The skip-college advocates’ contention—that, with the economic downturn, a college degree may not be the best investment—has its appeal. Given the high cost of attending college in the United States, the question of whether a student is getting his or her money’s worth tends to loom large with whoever is paying the tuition fees and the meal-plan bills. Even so, one needn’t necessarily be a liberal-arts graduate to regard as distinctly and speciously utilitarian the idea that higher education is, above all, a route to economic advancement. Unaddressed in that calculus is any question of what else an education might be for: to nurture critical thought; to expose individuals to the signal accomplishments of humankind; to develop in them an ability not just to listen actively but to respond intelligently.

This seems like a good argument until you realize who’s making it: The New Yorker. If you have a trust fund or other monies of independent gain, then of course you can attend college just for the edification of attending college. If you need to be able to find a job quickly and begin to recoup your investment, then you might find that college is a bad deal.

(Via collegefail)

As someone with crushing student loan debt (and basically two liberal arts [LIBERAL ARTS!] degrees), I can see the point. Didn’t Plato have a lot to say about this? Let’s kick out the poets and train all the men for war.