George Seibold

It was a Tuesday afternoon in February when a group of students from Oxford University were having some drinks at a tavern in town. The students were acting rowdy, in the way that drunk college kids tend to, and began to complain about the quality of the alcohol.

After getting in a bit of a back-and-forth with the landlord of the establishment, one of the students threw his drink at the man’s head. This prompted the man to go straight to St. Martin, the city’s church, and ring the bell to muster support from the townspeople. The students in turn ran to St. Mary, the university’s church, and rang the bell to call their peers to fight. A skirmish commenced, which lasted for three days and left about 90 people dead.

While this event, later called the St. Scholastica’s Day Riot, occurred in the mid 14^th century, the tenuous relationship between “towns” and “gowns” persists to this day (albeit in different and often milder forms).

College has always filled an awkward space in Western society, plucking youth from the world and cloistering them away to learn about big ideas and abstract concepts until sending them out into society a few years later with whatever results from an intensive exploration of whatever it is they cared to study—and, in many cases, a ludicrous amount of debt. In the past people may have seen the university system as a reserved for only those particularly keen on reading books or becoming a priest, but in modern times it is largely seen as a necessary step in order to achieve a good life and a well-paying job.

That being said, many people’s perception of college has become more and more unfavorable in the past few years. According to a recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center, over half of Republican and conservative-leaning Americans and about one-fifth of their liberal counterparts believe that colleges are negatively impacting the United States.

Aside from the adverse public perception of college, there is a growing skepticism of the value of a degree. Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University, argued in an article published in the Atlantic titled “The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone” how one of the only tangible benefits of a college education is the credential it provides—proof that someone is likely intelligent, diligent, and motivated. Employers aren’t looking for what you learned in order to get your degree, they’re looking for the preexisting traits that are required in order to get a degree.

The article goes on to cite numerous studies and data points with evidence that a college education does very little in the way of actually educating students, preparing them for the workforce, and getting people to think critically. Taken in a certain way, it would seem that Dr. Caplan might even believe that college makes people dumber.

In addition to how many Americans see college as a drag on society, there is a significant portion of the population that believes that colleges are treating their students poorly, too. There is new evidence that shows roughly a third of Americans think that universities put their needs over the needs of the students. Faith in all aspects of higher education is waning.

Universities have been the topic of heated debates in recent times. Across the country, colleges have become hotbeds of activism and social change. There was a decent amount of time in the past few years where many of the more notable protests fueled the 24-hour news cycle.

The role of academia in our society has come under scrutiny, with some saying that colleges are brainwashing today’s youth and are responsible for many of the ills of society. On the other hand, colleges have come under fire for no longer being relevant to the contemporary world; it’s not hard to believe that the value of a degree lessens day by day as the price of tuition steadily increases. By now, stories of recent college grads finding themselves unemployed and thousands of dollars in debt are so commonplace that it has nearly crossed into the realm of cliché.

So, because of all the negative buzz surrounding universities today, one must wonder what the value of going to college is in the first place. If it seems to have no tangible benefits, what is the point of going at all?

I asked this very question to a group of my friends a few days ago. We were all fresh into the second semester of our junior year, well past the halfway point of our college career. It was a Saturday afternoon, and we were hanging out and discussing how our courses were going. The conversation shifted to how different the “real world” will be from college, and whether or not we will be ready for it. Someone brought up the point that almost every one of us seemed to be on a fairly good track (it would be important to note that most of my friends are studying in STEM fields), and it was then that the question came to me.

For all of us, it seemed that college was just what happened after high school—we recognized that it wasn’t for everyone, and that it requires a certain amount of privilege in order to have the means to attend, but all of us were fortunate enough to come from backgrounds that allowed us to see college as a definite course of action. However, we were all aware of the negative perceptions college has in society, and we were all well aware of the challenges recent college grads have faced in the past few years.

 I asked everyone why we wanted to go to college, if it seemed like such a doomed prospect. Naturally, a couple jokes were thrown around about how they wanted to have a chance to party before joining in the ranks of the workforce or how their parents made them do it. Then some of us brought up that it did just seem like naturally the next step to take. After a bit of a lull in the conversation, my friend Emma spoke up.

“I came to college because I like learning,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“The job prospects might be an added bonus, but I love my courses and I don’t think I could get an experience like this any other way.”

Emma is an electrical engineering major. According to a Forbes report from 2015, people with an electrical engineering degree have the highest starting salaries of all college majors, at an average of $57,000 a year. If she wanted to go to school for the money, she chose the right thing to study.

But here’s the thing: she doesn’t care all that much about her prospective salary. Of course she wants to be financially stable and not have money be an issue in her life, but she didn’t choose to study engineering (or go to college in the first place) for the money.

I was intrigued by what she said, and asked her to elaborate. After a short pause, she responded.

“I guess I just want to know more. I’ve always liked math, I haven’t ever been this close to it as I have since I came here,” she said.

Our friend Josh piped up:

“I totally get that,” he said. “I feel like I’m just surrounded by so many interesting things here.”

Josh began college as biochemistry major, but quickly switched to computer science because he was better at it and believed that it would give him better job prospects after graduating. Last semester, he decided to pick up an English minor after I convinced him to take a poetry course with me. He’s always been interested in literature, but never really felt like it was his thing. Now, after being in an environment dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, he cultivated a new passion.

A few others agreed with Josh and offered similar comments. It was then that I saw the value of university in a new light.

I had been declared as an English major since I enrolled in school. I’ve always had a passion for reading and writing, and at this point in my academic career they’re about the only thing I can stomach in large doses.

Every time I’ve had some reservation about whether or not I’m making the right choice, every time I hear someone talk about how humanities majors are doomed or how people wished they could have gone back to school and studied something other than literature, I tell myself that I’m doing what I’m doing because I love it. Hearing my friends, who in all honesty are likely going to be much better off after graduation than I am, talking about how much they care about what they learn gave me a rekindled sense of the importance of doing what you love.

While universities might have come under fire in recent times, that doesn’t stop the students from engaging with their interests. There are definitely justifiable concerns with the university system, and undoubtedly a large number of people enrolled in college that would be better off doing something else. College itself might be getting off track, stunting the workforce and somehow damaging society. While society and universities, towns and gowns, might still be at each other’s throats, there’s always something to be said for doing what you love.