Recently, the Board of Visitors at the University approved a 3.9 percent tuition hike for existing in-state students, with further increases for freshmen entering the University throughout the next five years. In current dollar values, tuition for public four-year universities in Virginia has practically doubled in a decade, with comparable increases across the country. As of 2012, students are paying more out of pocket for public education than the state is, as federal grants for low-income households struggle to cover the rising sticker cost of education, which remains unmitigated due to state reluctance to allocate tax dollars to education subsidies. Is it worth it?
Yes. Attending college compels us to conceptualize learning as desirable choice, and attach qualitative value to the pursuit of knowledge because it is central to our identity as students.
This may not seem like a pragmatically sound argument; in the United States, which has the highest income inequality among Western democracies, college education is becoming financially untenable for many families, perpetuating income imbalance in a system where a Bachelor’s degree is an unspoken prerequisite for even entry-level positions. Those without it will find themselves vying for the same positions as their more educated counterparts. A degree, particularly from a reputable institution, will provide a leg up in the job search, but there is no guarantee: the market is fickle, and many occupations are becoming either redundant or digitally outsourced.
The concentration of information and democratization of access and skill development introduced by the Internet, compounded by the rising cost of universities and the emergence of an increasingly young “professional” — tech-savvy — class has led to a barrage of criticism toward the traditional four-year university education. Last summer, William Deresiewicz’s “Excellent Sheep” accused Ivy League institutions of producing cadres of unthinking, lucre-driven students who trudge through life as “blinkered overachievers” and graduate to fill the ranks of corporate middle management. More recently, author Kevin Carey has gone a step further, prophesying the end of college and the emergence of a tech-driven “University of Everywhere,” which would rectify the gross inequalities of opportunity and income preserved by the existing system. This university would purportedly provide its students with adequate training to acquire a decently well-paying job and moderate prosperity without the time or economic commitment of a conventional college education.
Yet to conceive of college education as, in the words of one critic, “a system driven entirely by profits and quantitative outputs” is reductive. A university should not just be a funnel to an occupation, with a few liberal arts classes thrown into the mix for color. Such a notion is wedded to a parochial view of success, and is unrewarding both for would-be students and those who teach them. What the university does — and four years may seem either frighteningly long or woefully short for such a task — is teach young people to learn, and to want to learn.
We can work as much or as little as we like, but it is in a field of our choosing — whether you spend your four years playing beer pong in a fraternity house, in the editing room of the student newspaper or diligently studying in the library, you must choose to declare at least a stated interest in one or more subjects. You are in charge of charting a course for your learning, and pressed — through basic requirements — to explore beyond what you believe you know to like or dislike. Yes, you might take classes you think aren’t “relevant” to how you conceive of yourself or what you seek to invest time doing in the future, but the idea that university courses should be grounded in practicality or timeliness is a relatively new one, brought to life more by avarice and ambition by universities and research institutes than consideration of the well-being of their students. Traditionally, as sociologist Robert A. Nisbet puts it, universities followed “the academic dogma,” which stated, “Knowledge is important. Just that. Not ‘relevant’ knowledge; not ‘practical’ knowledge... Knowledge!” According to this ethos, one could immerse himself in Latin for four years and emerge unscathed. Until the mid-20th century, universities did not feel pressured to provide courses dealing with trending social issues or contemporary figures. This is not necessarily better than our modern system; arguably, the university curriculum became more diverse just as its student demographics did.
What is most important is that young, mutable minds be placed in a context of concentrated academia and given the imperative to learn at least the fundamentals of a spread of subjects and the specifics of a few. What skills develop concomitant to that depend on the student. College is not necessarily a means to self-discovery, or job acquisition or moral edification. But it serves as a boon for the possibility for all. French philosopher Alain Badiou writes, “Nothing is promised to us.” No — but what is required of us at university is a basic curiosity that, if accompanied by the right set of factors, may hold promise.
Tamar Ziff is a Viewpoint writer.
Read More
EDITORIAL: Celebrating and reflecting on The Cavalier Daily’s independence
By Editorial Board | 23 hours agoOur independence grants us the ability to ask the hard questions and to say what University representatives cannot.
ARRAS: U.Va. must revise the Sexual Assault Prevention Training module
By Aoife Arras | 2 days agoIn addition to its failures in interactivity, the module lacks details specific to the University and discusses key concepts in universal terms.
EDITORIAL: Pedestrian safety is an institutional imperative
By Editorial Board | 4 days agoAmid a national crisis of pedestrian safety, Charlottesville and the University are also struggling to properly maintain pedestrian safety.
