What (else) is College For?

In 2012, Andrew Delbanco, Professor of Humanities at Columbia University wrote an article entitled “What is College For?” The first time I read it I thought, great question! I was one of those High School kids who always knew college was in my future, though I’m not sure why. Looking back, I think it was probably a sloppy combination of being pretty good at the school thing, nudges from my parents saying I should do it, seeing lots of my friends go, wanting to get out of my little hometown, and a vague sense that people who go to college have more options in life. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what college was for, but it sort of made sense as a next step. 

Delbanco’s article is short and totally worth the read. Should you not want to read the whole thing, I’ll sum it up. Delbanco argues that college is about three things: economics, democracy, and personal satisfaction (okay, end of story, you can return to your doom-scrolling now – JK, keep reading…) . After digging through his article, I had this lingering sense that something was missing. Having spent most of my life in college and having been a university professor, I knew there was a disconnect here somewhere. To find it, let’s start by running through Delbanco’s reasons that college matters. 

The first is economics. There are two parts to this. One is about our country’s economic strength. Simply put, national economic competitiveness benefits when its people go to college. Former President Obama put it succinctly in saying “countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.” Creativity, entrepreneurism, and technological development all rely on well-funded educational systems. If you don’t invest in education for your citizens, you will fall behind. Period. 

Another economic reason is a more personal and one that parents hint at throughout our academic career…“So, what are you going to do with THAT when you graduate?” Ring a bell? I recall the resulting trepidation being more painful for art and humanities majors than it was for business and marketing majors. But no matter which path you’re on, most of us go to college because we hope we’ll make more money after we graduate. And it’s true, college graduates tend to earn more over their lifetimes than those who do not attend college. And although tuition, housing and other costs have been rising way faster than minimum wage or inflation, college is still financially worth it over the course of our lives.

Besides national and personal economics, a second reason that college is important, says Delbanco, is what he calls a political one. I’m not sure if saying it’s “political” is quite the way I’d put it, but the gist of it is pretty simple…democracy is built on education. If you live in a country that is set up to allow everyone in the country to vote on who their leaders will be (as opposed to one that is run by a military dictator who has the most guns, or by a monarch whose parents passed it onto them like a really humongous inheritance), then the more educated folks are, the better they’ll be at choosing who will run the country. Mind you, this isn’t a liberal-conservative thing. We need thoughtful folks from all across the political spectrum to figure out hard problems. I think what Delbanco’s saying is that we all win when we support good education for as many people as possible. Or to put another way, Delbanco says

The final reason college is important is a little harder to get a handle on. Delbanco writes how one afternoon he was visiting with some alumni of the college where he teaches. He was telling them how pleased he was that they were adding some new art, music, and history classes and all the reasons these sorts of classes are really important for democracy, the economy, etc. etc. Afterwards, he describes how, 

Besides the money and chance to live in a democracy, why does college matter? Spending 4-years in the university matters because it makes us happier, more joyful, wiser, more interesting people. We learn to think about the past in ways that help us craft a more creative present and future. To learn is to make our experience, relationships, communities, and future bigger. Despite running the risk of implying people who go to college are somehow better than those who don’t (I’m not saying that!) and overlooking all of the many problems with our educational system (it has plenty!), going to college provides an opportunity to figure out who we are and what is important in ways that are difficult to do when we’re grinding our way through 40-50hr. work-weeks year after year.

I really appreciate Delbanco’s reflections in this article. But I still think there’s a problem here. College is not set up very well to do these things. Most American universities are set up really well to give you a list of classes to take and provide resources on how to write papers and study for tests. They’re pretty good at getting us all excited about their athletic teams, millions of dollars of investments in shiny new technology and getting us out the door in 4-years. But I’m not convinced they’re very good at helping us think about how this really applies to us getting a job, much less becoming involved in democracy or important social changes, much, much less how these 4 (or 5 or 6 years) make us wiser or happier people. That, I suppose they think, we just have to figure out on our own. 

This frustration and hope is what fuels this blog and forthcoming book The Gutsy College Student (Spring 2023). Having been a professor, career advisor, pastor, and DEI researcher, leaves me with the sense that many of us overlook the most powerful parts of college. Far beyond the “go to school to get a good job” mantra, college offers us opportunities to discover ourselves in new ways, learn the power of brave relationships, invest ourselves in causes that matter, and transform campus opportunities into genuinely life-changing experiences. But it doesn’t happen automatically. This deeper way of leveraging college takes both a new perspective and a gutsy commitment to try some new things.