College: more than a credential
College is like the mythical Scottish village of Brigadoon. It comes alive in a fleeting, magical way for entering freshmen and vanishes into the mists roughly four years later when the caps and gowns are returned and only memories and debt remain.
Oh sure, faculty and staff work at colleges year in and year out. Perennial students can be found there, too, along with buskers, landlords, and shopkeepers. But college is mostly about young people coming of age, grappling with new ideas, learning useful skills, and networking with contemporaries who may always be friends (and may also end up knowing something they can hold over you for the rest of your life).
Colleges are the membrane through which the accumulated knowledge of humanity is transmitted from one generation to the next, along with hacky sack, foosball, and frisbee. The process works best via a professor, a teaching assistant, a set of books, and a series of lab experiments. But some of the transfer inevitably occurs via CliffsNotes, last-minute cramming, and late-night talkathons. When a bachelor鈥檚 degree is awarded, the transaction is more or less complete 鈥� which is good but may not be enough anymore to make it in the job market.
In a Monitor cover story, Lee Lawrence looks into the worth of a bachelor鈥檚 degree. Where once a bachelor鈥檚 could open doors, it has become so commonplace that it might not be enough to land a job. On the one hand, graduate-degree holders may have a leg up; on the other hand, vocational skills alone may be a surer way to a paycheck. But while a bachelor鈥檚 may have become devalued, it is a minimal requirement in most jobs, a steppingstone to graduate credentials, and crucial for that little matter of civilization.
Columbia University professor Andrew Delbanco, in a new book titled 鈥淐ollege: What It Was, Is, and Should Be,鈥� points out that students 鈥渉ave always been searching for purpose. They have always been unsure of their gifts and goals, and susceptible to the demands ... of their parents and of the abstraction we call 鈥榯he market.鈥� 鈥� He cites Harriet Beecher Stowe鈥檚 1871 description of a man entering college when everything was 鈥渄istant, golden, indefinite, and I was sure I was good for almost anything that could be named.鈥� But he soon began to wonder about 鈥渁ll the pains and money鈥� expended on his education.
And yet almost everyone who emerges from college is equipped with the modicum of critical thinking necessary to participate in a democracy and to appreciate life more fully. 鈥淎nyone who earns a BA from a reputable college,鈥� Professor Delbanco says, 鈥渙ught to
聽understand something about the genealogy of ... ideas and practices, about the historical processes from which they have emerged, the tragic cost when societies fail to defend them, and about alternative ideas both within the Western tradition and outside it.鈥�
I鈥檝e found myself on campuses in Cairo, Moscow, and Baghdad. I鈥檝e seen the western sun paint gold the university buildings on Jerusalem鈥檚 Mount Scopus, walked along the scholar-scuffed halls of Magdalen College at England鈥檚 Oxford University, and felt the same ephemeral magic in Lubbock, Texas; Amherst, Mass.; and midtown Manhattan. A degree is only part of what a student takes from these places. The rest 鈥� the appreciation of the past, the enrichment of literature, the windows opened in a thousand minds 鈥� that is what a BA means, too.
John Yemma is editor of 海角大神. Email: editor@csmonitor.com.
