The High Cost Of Higher Education

One overlooked consequence of higher education’s burgeoning cost is students’ lack of meaningful exposure to “liberal education,” the knowledge and thinking skills needed by a free people.

Yes, high cost is driving student loan debt, which may well result in a student loan meltdown like the sub-prime meltdown. But fi nancial effects are less consequential than the results of decades of skimping on liberal education requirements: college graduates largely unaware of the history, value and achievement of Western culture, but quite well versed in job-related subjects.

The price of higher education and other factors encourage students to avoid studies not targeting employment. That avoidance costs American society dearly.

Well-intentioned antidiscrimination laws have left the college or university degree as nearly the only way to assure employers of applicants’ general intelligence and knowledge.

Except in some technical fields, a baccalaureate degree is the essential credential for better paying jobs.

Probably that fact alone explains why many of the two-thirds to 90 percent of our local school district graduates plan to go tocollege. Undoubtedly some of those students - let’s call them scholars - are hungry to learn for learning’s sake.

Bless them.

But college’s high cost drives even many wouldbe scholars to focus on the essential thing - the certifi cate that’s the credential for employment.

For students to view education primarily as a means to a job is a rational response to the high price of higher ed. For them, selfdiscovery, critical thinking, learning and understanding the culture they’ve inherited - education’s fi nest gifts - are luxuries they can’t afford. Besides, who wants the hassle?

To meet students’ demand for a low-hassle credential and legislatures’ demands for higher graduation rates rather than better educated students, colleges gut general education requirements, reducing the banquet of liberal studies to a whiff from the kitchen.

The professorate contributes in several ways.

Undergraduate courses are often over-specialized;

some are conducted as indoctrinations of (usually) left-wing pieties rather than explorations of a subject.

Tenure committees devalue teaching for research. And faculties capitulate to, or even enforce, the antiintellectual multiculturalism and political correctness that make honest enquiry, if not impossible, a career risk.

So a liberal education, what should be foundational for all students - accountants, engineers, bankers, teachers, “pre-professionals” - too often becomes unwanted and unavailable.

The liberal education entails more than studying the development of civilization, knowing some basics of science, appreciating the arts, and listening in on what was once called The GreatConversation - what centuries of thinkers and artists have expressed about the human condition. For education to be liberal, one must learn for learning’s sake, not for an exam or a certificate or even a credential allowing one to teach about it.

Not learning about our culture or appreciating each discipline in its own terms has profound societal consequences. In politics, for instance, judicial decisions, candidates and parties are often valued purely for how well they serve the voter’s narrow self-interest. A liberal arts education can put personal advantage in perspective because it makesone aware of the centuries of intellectual, cultural and armed struggle that made possible our fragile freedom.

We still will disagree on political and judicial matters, but our arguments will advance principles, not mere interests.

Paradoxically, learning for learning’s sake serves society, like free-market capitalism.

As the honest pursuit of one’s own enlightened self-interest in commerce benefits the greater society, so pursuit of knowledge for itself results in practical benefits - politically, scientifically and culturally.

Both a liberally educated citizenry and free markets preserve and advanceculture, prosperity and freedom.

Despite the prohibitive cost of college-based liberal education, there is hope.

In the past, those who demanded education read books. Books still exist.

Some professors still leave their politics at home and submit themselves to the discipline of their subject.

And through both the market and private philanthropy, everyone can access the liberal education, albeit without the credential.

For the price of a textbook or two, The Teaching Company, an entrepreneurial enterprise, offers CD and DVD “Great Courses,” taught by some of the country’s fi nest scholars/teachers. The Gates Foundation-backed, nonprofit Khan Academy off ers free online courses and tutorials, primarily in math and science, but with plans to broaden its off erings.

The great irony of higher education is that while credentials have become more elite and expensive, liberal education, once the domain of the elite, has become more democratic and affordable for those who seek it.

BUDDY ROGERS, A ROGERS RESIDENT, EARNED HIS DOCTORATE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN. HE CONTINUES TO WORK ON BECOMING EDUCATED.