Does College Matter?

This is based on a post originally published by the author in Consider Magazine (http://consideronline.org/) in a point/counterpoint on the necessity of a university education.

These days many prospective students might ask if university is necessary for their success, and might ask if the investment is worth the return.  I believe that the university is a critical institution because of the value that it brings to students, and through them the value it brings to society.  A university education is necessary for young people because of the discipline and structure that a university provides for intellectual development.  This provides the strong foundation on which their future contributions to society are built.

Some of my readers are already chewing on what they imagine my arguments will be, searching for a single counter example to overturn them.  These are easy to find. Let's grab everyone's favorite: Bill Gates.  But of course Gates did go to college; he simply did not graduate.  Michael Dell.  Oops, same story.  Andrew Carnegie!  Never went to college at all.   Success!  University is not necessary!  Alas, if you accept this argument, then a university education is exactly right for you.

Andrew Carnegie did endow a college, which is now a rather good place called Carnegie Mellon University.  If university is not necessary, why did he do such a thing?   Because Carnegie recognized the importance of education, as do Gates, and Dell.  All three have supported higher education broadly, providing significant sums of money and public visibility to the higher education enterprise.

In fact, it is not useful to draw conclusions about the value of higher education from successful entrepreneurs like these.  Carnegie was a singularity, as are Gates and Dell.  They are not like everybody else: they were very lucky, especially in their timing; they were wicked smart; they were hugely ambitious and driven; they were not typical.  I'm sorry, but they are not you.

The question is not, “Can some people be successful in some measure without going to university?”  Of course, some individuals can, and this is a largely irrelevant fact.   The question is, “Can you be maximally successful in truly meaningful ways without going to college?”   The answer for most of you is “No.”

To be successful in meaningful and broad ways – including not only contributions to self but also contributions to society – you need to develop subtle capacities that for most of us are best developed and transmitted through the difficult intellectual work of a college education.  Education is not the accretion of facts but is rather the accumulation of habits of thought. This is what would remain even if you forgot all the facts that you learned.  Education is about the wisdom that you develop as you wrestle with interesting and difficult concepts, and as you learn to apply new modes of reasoning and analysis to complex problems.  Education is about learning to perceive problems, and this is harder than it sounds, for most problems go unseen.   And it is then about learning to then create solutions.  Education is about learning to be creative, acquiring persistence, and developing smart techniques to overcome barriers.  It is about learning to work with others who are very different and learning to understand and even see the value in their different perspectives.

Of course all of these capabilities can be developed without going to university.  But most of us would fail to fully develop them without the stimulation, the environment, and the challenges that the university sets for us both inside and outside the classroom.

The core to the development of these capabilities is the critique on our thinking that a university education provides to each of us.  This uncomfortable but critical critique on our approach to problems is the primary method by which humans improve as learners.  We can of course learn on our own, but most of us are very poor at self-critique.  We are generally overly critical, or insufficiently critical, or self-critical of the wrong things, or simply myopic about our own flawed thinking. 

While we can receive critique from other quarters and in other forms, a university is a space where we voluntarily place ourselves in the hands of professional and sometimes stern critics – professors.  This is a very different quality of critique than we can receive in other venues.  Perhaps we could all go start companies and receive critique from co-workers or investors.  But those critics have many inconsistent motives, and providing feedback is never their primary function; they give feedback only to advance some other agenda, such as protecting an investment or advancing the company plan.  In most contexts critique is a means towards an end other than your improvement, which is then only a potential collateral benefit.  In a university setting, critique is delivered with the primary purpose, and often with the only purpose, of improving the student’s thinking.

University education also provides structure and design.  Exercises and assignments are designed to produce intellectual growth.  On our own we don’t select the right exercises to develop ourselves; we select exercises that are too easy, or too hard, or poorly aligned with the areas we need to develop.  A curriculum is designed to be coherent and broad, rather than immediately or necessarily utilitarian.   While you could challenge yourself intellectually outside the university framework, the tendency would be toward narrowing to some set of perceived essentials that address some immediate needs.  This would be proper and efficient in that extra-university environment.  In contrast, a university forces you to stretch in directions where you might not want to stretch, because the primary goal is to improve your thinking.

There are many discussions these days about how a university education leads to better employment or better pay.  This is true in part because employers use university education as a filter to simplify their selection process, but more importantly it is true because, compared to those who do not partake of university education, graduates have developed stronger creative capacities, a greater ability to implement ideas, stronger intercultural skills, an enhanced ability to successfully communicate more complex ideas, and a deeper understanding of social responsibility.  These capacities have been honed by relentless critique and practice.  Graduates can then bring significant value to solving problems in “the real world.” Employers realize this; society realizes this.

Universities are the unique intellectual space specialized to challenging young people and critiquing their response to that challenge in order to make them more skilled and capable at recognizing and addressing problems.  This brings value to the students as individuals and to society as a whole, and this value proposition far exceeds what could be achieved through other intellectual growth in an environment not actually focused on that growth.

Could some singular individuals contribute greatly to the world without a university education?  Of course.  But the rest of us are not singularities: we are capable individuals with that special human gift: the ability to grow through smart effort molded by useful feedback.  The university is the place where we are directed in that smart effort and receive that feedback.  The university is the place where we grow, and where we learn to continue that growth even after we leave.