Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
May 19th, 2021
College is very expensive: on average, it costs $25,000 per year for public and $41,000 per year for private schools. Is it worth it?
When we ask the question of whether something is worth the sacrifices we have made for its sake, we are addressing its value in our lives. OK, but whose lives?
Is the neo-liberal university worth it to the ever expanding ranks of academia's permanent underclass? Three quarters of "professors" in higher education are underpaid and overworked adjuncts. Is their lack of health insurance, job security, or meaningful opportunity for advancement worth it?
Is it worth it to the working class scholarship students, who suddenly find themselves in a culture where their habits of being are alien and unacceptable? Too often they find that they need to conform to the mores of their supposed superiors if they are to have any chance of succeeding on terms that might then put them at odds with the communities who sent them there in the first place.
Is it worth it to the middle class parents who by and large are stuck with the astronomical bills? Let us consider some of those costs. There are the kids they wanted to have but didn't because of the costs; there are the hours spent away from home because of the second job they had to take to pay for tuition; there is the enormous pressure they are forced to place on their kids to outperform their peers in sports and academics so that they can get the coveted scholarships universities hold out as carrots to keep kids running in the rat race that we call a high school education.
Is it worth it to the middle class kids in high school, who can only see their education as a means to an end? Even the not especially ambitious ones know that they have to focus on getting the grades and the extra curricular activities to get admitted. Their counselors make sure they are focused on building their resumes because they know that to win at the meritocracy game they need to beat out the competition. Is it worth the loss of a real education--i.e., one that prioritizes pursuit of what is true, good, and beautiful for its own sake? Is it worth the crippling anxiety over tests and other "assessments" meant to measure their fitness for a school they know their parents can't afford? Will it be worth the debt they will likely be saddled with during the best years of their adult lives, and the effects that this debt will have on their future choices?
The question of whether college is worth it is not one we can pose abstractly. But there is a prior question that interests me that no one is asking. Not surprisingly, it is a philosophical question: What is a university for? The answer to that question will determine its real value in human life.
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