Recently, I read an article on CNN.com about a Trina Thompson who decided to sue her college because she couldn’t find a job. To someone like myself who just completed a master’s program that, to my knowledge, has 0% job placement (and no services to speak of to raise that number) my first thought was that she was being ridiculous. However, as I considered the situation more I started to agree with her. In fact, Ms. Thompson’s situation made me wonder if I should consider doing the same thing.
I have no plans to sue my school, but the incident raises questions about the purpose of higher education. Much of the criticism leveled at Thompson seems to be based on the romantic idea of a “liberal education,” which might be summarily described as a broad effort to make people better, more ethical and well-rounded citizens (and people). While, as a recent MA, I’m obviously a disciple of this idea, I also know that just about everybody goes to college today because it will make them more marketable for a future job.
The point then, is that nearly every college degree is simply a technical certification from a trade-oriented school. Ms. Thompson’s school is more obviously so, but even students at prestigious schools are there because they’re trying to become more marketable. The skills they’re learning might prepare them for white-collar jobs, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re learning the “techniques” of a “trade.”
This reality is a problem for a couple of reasons. First, because no one is admitting it. Most college educated people look down on someone like Thompson because her argument is painfully honest about what people expect from an education. There are a lot of people who don’t have jobs when they graduate, but the criticisms of Thompson demonstrate that people don’t see that fact as a problem (with either the education system or the post-graduation market place). Indeed, the defense of education-for-education’s sake that has been invoked actually suggests that people don’t think there are any system-wide problems at all. It doesn’t matter, the argument implies, that people today take longer to get through school, are more saddled with debt, and have less of a guarantee of employment after college; just because that happens with many people, the system is still working just fine.
Second, this is a problem because liberal education has a lot to offer and because if we abandon it, eventually no one will be able to think critically about ideas like ethics, citizenship, and community. Instead, people will be locked into roles determined by class and economic status (as well as race, gender, etc.) without the ability to raise questions about those roles. In other words, the recent debate sparked by Trina Thompson suggests both that liberal education is quickly slipping away from us while we delude ourselves into thinking that it isn’t.
Luckily, liberal education isn’t completely gone. It coexists with work-oriented schooling in a way that apparently satisfies many people. (If it didn’t satisfy them, they’d stop going to school.) Still, if people refuse to recognize the effects of business and the market place on education there will be nothing to mitigate the capitalist onslaught in colleges. People will continue to be in debt and unemployed, and no one will stop to consider if that is a problem. At the same time, high-minded ideals embodied in a liberal education will keep slipping away from us until no one even remembers what they were.
I wonder if part of the problem comes down to that good ol' "American Dream": we have this vision, inherited from the Founding Fathers or the Pilgrims or the Puritans or whomever, that we should be able to work hard and then get something in return. That something has been defined differently throughout the years. Once, it was not being taxed without a say in government; another time it was about being free from slavery; and another time it was about having the opportunity to work despite disabilities. The list goes on.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to education, the purpose of education has shifted definitions as well. Academia, traditionally, has been about the pursuit of knowledge. Back in the day, "education" was only for those going into the church, law, or medicine. The evolution of the education system has slowly expanded. At other times, education was for those who needed further knowledge in order to teach, heal, or govern. As you've pointed out, education now has taken on a very practical approach: the only good education is one that leads to a job. One goes to school, works hard, and is rewarded with a good-paying job that will allow for those rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
I've seen that academia has resisted this "practical" (or perhaps technical or trade-school would be a better term) turn, because it has traditionally never been about employment, but the pursuit of knowledge. It comes down to how one defines what an education is for. This woman, and much of the world, think an education is only as good as the income that comes after. I've heard academics blame science and technology for this practical turn (a little paradoxically), and I see the entire "No Child Left Behind" initiative a product of this as well: it focuses on science and math and "practical" skills while neglecting the arts, music, literature, and "lesser" areas of knowledge.
To take a more bitter/harsh turn: I think this woman is also a little pathetic. How many college graduates with ten times more experience than she has are employed right now, and she thinks that just because she is a college graduate she should get a job? Really.