The "New" UChicago

dunbar
Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:04:55 +0000

Part of the problem must also be related to the cost of a college degree. It’s much harder for anyone, low income or not, to justify spending a lot of money on a degree that’s not necessarily a financial investment for the future. Even as a humanities major who doesn’t care about making a lot of money, I can’t help but feel a little guilty sometimes that I’m spending so much money on something that likely won’t give me a substantial monetary return.

I would also guess that the collective attitude towards the purpose of a college degree has shifted to view it much more as a tool of practicality. That’s why the first thing people ask when you say you’re an English or Classics major is often what you plan to do with your degree. Or why the comments pages for articles on majors, employable degrees etc. are nearly always filled with people criticizing those who chose to major in “unemployable” subjects. In some ways I think this shift in attitude is understandable. By and large the people responsible for increases in college attendance are people who wouldn’t have gone to college 30-40 years ago, and it’s a lot harder to justify majoring in something not related to a job for these people than it is for your traditional liberal arts students. They’re going to college to get a job when previously they would have just received technical training. Is it really an intuitive change to start teaching them Socrates rather than computer programming? But I think what happens is this attitude ends up working its way up to the very top, at least in part. For better or for worse, even the students entering HYP are coming in with a more practical idea of the purpose of education.