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Becoming A Master Student, Concise, Tenth Edition
Dave Ellis
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| | Understanding the Value of
Higher Education | | | | | | | |
When you're waist-deep in reading assignments, writing papers, and studying for tests, you might well ask yourself, "Is all this effort going to pay off someday?" That's a fair question. It gets to the core issue—the value of getting an education beyond high school.
Reassure yourself. The potential benefits of higher education are enormous. To begin, there are economic benefits. Over their lifetimes, college graduates on the average earn much more than high school graduates, and that's just one potential payoff. Consider the others explained below.
Learn skills that apply across careers
Jobs that involve responsibility, prestige, and higher incomes depend on self-management skills. These include knowing ways to manage time, resolve conflict, set goals, learn new skills, and control stress. Higher education is a place to practice such skills.
Judging by recent trends, most of us will have multiple careers in our lifetimes. In this environment of constant change, it makes sense to learn skills that apply across careers.
Master the liberal arts
According to one traditional model of education, there are two essential tasks for people to master: use of language and use of numbers. To acquire these skills, students once immersed themselves in seven subjects: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These subjects were called the "liberal" arts. They complemented the fine arts, such as poetry, and the practical arts, such as farming.
This model of liberal education still has something to offer. Today we master the use of language by using the basic processes of communication: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. In addition, courses in mathematics and science help us understand the world in quantitative terms. The abilities to communicate and calculate are essential to almost every profession. Excellence at these skills has long been considered a hallmark of an educated person.
The word liberal comes from the Latin verb libero, which means "to free." Liberal arts are those that promote critical thinking. Studying them can free us from irrational ideas, half-truths, racism, and prejudice. Beyond this, the liberal arts grant us freedom to explore alternatives and create a system of personal values. Such benefits are priceless, the very basis of political freedom.
Gain a broad vision
It's been said that a large corporation is a collection of departments connected only by a plumbing system. The quip makes the point: As workers in different fields become more specialized, they run the danger of forgetting how to talk to each other.
Higher education can change that. One benefit of studying the liberal arts is the chance to gain a broad vision. Liberally educated people know something about the various kinds of problems tackled in psychology and theology, philosophy and physics, literature and mathematics. They understand how people in all these fields arrive at conclusions and how these fields relate to each other.
Discover your values
We do not spend all of our waking hours at our jobs. That leaves us with a decision that affects the quality of our lives: how to spend leisure time. By cultivating our interest in the arts and community affairs, the liberal arts provide us with many options for activities outside work. These studies add a dimension to life that goes beyond having a job and paying the bills.
Practical people are those who focus on time and money. Yet it's impossible to manage either of these effectively without a clear sense of values. Our values define what we commit our time and money to.
Vocational education is about how to do things that we can get paid for. Through a liberal education, we discover what's worth doing--what activities are worthy of our energy and talents. Both types of education are equally important. No matter where they've attended school, liberally educated people can state what they're willing to bet their lives on.
Discover new interests
Taking a broad range of courses has the potential to change your direction in life. A student previously committed to a career in science might try out a drawing class and eventually switch to a degree in studio arts. Or, a person who swears that she has no aptitude for technical subjects might change her major to computer science after taking an introductory computer course.
To make effective choices about your long-term goals, base those choices on a variety of academic and personal experiences. Even if you don't change majors or switch career directions, you could discover an important avocation or gain a complementary skill. For example, science majors who will eventually write for professional journals can gain value from English courses.
Hang out with the great
Today we enjoy a huge legacy from our ancestors. The creative minds of our species have given us great works of art, systems of science, and technology that defy the imagination. Through higher education, you can gain firsthand knowledge of humanity's greatest creations.
Poet Ezra Pound defined literature as "news that stays news."1 Most of the writing in newspapers and magazines becomes dated quickly. In contrast, many of the books you read in higher education have passed the hardest test of all--time. Such works have created value for people for decades, sometimes for centuries. These creations are inexhaustible. We can return to them time after time and discover something new. These are the works we can justifiably call great. Hanging out with these works transforms us. Getting to know them exercises our minds as running exercises our bodies.
Through studying the greatest works in many fields, we raise our standards. We learn ways to distinguish what is superficial and fleeting from what is lasting and profound.
The criteria for a great novel, poem, painting, or piece of music or dance might be different for one person than for another. Differences in taste reflect the differences in our backgrounds. The point is to find those works that have enduring value--and enjoy them for a lifetime.
Join the conversation
In ancient times—long before printing presses, televisions, and computers—people educated themselves by conversing with each other. Students in ancient Athens were often called peripatetic (a word that means "walking around") because they were frequently seen strolling around the city, engaged in heated philosophical debate.
Since then, the debate has deepened and broadened. The world's finest scientists and artists are voices in a conversation that spans centuries and crosses cultures. This is a conversation about the nature of truth and beauty, knowledge and compassion, good and evil--ideas that form the very basis of human society. Robert Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago, called this the "great conversation."2 By studying this conversation, we take on the most basic human challenges: coping with death and suffering, helping create a just global society, living with meaning and purpose.
Our greatest thinkers have left behind visible records. You'll find them in libraries, concert halls, museums, and scientific laboratories across the world. Through higher education, you gain a front-row seat for the great conversation--and an opportunity to add your own voice.
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