When faced with the breadth and depth of issues confronting our education system — which can broadly be split into the categories of access, cost and quality — it may seem inappropriate to discuss one category without fully considering the others. For example, it may seem improper to discuss how we can improve the quality of education while cost remains a significant barrier to access for many.
Nonetheless, this week, I’ve decided to use my column to discuss an area in which our modern education system seems sorely lacking in quality. Perhaps considering it may yield unforeseen benefits in the area of cost and access.
First, let us consider the purpose of postsecondary education in the United States. America’s first colleges, Harvard University and Yale University, were founded as training grounds for religious ministers. Not until John Hopkins University, styled after the German research universities of the day, was founded in 1876, did the modern research university take shape. Since then, the research university has proven to be the most enduring conception of what postsecondary education is, and for good reason.
Despite its many benefits, the research university is not without its fault. It is an institution that thrives on specialization. On the one hand, this specialization has vastly improved our quality of life, creating countless scientific and medical advances including the polio vaccine, the MRI, the CAT scan and the computer. In addition, the modern research university has been the breeding ground for ideas in economics, sociology, history and political science that have revolutionized how we think about our world and our place in it. As a result, our universities have produced generations of leaders well versed in their chosen disciplines.
Despite its obvious benefits, the specialization that is part and parcel of the modern university often supports a more explicitly utilitarian conception of the purpose of a university. In other words, specialization can reinforce the idea that education is only worth what you get out of it or what is produced by it.
Now, I certainly am not one to assert that a postsecondary education should be some lofty ideal pursued without concern for what you get out of it. As someone studying economics and finance, I fully intend to make use of my education to support myself. But that certainly is not all my Boston University education will be useful for. We must all be wary about thinking of our education in a narrow manner, as just something that will serve a purpose to us. Instead, we should also consider what kind of a person our education forces us to become.
One of the best ways to become the kind of person our society needs is to engage with a diversity of ideas, in addition to specializing in a specific discipline. Indeed, many universities have policies encouraging this: most universities require students to take classes in a variety of disciplines, Boston University included, but it is often simple to circumvent these requirements. In short, one of the more salient and regrettable trends in education seems to be the decline in the role that the broad critical thinking plays in our system.
Perhaps what we need is a reemphasis on the classical education that was the mainstay of college learning for the majority of our country’s history. Although some may consider the Western canon of philosophy, history, literature and art to be an archive of the works of dead white men, the ideas with which these works engage are timeless and necessary. Various Boston University institutions, such as the Kilachand Honors College and Core Curriculum, encourage this kind of broad thinking and engagement with these ideas that have formed the cultural milieu we experience now in 2015.
One of the benefits I believe I have acquired from studying history, philosophy and literature is an enhanced ability for self-criticism. As an economics major, I have to admit that my field of study has a tendency to attempt to quantify everything, to measure in dollars and cents what really cannot be value in monetary terms. Although the value of studying the Western canon cannot necessarily be quantified, that does not mean it is not valuable.
Although it may not stand out in the minds of most students, our university education system was founded at least partially to form good citizens. If — and this is a big if — this is something we as a society care about, we should reemphasize the works that have formed us, not just at the college level but at all levels of education. Ultimately, in order to understand where we are headed as a society, it behooves us to understand where we came from and how we arrived at where we are now.
