In this morning’s Today Show, we were presented with yet another variation on what has become an all-too-familiar story running with increasing frequency in the heat of the college application season: “Is college worth it?”
We’ll save you the suspense. The answer—like it usually is for these stories—is “yes”, but first you must pass through a haunted house of drama and factoids.
First act: Usually these stories start with a liberal arts major (in this case, a French major) who graduated into a world reluctant to hire her because of “her limited skill set.”
Second act: The recent graduate, faced with a college debt of $50,000, “settles” for a job that does not employ the skills she learned in her major (in this case, working as a customer service rep for an awning company).
Third act: Cut to the reporter (in this case, financial expert, Jean Chatzky) back in the studio summarizing the state of affairs for the host (in this case, Matt Lauer), who serves as a proxy for the target audience (in this parents of college-bound students). The exchange usually goes like this:
- Proof point: Flash a screen with data showing the difference in lifetime earnings between bachelor’s degrees holders and high school diploma holders (about $1 million; so, yes, it’s technically worth it).
- Counterpoint: But what about that double-whammy of debt and unemployability?
- Solutions offered:
- save your money by attending community college then four-year college (a viable option for many)
- pick an in-demand major, like medical technology, nursing, education, math & computer science, or engineering
- corollary: watch out for those majors that don’t have jobs named after them (e.g., things like “English” or “history” or “philosophy”)
And there, in a three-minute story, you have some one-size-fits-all advice on college and major selection.
We cannot ignore an economy that continues to present significant challenges to all of us. We cannot ignore that there are students out there taking on extraordinary debt to attend college. (In news stories, there is generally a direct relationship between the size of the debt and the level of tension in the story.) We acknowledge that there are a number of in-demand majors, such as those listed above, that have clearer prospects (though certainly no guarantees) for employment than others. There is comfort in certainty.
But what if you’re not interested in those majors? What if you are one of those students for whom a liberal arts major at a liberal arts college is the right fit?
Take heart: the college investment for many people is not simply an investment in job training for your first gig out of college. As we mentioned in an earlier blog, an investment in a place like Lawrence University is an investment for a lifetime, which will comprise, quite likely, more than your first job out of college: perhaps a trip to graduate or professional school; a career change or two; and a host of experiences that will call upon your abilities to find common ground with people who look, think, act, and believe differently than you do. It’s our job to prepare you for all of these by pushing you to become: a nimble, lifelong learner; a strong compelling writer; a creative problem solver; a critical thinker; a competent arguer; and a person equally adept at independence and collaboration. In other words, an eminently employable person.
And one last thing for you budding liberal arts majors out there: Matt Lauer pursued a telecommunications major at Ohio University, a liberal arts college. Jean Chatzky earned a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in—wait for it—English.
Looking forward to my 45th Reunion as one of the few gainfully-employed members of my class by then, I look back on the intervening decades with immeasurable gratitude for my Lawrence Experience. NO – I did NOT have a career like my father-in-law’s – 42 years with Westinghouse and a very generous pension with “portable” medical and life-insurance plus a heavily matched 401(k) – but neither did most of my classmates. I’ve worked for more than a dozen companies – global, national, regional, and local; started three of my own; and “re-invented” myself in almost half-a-dozen totally distinct “career paths.” I’ve had to. Our world has changed too rapidly and too dramatically (in both qualitative and quantitative terms) to have been able to sustain a career in any area but the classic “professions” – medicine, law, finance, education, and “the arts” – though even those have morphed so significantly that only “continuing education” and consistent, energetic applications of creativity and innovation have allowed even the most talented, credentialled practitioners to sustain a single career path.
Instead, my life has been one of almost constant “renewal.” As a result, it has been challenging, rewarding, varied, fulfilling, and anything but boring. I have lived and worked on four continents, been exposed in-depth on-the-ground to several dozen very different cultures, and have an address-book that spans more than half the time-zones on the Planet. I’ve had the opportunity to put my rudimentary knowledge of 5 languages to the test (and enrich them out of necessity – which is always both the best teacher and the “mother of invention”), and I have been privileged to understand at a personal level what Mark Twain meant when he said that: “Travel is fatal to ignorance and bigotry” (though I do have a love-hate relationship with Australians to this day…my only acquired bias).
I have learned the jaded truth of Mae West’s dictum: “Honey – I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor…and, believe me, rich is better”…and I have learned, more importantly, how right Ghandi was when he proclaimed (however modestly) that: “Man becomes great exactly in the degree to which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.”
Perhaps – above all else – Lawrence and it’s own unique spin on the liberal arts philosophy – in theory and in practice – allowed or, perhaps, forced me to get beyond and outside of myself, and to appreciate that the most valuable things we can do with our lives are arrived at – often with generous doses of serencipity – through a rigorous combination of astute observation and penetrating introspection. Then (once that focus in found) our “vision” may be executed or implemented in collaboration with those we enjoy and respect, with assistance from those we persuade, in order to ameliorate a pervasive need for beneficiaries we may never know.
Those lessons are not readily available to everyone, but are the “stock-in-trade” at the few institutions, like Lawrence that both seduce and compell students to embrace what my beloved Professor Elisabeth Koffka called: “The Life of the Mind.” I first thought that was an erudite platitude, laced with some intellectual arrogance, but eventually – with the aid of Professors William Chaney, Minoo Adenwalla, Chong-do Hah, Mojmir Povolny, Jules LaRoque, Robert Rosenberg, Allen West, Ron Mason, George Walter, Ken Sager and Deans like Marshall Hulbert and Chuck Lauter – I began to appreciate what that meant and how to live it for a lifetime.
And I learned that the “communications crafts” – from writing and editing, to making presentations and arguements (well supported by research data, statistics, rigorous analysis, balanced interpretation, and graphics) – i.e., the ability to strategically conceive of, present, argue for, and implement an novel idea – would be the most important weapons in my arsenal. In a variation on Pirelli’s slogan “Power is nothing without Control” – I would add that “Knowledge is nothing without the ability to apply it effectively.” And the Lawrence Experience at its best enables young people to enter the most highly-competitive / issue-challenged world we have ever had to confront as neophytes – newly-minted BAs. There is no question that it is daunting, but in the lifetime ahead of the Class of 2013, I’d bet heavily on Lawrence alumni of every vintage. Thank you, dear alma mater – I quite literally couldn’t have done it without you!
Thank you, Sam, for such a strong endorsement. Your commentary as a Lawrence graduate is way more credible (and more important) than the posting of your alma mater’s admissions office! (So says the guy in the admissions office that wrote it.)