by Dr. George A. Pruitt
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Recent polling suggests that public confidence in higher education is at an all-time low. The reasons for this are many: concerns about affordability and attacks from toxic ideologies emanating from both extremes of the political spectrum. Others question the value of a college education in a narrative that goes largely unopposed by the higher education community. College leaders, scholars, and business executives who appreciate the essential role of higher education in preserving our democracy need to break their silence and join voices in clarifying what should and should not be expected from higher education.
I have always objected when political leaders and public figures assert that the reason for going to college is to get a job. They cite data that shows that college graduates, on average, have higher incomes than non-graduates. That is true, but not for the reasons they think. High-capacity people outearn low-capacity people, and higher education is a vehicle for developing high-capacity people. It teaches people self-discipline, self-motivation, how to learn, and how to think critically. It aligns behavior with consequences and accountability. It promotes team building, communication skills, and problem-solving. None of these constitute a ticket to a particular job.
Less than 25% of college graduates in the workforce are in jobs related to their undergraduate major. I majored in biology and minored in chemistry, but I haven’t been in a science lab since I finished my undergraduate degree. Of course, that is different if you are a teacher, nurse, architect, accountant, etc., but for most of us, it’s true. Vocationalizing college marginalizes legitimate and important vocational training that prepares people for highly skilled jobs that often provide higher incomes than college-educated professionals. If you doubt that, you’ll be reminded of it the next time you call a plumber, electrician, or mechanic. It also makes no sense to ask an eighteen-year-old to decide what they are going to do for the rest of their life.
Pundits are quick to point out that incomes increase with educational attainment; however, while they are related, they are not the same thing. The course of your life is a function of the choices you make, but you only have choices if you perceive you do. Education provides access to those choices. It opens your mind to a deeper level of understanding for your environment, the world, and history. It provides exposure to new realities you have no way of appreciating without the empowering effect of an education.
I agree with those who assert that not everyone needs to go to college, but everyone should develop their own unique set of talents and abilities. My neighbor was a wonderful math teacher. She was troubled that her son refused to go to college. He did not like school and insisted that college wasn’t for him. He loved cars. As a teenager, he fixed up cars in their garage to sell them. It was his interest and his passion, and he was good at it. Today he is a service manager of a large car dealership. He is successful and accomplished in his field and has an income far in excess of his math-teacher mother.
In “From Protest to President: A Social Justice Journey Through the Emergence of Adult Education and the Birth of Distance Learning,” I describe what happened at my first job out of college. It was with Illinois Bell Telephone Company, part of the old “Ma Bell” AT&T corporation, at the time, the “Apple” of its day. I had lunch with the vice president for human resources. I asked him why they hired a biology major to work in the management ranks of a global corporate goliath. He told me that aside from the technical people: engineers, accountants, etc., they assumed that no college graduate brings useful content knowledge to the company. What they bring is an enhanced capacity to learn, a broader perspective on society and the world, critical thinking skills, the ability to communicate verbally and in writing, self-discipline, self-motivation, and the ability to be taught. They were looking for people with the intellectual acuity and outlook of an educated person. If they had these attributes, they knew they could teach them what they needed to know to run the company.
I once visited the U.S. Army War College and Colin Powell had just left after lecturing the students. The head of the Chinese armed forces had been there the week before. Most of the students at the War College were colonels who graduated from West Point or Annapolis in engineering or technology on track to become future flag officers. One of my colleagues asked them how well their undergraduate education prepared them for graduate school and their careers in the military. Every one of them expressed a desire for greater exposure to the liberal arts. Their training in the military had given them war-fighting skills but the principal tenets of leadership and effectiveness in the various geographies in which they had to function was dependent upon them understanding things like history, religion, sociology, and anthropology; things they needed to understand to collaborate with the leadership, opinion leaders, and people they were trying to defend.
The success we enjoy as individuals and as a nation does not depend on our vocational ability in any particular job or career. It depends upon the quality of, and development of, the human capital within ourselves and collectively as a society. It is by far our most valuable asset and higher education is the primary vehicle to develop our human capital.
Thomas Jefferson wrote his own epitaph and listed only three achievements. One of them was the founding of the University of Virginia. He left out that he served two terms as the third president of the United States, a fact that gave testimony to his priorities. Jefferson understood that the survival of the democracy is dependent upon its citizens having the intellectual capacity to exercise stewardship over their own government. Something that had never been tried before on this scale.
Jobs and careers come and go, but the empowerment and broader perspective that comes from a quality education benefits us individually and collectively for the entirety of our lives and for future generations.
