Higher education is just aiming at wallets

Ravi S. Rajan, Tribune News Service

We see you voting with your feet. You’re abandoning work that doesn’t make you happy, searching for purpose in your days, for those things in life that bear joy and meaning.

We in education want that for you, too.

But we haven’t exactly made that clear. For decades, US colleges and universities argued for education by pointing largely to employment statistics. The essential message: “Get a degree, and you’ll never want for a good-paying job.”

After all, what more could anyone want than an almost guaranteed job?

Plenty, as shown by the record 4.5 million workers who up and left their jobs just in November.

Many certainly had no other gigs lined up — not immediately, anyway — and probably didn’t care to.

Having a job — just any job — appears to be no longer enough. Given that, the old employment-centred argument for a college education now feels about as functional as a typewriter. Ironically, in this historic moment, educators’ greatest offering is precisely what we’ve neglected to herald: the discovery and fulfilment of ourselves.

“The key to the word ‘professional’ is not primarily that one should be paid, but that one has ‘professed,’ that one has declared himself indivisibly devoted to some calling which so meaningful that he becomes utterly dedicated,” said Walt Disney, a founder of my own institution, when he helped start the school.

That was about a half-century ago. Maybe we as today’s educators should have seen this contemporary moment coming. As a group, we’ve taken the bait by focusing on selling “the job” as our greatest spoils. We’ve feared speaking plainly to how education should help us find what scratches our itch.

Because of the pandemic, it’s now clearer than ever: Schools erred by speaking so narrowly to wallets while ignoring hearts and minds.

For nearly two years COVID-19 has forced nearly everyone to confront mortality in stark, sometimes immediate terms. It shakes us in ways that most could have imagined before, leaving us little choice but to wonder if we’re making the most of our limited time on this earth.

We continue to feel some form of that craving today. Some of us are fortunate, having long ago unlocked what stirs us and yoked that to meaningful work, sustaining ourselves comfortably in the process. Others are also fortunate: They have found purpose in their lives outside work, and are comfortable with the balance.

For those not so fortunate, the pandemic has awakened awareness of what’s missing from their lives. And if a particular job impedes their completeness, it seems we’re more ready these days to find the exit.

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t some hype for higher education to justify its high price, or to excuse its endemic flaws. Nor am I diminishing the importance of stable work that sustains our families. And I am certainly not pretending that everyone has access to the kind of education that enables this kind of self-discovery.

I am making a plea — for us to see higher education, and all education, as more than just an employment path. To look beyond myopic marketing, and corrosive sound bites, and see the promise that an education focused on developing our critical faculties gives us at this turning point for humanity.

It’s the exploration this kind of education enables that gives us the greatest hope to find the grounded meaning and happiness that we seek as we reject our status quo and reassess our workaday lives. Through these journeys — the self-discovery of heart and mind, our scrutiny of big ideas and the discovery of worlds we wouldn’t otherwise encounter — we sate our thirst for a passion in life, for something as big as or greater than ourselves.

Some will find happiness married with their work; some won’t. No matter what inspires function and joy, educators help students find and electrify that source. That’s the fundamental proposition of education at every level — a life of potential fulfilled, not only a healthy checking account.

Let’s no longer be afraid to say so.