For those parents who are impatient with all this talk about “life of the mind” in light of the realities facing their kids on graduation I commend the 2002 “Aims of Education” talk by Andrew Abbott, a sociologist:
https://aims.uchicago.edu/node/79.
Abbott tells the entering class that merely by being one of the relatively few (40,000 or so) who have gotten into an elite college (as against the total of 1.8 million going to all colleges that year) they’ve hit the home run ball - that almost everyone in that class, regardless of field of study, will end up with earnings greater that 80 percent of the population 20 years out. His survey of 1975 U. of C. graduates twenty years out showed that their incomes were five times the national average and put them in the 93rd percentile, so I guess he was allowing for some margin of error for that present class of 2006, notwithstanding that it excelled the class of 1975 in all the usual measures (as the class of 2021 must surely excel the class of 2006, I would interject). Interestingly there was only a weak correlation within the Class of 1975 between g.p.a. and future earnings, so that it appeared not to matter very much how hard you worked at your studies. Even more surprisingly, what you studied didn’t matter very much: there was only a weak correlation between future earnings and major. Yes, one’s ultimate occupation is the biggest variable, but “at the University of Chicago there is really no strong relation between what you study and your occupation in later life.” This observation is supported by statistics that flood into his talk at this point and on the basis of which he concludes that except for professors in the natural sciences “there is absolutely no career ruled out for any undergraduate major at the University of Chicago.” He then goes on to demolish a shibboleth of a different sort - that the famous U. of C. rigorousness is all about acquiring cognitive and writing skills that make for future success. Guess what - unsupported by statistics! What is left then? --Education is a good thing for its own sake, it makes us fuller people, more able to understand and participate in the world, inculcates in us “the habit of looking for new meanings, of seeking out new connections, of investing experience with complexity or extension that makes it richer or longer.” The inspiration is saved for the end, and it proves to be, coming after all those demolitions, surprisingly inspiring and traditional. And, more importantly, true. The search for “meaning” is the thing itself and not just a future aim of education. However, it should be reassuring to many a parent to know that it doesn’t come at the expense of the usual measures of worldly success.