What is College for?

tk21769
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 13:21:37 +0000

Pretty much all public colleges and universities were established with some thought toward upgrading the skills of the people in order to boost the economy (and hence grow the tax base that will then pay more taxes to increase funding to the government) or educating people for some job of particular interest (e.g. military service academies to educate military officers).

True. Not coincidently, most of them were founded during the heyday of the second industrial revolution, when the country needed more skilled technicians to develop its expanding (and increasingly complex) factory, transportation, business and communication systems. But they almost all have a liberal arts component, too.

Most liberal arts colleges (and the private universities that grew out of them) were founded for different purposes. They were meant to educate thought-leaders for civic and religious life.
Another purpose was to teach the children of affluent families how to make disciplined use of leisure time. With respect to both of these ends, the “liberal” in “liberal education” has to do with liberty and how people use it.

Nowadays, a career might span only about half of a long life (~40 out of 80 years).
Even during a career, work might comprise only about 1/3 of a week day.
Even during work hours, most people in “good” jobs spend much of their time consuming diverse information, analyzing it, communicating about it, and making decisions (not doing manual labor or running errands.)

Most of us want our kids to have one those “good” jobs, which are as much about quality of work as they are about income. We don’t want them spending all their free time smoking pot and playing “adults only” video games. Most of us (I hope) also would prefer our national leaders not to be narcissistic blowhards who spend hours per day making groundless, ad hominem attacks on their critics. Thoughtful, curious, liberally educated people are less apt to do those things. That in my opinion is what college is for.