What's the point of college?

[audiophile]

<p>Thought this column in today’s Daily Pennsylvanian was thought provoking: [Stephen</a> Krewson | What’s the point of college? - Opinion](<a href=“http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2008/11/20/Opinion/Stephen.Krewson.Whats.The.Point.Of.College-3553497.shtml]Stephen”>http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2008/11/20/Opinion/Stephen.Krewson.Whats.The.Point.Of.College-3553497.shtml)</p>

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Later, I attended an English departmental lecture (for extra credit). The professor analyzed an obscure 18th-century novel. Her aim was to show how the insertion of a pet monkey into one of the concluding scenes constituted an attack on period ideas about the desirability of marriage and problematized the structures of male/female and human/animal intimacy. Heady stuff.</p>

<p>I could scarcely suppress my glee at the fact that I could - after two and a half years at Penn - more or less understand the code she spoke in. This certainly must be the real, ivy-clad essence of education: the ability to wear turtlenecks, speak in paragraphs of dense prose and analyze a text six ways to Sunday while never arriving at a definitive reading.</p>

<p>But this is nothing more than mastering a specific skill - no different than programming a computer or riding a bike. As Stanley Fish argues, the humanities will not “save” us or make us better people. For that matter, neither will anything else taught at Penn (though, to be fair, many things taught here will help save others).</p>

<p>Franklin spoke poorly when he spoke about the “practical.” The practical is distinct from the academic. W. H. Auden famously wrote, “Poetry makes nothing happen.” How much less, sitting and talking about poetry. Or sitting and talking about business. Or sitting and talking in general!</p>

<p>Of course, I’m being glib. The things you learn are of use. To quote Drew Faust at a happier time: “A university is not about results in the next quarter; it is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is about learning that molds a lifetime.”

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[dt123]

<p>The point is to learn not to use words like “problematize.”</p>