Wednesday, October 4, 2023

College education

In my experience, a college education is a chance to swim in the ideas of the great minds. It’s a chance to develop your voice. It’s a chance to develop the critical skills that you will use to make sense of the world. It’s a chance to understand what it means to be a human being.

But I think higher education is failing at this. Major sports have been pushed forward in fundraising and student recruitment. The public face of the university is sport. Graduates celebrate getting the diploma and expect the big paycheck to follow. Many don’t ask for more than that.

Descartes, Oppenheimer, Hawking, Hildegard von Bingen, Harriet Tubman, Schostakovitch, Lewis Thomas are all names that are less important that the names of basketball and football players. Coaches make more money than university presidents. 

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