of individuals have lost trust in higher education institutions and are turning to the internet to learn dance décorum and survival skills.
Wikipedia may have answers but it doesn’t teach you how to ask questions. In this post-industrial tech economy, disruption abounds. 38 percent of jobs in the U.S. are at high risk of being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence over the next 15 years, according to a PwC report. McKinsey forecasts that up to one-third of workers could see their jobs disrupted within the next twelve years. 50 percent of the activities in the global economy could be automated by adopting existing technology.
Technology will continue to disrupt the workforce, including higher education, but colleges have the propensity to prepare individuals for these proverbial shipwrecks. Jobs specifically train you, the internet informs you, but colleges cognitively form you. As Allan Bloom notes in his book The Closing of the American Mind: “The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.”
In his famous Kenyon College address, David Foster Wallace likened us to fish swimming through a vast ocean of information. He noted: “Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.” He concluded: “It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to... Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”
College inculcates that concentration which helps you to see that disruptions provide opportunities. Some may fear losing their job, but colleges mitigate that fear by preparing you to anticipate future needs. According to John Henry Newman, education is the thread on which received knowledge, jewels of the great tradition, can be strung. Delving into the past has a propensity to prepare you for the future, realizing there is nothing new underneath the sun.
In the biblical narrative, we read about Jesus growing in wisdom and understanding (Luke 2:52). Before Paul went on his missionary journeys, he went away for a few years to study (Galatians 1:17). And Timothy was encouraged to study and show himself approved (2 Timothy 2:15). As Jim Denison notes, the Holy Spirit has a strange affinity for the trained mind.
In his book Engaging God’s World, Corneilus Plantinga Jr. notes that the “point of all learning is to prepare to add one’s own contribution to the supreme reformation project, which is God’s restoration of all things that have been corrupted by evil.” On the college campus, curious students synergistically engage with wise learners. They discuss what has been done in the past and what can be done in the future. Instead of echoing each other in homogeneous cyber silos, the college campus offers individuals the chance to talk with each other. John Milton described this intellectual back and forth as wrestling in a field, asserting that truth has never put asunder.
Teaching Nick was the pits but teachers provided a ladder to get me out of the pit. Now only if I knew how to dance…