Ode to the uneducated
This graduation season, remember: Your degree does not mean that you are smarter than everyone else.
Graduation season is upon us. Commencement speeches, which I love, will be given—some star-studded, some not. Graduates will listen as words of advice are imparted in poetic form about how to best use their education—how to succeed in their career, how to serve their community, how to be a good human. The speeches that I find most perplexing are those that are given by college or high school dropouts who went on to become quite successful, despite not completing a formal education. They viewed their school-based education as getting in their way; thus, they had to leave to pursue their passion and achieve their goals.
Steve Jobs was one such person. In his commencement speech to Stanford graduates, he even went so far as to say this about dropping out: “it was one of the best decisions I ever made.” Why? Because then he was free to pursue his interests and learn content that he found intriguing, which later led to successful products that many of us use and love. Jobs created an object and technology that has profoundly changed the way we communicate. And dropping out of college opened the path to create it. Yet, he stood in front of a crowd of students gathered to celebrate their successful completion of a university education to offer them advice on how to use their education, and how to live. Why was he even invited?
Because he understood how stuff works. He created products and ran a successful business, which required him to understand our legal system and tax system and all of the other institutions a corporation must interface with in the U.S. Certainly, he had advisors helping him along the way, as most heads of companies do, but he still had to be privy to the knowledge of his advisors to make his own decisions for the benefit of his company. To be sure, not everyone is like Jobs. But it would be disingenuous to suggest that no other college dropout is like him.
The Thinking Man is Not Always College Educated
Back in January an article was published in Discourse Magazine that overhyped the value of a four-year degree: “The Thinking Man’s Majority.” The premise, or at least what stuck out to me, is the notion that college graduates know how stuff works, the systems and structures that make America run. The author’s specific argument in favor of being college educated is the value of receiving training in how to conduct research, how to evaluate sources, and how to weigh different claims of knowledge. And, he seemed to think this most crucial: the four years on campus gives students a “familiarity with the kinds of institutions that produce knowledge.” This sort of training, the author contends, makes graduates with a college degree more appropriate to govern the country, or at least make major decisions about consequential human affairs.
I, too, want those in charge of governing, and all that the task entails, to understand how stuff works—our governance structure, our corporate sector, our civil sector, humans—but I’m not so convinced that a (modern) college education is any sort of guarantee that a person has a greater understanding of how to conduct research, evaluate claims, or grasp the inner working our institutions, or even the inner workings of their own field, in some cases. The author seems to overstate the extent to which the coursework leading to a four-year degree teaches students how to think. If the argument was that philosophy majors trained at rigorous, academic-focused universities are more likely to become a “thinking man,” and thus better equipped to make governance decisions, then I might be a little more convinced. But such preparation is not the norm.
Certainly, some young people have more knowledge than others regarding topics like the economy. Graduating with an economics degree does provide you with a better understanding of economic systems, or at least an edge over someone who majored in physics, for example. But I dare say the economics major is not as well versed in the U.S. economic system as someone who starts a business, or runs one, and invests their earnings, even if they dropped out of college or never attended in the first place. The economics major could catch up in knowledge to the dropout if they too start their own business but not if they simply work through life as a middle manager.
I graduated with a degree in elementary education and did not walk off of my university’s campus knowing how a school district is structured nor how decisions within it are made, let alone how the education system writ-large operates. I had to leave the classroom and start working as a policy advocate, interacting with policymakers and the governance system regularly, to figure all of that out. And in graduate school, I encountered many scholars of education who had only ever studied schools; they had never worked in one. Their views far too often did not accord with reality, and yet, they were successfully on track to become university professors, granting them the authority to educate future students about how classrooms and school districts are run and how the U.S. system of education functions.
There are, of course, many graduates who do in fact understand how systems work, at least in their professional field or field of inquiry. And, on the flipside, there are also plenty of others (perhaps too many) who think they know how stuff works. Who can regurgitate what they have read in books or learned through class discussions. Students who do exactly what is asked of them by their teachers in the exact way that they are supposed to do it and therefore receive straight As. But who, nonetheless, never actually think deeply about what they have read or learned. Students who want to get a good job after they graduate, which motivates their drive for good grades, but are mostly interested in the college experience—the tailgates and frat parties and social events that have nothing to do with applying the knowledge they acquired through their coursework. Those who complete assignments then forget about them and the content supposedly learned. The students who enjoy the image of being well-studied without taking the time to actually understand what they’ve studied.
When I picture the well-educated-in-name-only, a scene from Good Will Hunting comes to mind. Matt Damon’s character, Will, defends his friend, Chuckie, against a Harvard graduate student who is trying to make Chuckie look stupid in front of two women he is hitting on. Will steps in when the grad student begins regurgitating some books he has read and tries to pass them off as his own ideas to embarrass Chuckie. Will picks up on the falsity, calls him out for it, and, as a comeback, tells him that he “could have gotten his $150,000 education for $1.50 in … late charges at the library.” The point being that anyone who is literate can check out a book from the library, read it, adapt the views as their own, and go around spouting them without ever wondering: Is the author correct? Do I agree with their views?
Of course, not all students behave like the character in the movie, skating through their degree without any original thoughts of their own. But a four-year degree is falling short on the goal of graduating students who think deeply about the world they inhabit and understand how stuff works. Partly because the incentives don’t exist to achieve that goal. The college experience is alluring and pulls young minds away from coursework and towards the social aspects of college life. Certainly, some students may spend their leisure time involved in clubs or social events that encourage discussion and debate of politics, culture, history, or other subjects of study, but I doubt that’s the norm. And if attending university with the sole purpose of getting a job is the motivating force and singular focus of students, as it often is, then learning how stuff works so that they can fully participate in American life beyond their career isn’t top of mind or even a consideration for how to spend one’s time on campus. Plus, just like the so-called uneducated, consumption of social media has led even the most educated with the highest degrees to adopt views about topics and systems they know very little about, views that often run counter to reality.
I am not asserting that there is no value in a four-year degree to help young people acquire a greater understanding of the ins and outs of the world they inhabit. I just think the notion that university educated citizens have a greater understanding of how stuff works than those without a four-year degree is an overstatement.
The Real Thinking Man
I suspect that the thinking man who understands how stuff works matures by living in the world and being a student of his surroundings. And by taking it upon himself to read books that cause him to think deeply and accumulate knowledge, with no promise of pomp and circumstance at the end of his journey. He elects to read books that house the wisdom that has shaped the modern world, without the requirement of attendance to a university or a bachelor’s degree to access. He stays abreast of the happenings in his field by reading topic-specific media outlets. He has managed to learn how to conduct research and acquire knowledge without taking college courses. He can tell you how institutions work because he's had to interact with them in the course of conducting his business.
This year's graduates, and all of the graduates in all of the years to come, should walk away from their alma mater thinking: “This is just the beginning. I don’t know everything. I am not smarter than someone without a four-year degree. I have so much more to learn about how this world—with all of its systems, its institutions, its people—works. And I could learn these things from the most unexpected people and in the most unexpected places.” They should be open to the idea that they might be wrong, that a college degree does not automatically ensure their access to knowledge, even if they use Google Scholar instead of Wikipedia. Because we are all susceptible to bad information—a degree does not protect you from that—and we’re all able to make bad decisions with that information. Yet, we are all also able to access knowledge, learn, and grow. The best way to understand how stuff works is by living in the world, interacting with institutions, observing our surroundings, and mastering our field of work or study.