Please stop obsessing about college!
Four arguments against higher education from an insider
This is an essay I’ve resisted writing, but every five years or so I like to do something that might ruin me, just to keep life spicy. And I’m overdue…
For the past decade, I have made my living at a university. It’s one of the fancy ones. But in the hours I’m not on campus, I also live in the real world. And what people in the real world think about college is almost invariably incorrect. Many parents in the American suburbs organize their lives and leisure around the prospect of getting their kids into one of the fancies. But this is a bankrupt goal, sure to drain your savings and your spirit. And worse, if you don’t handle the process well, you just might teach your kids all the wrong things about what’s important in life. Don’t get me wrong, many studies demonstrate the payoff in lifetime wages to higher education. But individuals aren’t averages. A different, better question might be how might I help my child discover natural talents and share them with the world? And so today I begin a vain crusade, certain to get me uninvited to all the best parties for years to come.
Four reasons NOT to send your kid to college:
1. It’s lazy. College is essentially about outsourcing. We lack imagination about how to guide our kids to fulfilling and noble lives. So instead we outsource that work to colleges. It’s hard to say if colleges are even moderately competent at it. On the other side, companies outsource to colleges too. They glean a ton of information about your kid just based on his or her being a student at our school. But think about the things that generally make someone successful in a company – Are they articulate? Industrious? Curious? Likeable? We don’t test kids for these things when we let them in. And we don’t teach these things while they are with us. So you’re relying on us for things we don’t do. You might want to put a little more energy into this one.
2. The price is just silly. The sticker price at one school I looked up was $355,416.30 for four years. That is WAY more than the price of the average home in Tucson or Tampa or Toledo or Tulsa. I’ve never been to Tucson, but I bet it’s nice there. Sunny. Good Mexican cuisine. Sign me up.
3. You forget MOST of what you learn. I loved being in school and I have a bookshelf full of dog-eared Dickens novels and bone-dry economics textbooks. Twenty-five years later, they are just for show. Hell, twenty-five minutes later, they were probably just for show. Yes, I too delude myself and spout grandiose nonsense at parties like “but we learned how to think.” Even if that’s a little bit true, could my kids learn “how to think” for something less than $355,416.30?
4. It may actually make them worse people. Rob Henderson’s brilliant essay “Why Dumb Ideas Capture Smart and Successful People” highlights an amazing discovery in psychology. The more education someone has, the more contempt they hold for strangers. And worse, the less skeptical they are when people lie to them, even blatantly. Seems counterintuitive, right? But at the root of it is that educated people have high social status and they care about keeping it. If being kind or telling the truth will lower their status, status usually wins. Maybe this is why so many weird ideas float around campus unchallenged on Friday afternoon, while, back in the real world, the entire bar laughs at them on Friday night.
This weekend I saw a friend I’d not seen in years. She mentioned her daughter, who was a little kid last time I’d seen her, is an undergraduate at Harvard. Hey, I admit I was impressed. Just not $355,416.30 impressed. Winters are so much nicer in Tucson.