Live Generously

First things first…Christie and I are sitting at Pier View Coffee in Oceanside, and it is absolutely beautiful today.

As I was driving here I listened to an interesting NPR Talk of the Nation Opinion Page piece. It was an interview with a career counselor who had just written an op-ed piece for The Chronicle for Higher Education essentially alleging that college degrees are a waste of money.

This story was of particular interest to me, given that I am currently a college pastor at my church, where I interact with a whole lot of students that are trying to figure out their academic future.  There isn’t a major university nearby, so nearly all of the college students involved in our ministry attend community colleges.  I myself never attended a community college, but instead went straight to a four-year school.  It was always assumed, growing up, that I would do just that.  The thought of not going to college was never seriously considered, and I played the standard pre-college game of taking AP classes, taking the SAT (and SAT II), and applying to the best schools that I thought I had a shot of getting in to.  Alternatives were never even discussed between my parents and I.  Honestly, I wasn’t interested in any sort of alternative. I am wondering if perhaps my lack of interest in an alternative was more culturally conditioned than anything else.  That thought is validated that next year my brother, who performed similarly to me academically in high school and has been accepted to a top 50 national university, will not be attending college (though he plans to eventually).  Even within my own family, the culture is changing, at that may be a good thing. In talking with students today, I frequently encourage them to continue on in their educational pursuits (and will continue to do that, for good reason in my opinion, even after hearing this story), but I am realizing more and more that the “answer” isn’t just education, but rather it is engagement with one’s passions.

I remain, now a few years out of college and a few years into graduate school, an advocate for higher education. I believe that a college education is valuable, and I look back on my time in college as one where I matured intellectually, socially, emotionally, spiritually, and in many other ways.  That being said, being removed has allowed me to reflect more critically on my college experience.  In reality, many of the classes that I took were, frankly, useless.  Many of my professors were indifferent.  In fact, I cannot name a single class that I took in college that tangibly helps me in the performance of my job (though, to be fair, I don’t think UCLA prides itself on preparing people for careers in Christian ministry ;-)). This has allowed me to question not the value of higher education, but instead the way that we approach higher education in this country. I bears mentioning, however, that I fully recognize I could have made choices that would have made my undergraduate educational experience more profitable.

Given my own struggles with this topic, I found Marty Nemko’s article America’s Most Overrated Product: The Bachelor’s Degree to be fascinating (especially since Marty is a career coach). Nemko argues that too often students who underachieved in high school end up going to college and dropping out.  In fact, he cites a statistic that says that over 2/3 of students in the bottom 40% of their high school class that go straight to four year colleges are without a college degree (and saddled with massive debt and a bruised ego) a full eight and a half years later.  Yikes.  To go along with that, I recently read a statistic that said 86% of students that enroll in community colleges drop out.  86%! Furthermore, half of those that make it out of community college drop out before they finish their degree.  That means that only 7% of those who enroll in community colleges get bachelor’s degrees.  Those, in my view, are staggering statistics.

Nemko goes on to say that even for those who complete their degrees, success is hardly guaranteed.  The off shoring and automation of jobs is making the job market scarce, often requiring people with college degrees to take jobs they could have taken with high school diplomas.  Colleges, however, are quick to cite a few different things: 1) There are plenty of statistics that indicate that people with college degrees make more money over the course of their lives than non-graduates.  Nemko argues that such a difference is made because people with college degrees are simply more self-motivated.  He says you could lock those people in a closet for four years and they would still, on average, make more money than the individuals they are being compared to. 2) College education isn’t about employment advantage.  It is about enlightenment and learning how to think.  To this, Nemko responds:

Colleges are quick to argue that a college education is more about enlightenment than employment. That may be the biggest deception of all. Often there is a Grand Canyon of difference between the reality and what higher-education institutions, especially research ones, tout in their viewbooks and on their Web sites. Colleges and universities are businesses, and students are a cost item, while research is a profit center. As a result, many institutions tend to educate students in the cheapest way possible: large lecture classes, with necessary small classes staffed by rock-bottom-cost graduate students…That’s not to say that professor-taught classes are so worthwhile. The more prestigious the institution, the more likely that faculty members are hired and promoted much more for their research than for their teaching. Professors who bring in big research dollars are almost always rewarded more highly than a fine teacher who doesn’t bring in the research bucks. Ernest L. Boyer, the late president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, used to say that winning the campus teaching award was the kiss of death when it came to tenure. So, no surprise, in the latest annual national survey of freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, 44.6 percent said they were not satisfied with the quality of instruction they received. Imagine if that many people were dissatisfied with a brand of car: It would quickly go off the market. Colleges should be held to a much higher standard, as a higher education costs so much more, requires years of time, and has so much potential impact on your life.

Nemko raises a number of good points, and they are points that those who market higher education ought to be forced to address.  The reality is that if students aren’t careful (like I, to be honest, wasn’t) they will find that even if they graduate from college they will do so having learned very few actual skills along the way.

I am very open to the idea that perhaps college isn’t the answer for everyone.  That being said, the problem isn’t a lack of interest in education, I believe the problem is a lack of motivation in general. I suppose in many cases college seems like a logical option for young people simply because if they aren’t in school they will probably just take a dead end job and fail to apply themselves to anything substantive.  In other words, college may not be great, but it beats the alternatives.  This is a big problem.  On one level, universities ought to be held to a higher standard that cuts down on the number of ‘defective products’ they produce. That, in my view, is the ultimate answer. On another level, perhaps we as Americans need to broaden our collective imaginations such that we can get more creative about pursuing lives that actually make a difference in the world.  As Nemko cites, there are plenty of people that have quite literally revolutionized the world who lacked a college education.  I suppose my fear is that too many younger people will be inclined to read Nemko’s article, use it as an excuse to stop pursuing an education, and rather than using their new found freedom to pursue excellence, they will settle for mediocrity.  Again, there are big problems with higher education, but the problem is able to persist because of our own lack of creativity as a society that leads us to send smart kids to school, and allow the not so smart ones to wallow in mediocrity. I suppose the biggest piece of advice I give to our students should be more directed at awakening their passions and making their lives something that add value to society.  Maybe that means college, maybe it doesn’t.