Since graduation lies just around the corner for a few thousand students here, I thought I would use this column to reassure everyone their college experiences and degrees meant something. After all, it’s tough even for college grads to find the job of their dreams in today’s economy, and grad-school admissions are tightening as applications for many programs soar.
In this environment, it is easy to understand why many will be standing in their graduation robes, about to start a job they didn’t really want, wondering what all the cost and effort of college was really for. I mean, didn’t your parents tell you the reason you went to college was to get a good job?
Not anymore–at least, not for people that don’t excel in specialized programs. The push for more teens to go to college (and the growing scholarship programs that make it possible), while a very positive development, has negated some of the advantages a college diploma held when it was rarer. Hell, two summers ago I worked on a street department crew, scraping roadkill off the streets with a college graduate who couldn’t find a job with better benefits.
As I pondered the question of justifying a college degree in non-economic terms, I got the weekly call from my 9-year-old brother asking about my baseball-card collection in the attic at home (“Umm, Matt, I was wondering … you know those Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds rookie cards … well, can I have them?”). To change the subject, I asked him for advice on this column, expecting him to give me some answer about how college is good because you get to set your own bedtime and have a lot of friends stay over.
“Umm, well, college is good because it makes you more of everything,” he said. “Except meaner.”
I laughed at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized his simple answer was just about right. College might not make you “more of everything,” but it does make you more of a lot of things–and in a world where a college degree does not guarantee a good job, that fact stands as the true value of a university education. For example:
College makes you worldlier. This may truer in some classes (say, Modern Asian Culture) than others (like, for example, the Literature of the Vikings). But they all serve to add breadth and perspective, and you never know–you might be able to use those Viking poems to wow the crowd in a biker bar someday.
College makes you more tolerant. At least, it better, if you want to make it here. Kids from Wisconsin farm towns meet kids from North Milwaukee; the daughters of lawyers meet the daughters of waitresses; guys who went to school in South Korea meet guys who went to school at Sheboygan South. It might be tolerance by force, but it is a valuable lesson to learn.
College makes you more frugal. You live for four or more years in college on Ramen noodles and Old Milwaukee. No matter what job you take, you’ll probably never have to live like that again–but you do learn to value a free slice of pizza when you come by it. College provides both economic relativism and dietary-survival skills.
College makes you more analytical. All those close readings, the presentation of materials with opposing viewpoints and discussion-group debates make you more suspicious of those trying to change your opinion. Whether this suspicion is exercised when a former pro wrestler tells you he will make a great president or when Miss Cleo tells you to buy 1,000 shares of the next Enron, healthy skepticism is not a bad quality to have.
College makes you more knowledgeable about yourself. No one comes out of college with the exact same interests they came in with. I went from journalism to political science because of a great lecturer I had freshman year; I had a friend go from engineering to history; I had a roommate who went from wanting to be a politician to wanting to teach English in Norway. You might not be able to get the job of your dreams right away after college, but at least you have a better idea of what it really is.
And until you get there, the street department is a lot more fun than it sounds.
Matt Lynch ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in English and political science.
