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In Support of a Four-Year College/University Experience
Keith Greiner
August 9, 2020
This essay is in support of a four-year college experience and the degree that represents that experience. It is motivated by the 2019 political environment that attempts to devalue education, science, and diversity. It responds to the occasional essay that suggests a four-year degree is no longer relevant, or that someone with a four-year college education will not be as economically successful as expected. This is my sense of the topic on the day this is written. By tomorrow, the words will change, but the sense will be similar.
Every great work of art and every great invention comes from two components.
The first component is the highly technical skill needed to apply brush strokes to a canvas, or to fabricate the parts needed to build an engine, or write the code that makes a program work. Such technical skills, to me, are not vocational skills, but rather is an important technical skills needed to translate creative ideas into real things. Every person needs to have those technical skills.
The second component is more difficult to define. It is that thing that makes us more fully engaged and alive: it is what makes an individual a whole person. It is a philosophical, moral, overview: the visionary background that informs and inspires everything we do and everything we are. It is the essence that elevates an individual to a new, higher level of existence. This second component is as omni-present as the air we breath, and yet is so elusive and so hard to define it cannot be fully quantified. It is a feeling or a nonverbal sense that informs all that we are. It is a sense of identity that informs everything we do. It is the context makes the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel so amazingly different from the scratch marks on a prehistoric cave, while knowing how and why the difference matters. It is the insight that knows when and how a story compares and contrasts with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and how the many themes from Shakespeare’s works inform 21st Century life. It is the knowledge that the engineering design of an electronic musical keyboard needs to allow for pressure sensitivity. It is the recognition that people from both sexes, and the many world cultures and religions, all have contributions to make. It is a lifelong inquisitiveness that informs, enhances and inspires a quality of life beyond the technical. It requires the technical but goes well beyond the technical. It is the tip of Mazlow's pyramid. It is all these things and so much more.
People can certainly experience an elevated life and have many insights into life without possessing a college degree. Many have. However, the well-organized four-year higher education experience can prepare a person faster and more completely while meeting specific goals for a well-balanced, well-developed person.
Over the four years of a traditional degree program, the technical and whole person get all mixed up together as the person becomes a well-rounded, well-informed, and well-formed citizen. As I see it, the mixing and growing process takes time: aging like a fine wine over a period of time. If the experience is rushed by, say a three-year bachelor’s degree, or even if the person takes the majority of his/her college classes during high school, then the person has less opportunity to fully incorporate the liberal/general college/university opportunities that are available at a good quality college or university. Some people are actually able to let the mixing and growth take much longer by staying around the college/university longer than the standard four years – maybe while working on an advanced degree and maybe not. Others extend the process by taking a few courses at a time while working full-time and supporting a family. I have seen face-to-face in adult learning programs and may take many years to complete their studies. At a college completion banquet for these people it is not uncommon for a person to reflect that he/she started by seeking just the certification of college, but grew into something much more while becoming a more whole person. Still others are retired senior citizens who take advantage of special non-credit programs that are sometimes offered at traditional colleges/universities. This group often reports the amazing growth opportunities that come from such wonderful programs for seniors.
Of course, the technical component is important. We all need some skills that are directly applicable to a job. The artist, of course, needs to know how to shape the paint strokes on the canvas. Leonardo da Vinci and other artists of his period also needed to know something about the chemistry of paint (in the context of what chemistry was in their day) because they needed to make their own paints. Such is the need for technical skills, and the value of community college programs that focus on those skills. And when the technical skills are combined with the moral, philosophical, we have the whole person. We see that in amazing artists and innovators that are known to all. But it is not limited to iconic people. For those who go looking, the influence of a college experience can be seen in friends and neighbors: many of whom have an astounding sense of the world because of the combination of the breadth and depth of their higher education experience.
And that is what a well-designed four-year college/university experience should provide. It is what should be provided in a liberal arts or general education component of any degree program. It doesn't guarantee a job, but it can give the graduate a big step forward.
As I have suggested to students of management, the practice of management requires that there is something to manage. If there is nothing to manage, then what's the point? A liberal/general college education that allows a person to better connect with the subject to be managed is very important. More importantly, the liberal/general education that helps a person to turn her/his mind in any direction is perhaps the most important single outcome of any education.
The person who uses the college experience to blend both a marketable skill and that extra elusive whole person component, can reap many benefits that include:
The economic benefits, of course, are not universal. Some have lower lifetime earnings (The idea of lower earnings makes me think of government and private non-profit college employees.) Those for whom the promise of a better life and greater income did not develop, may find their situation frustrating. However, if their college years were well used, they have a worldview context that allows a broader, and hopefully more satisfying of the world. Their educational experience should, I hope, provide some consolation for them.
One thing that is most definitely true is that the person who used his/her college/university time wisely will reap a lifetime of quantifiable and non-quantifiable benefits. Among those are the outcomes described by the Yale University faculty who suggested that a college education should create a mind capable of turning in any direction as it helped the learner learn to:
And the wording of Pascarella and Trernzini who added that higher education should:
And now, in the context of the Trump-world, we need to add that a college education should help people learn to...
Of course, in today’s world we also have to consider the cost of the college/university experience. The creation of federal student grants and loans made it possible for millions of Americans to gain access to the college experience both for technical and for personal growth. That access also made it possible for more people to have elevated income, which caused them to pay more taxes, which in turn, provided needed services that improve the quality of life in the United States.
Unfortunately, the U. S. government legislative and executive branches have had a long-term policy that the cost of the college and university experience is to be paid for via personal, individual debt rather than grants. Grants to individuals and colleges/universities are better, because the entire society benefits from an educated population. Such grants are an investment in the growth and development of the society.
However, the current policy is not likely to change any time soon. The Trump administration appears to be on a track that would make it even more difficult for moderate and low-income families to afford quality higher education. That will continue to cause people forget the personal growth and development part of the experience, and focus only on the economic return on investment. That’s when those very important liberal arts and sciences, and pure research get tossed aside (as we have seen) in favor of narrow vocational skills.
The country needs an educated population. The country needs the liberal arts and sciences and the pure research of people who follow scientific questions in whatever directions they lead.
So my advice to individuals continues to be to try to get breadth and depth of education, while limiting personal debt so the payments are no more than about 8% of post-graduation income. Colleges need to continue to find strategies for this to be possible for all degree programs. Employers need to continue to recognize the value of a well-rounded postsecondary education. With the help of colleges/universities students need to seek strategies that will make college/university affordable. But always, keep your eye on the prize: the broad scope of a liberating, liberal education with enough vocation to be able to pay the bills and support a family. At the same time, people need to pressure elected officials for improved, greater support for all education including higher education.
References:
Pascarella, Ernest T., & Terenzini, Patrick T. (1991). How college affects students: Findings and insights from twenty years of research. San Francisco, CA:, Jossey-Bass.
Yale Faculty Report of 1828. See: http://www.higher-ed.org/resources/Yale/1828_curriculum.pdf.