The Value of a College Education

Maybe this is too easy. For NPR. But another week and more reportage on National Public Radio about the value of a college education and whether it's worth it. Maybe it's just that I drive once a week and only catch these then; maybe they run similar pieces like this morning's interview everyday. But this is a very important to topic to everyone, and one that is on everyone's mind especially at this time of year. I attended a wonderful commencement ceremony for Lamar Dodd School of Art graduates and their families last night, and the keynote speaker did a great job not mincing words about the job market for new graduates but also explaining his experience making up a career for himself, a job that did not previously exist, and what the new graduates should do to conjure similar routes to happiness and fulfillment for themselves. But before I get to that, this:

This chart, and there are many others like it, must be the context to any conversation on whether college is right for you. It is. And this is only in terms of employment and earnings, versus not going. But the above segment was filled with elliptical phrases like, "... or whether you should try something else." Well just what might some of those things be, Jennifer Ludden?

The analysis becomes especially acute, and not in a good way, when the discussion turns to the long-term consequences of this decision of whether to attend college. The framing is, of course, the prospect of taking on debt, which is valid enough, though by itself much too facile to present as a single guiding principle. But even this framing of value is misguided and incomplete. In the interview following the segment with financial advisor (and Towson University adunct professor) Tim Maurer talks about the accounting students he teaches, that many of them admit to choosing accounting because of job security. "It's hard, not so many people want to do it," he says. He adds that many of his students admit that they don't like accounting, they're just sure that they'll have a job. This itself should be an alarm bell, but it passes as the breathless conventional wisdom it has become.

The obvious, unasked follow-up: but for how long? Is this the prescription for long-term employment, much less fulfillment, that it infers? What will happen to the actual people who make this decision, much less the actual society comprised of them? Isn't this part of the question? Though means are a very important constraint on whether and which college you might attend, the quandary is not about debt alone. Maurer talks about this decision in terms of students 'establishing the whole foundation for their lives, based on job security, today.' He then waxes on the question of how 17-year-olds might make this decision, suggesting they use the value proposition, i.e., gauging how much you're willing to pay for a college education based on how much money that is going to earn you in the future. Later he likens the investment in college to asking what one might get, value-wise, on the experience price we might put on a vacation. He asks what such an experience is worth? But getting back to the first analogy of establishing a foundation for their lives, isn't a college education much more like a marriage than a vacation? It would probably be better to think about the longest committment one might possibly make when considering how you want to invest in your future, if that is the set of rubrics you are going to consider. Though I will admit even this leaves out much that should be part of the discussion.

Which gets me back to the art school ceremony last night. Rob Gibson, creative director of the Savannah Music Festival, told the assembled of his many experiences as a student, as a young salesman and as a young festival producer building the "Jazz from Lincoln Center" series. As he described the many tools that go into lighting one's own path, Gibson noted that he was describing a sense of education that never ends, that must not end. The continual self-education that builds on everything you know, on everything that you have experienced, that is not merely the sum of its parts (or their price) and in truth cannot be arrived at mathematically at all, is the key to a meaningful life. That is why this this such a magical time on campus. The graduates have done something truly amazing - for themselves, their families and their futures. Really for the future. Many of them have even changed the course of the future family members. All this, not to even mention the specific advantages of an art/humanities degree in lighting one's path. But what is all of this worth? Should people go into this decision with a formula to calculate if they will be paid back in full? The question is self-refuting. But the discussion at least deserves a larger, messier context - one that tracks with the life that surely goes with it.