While each of these items is vitally important, the most frequent nightly worries I face involve the overwhelmingly negative narrative about higher education that is currently unfolding. I say this because while many of my worries are local, the public discourse about higher education is global and has potentially devastating consequences for the young people involved. There are two parts to the narrative, both disturbing and worthy of my night terrors.
The first part of the prevailing narrative states that a college education, especially a liberal arts education, is not a worthwhile investment. It posits that, in fact, young people can expect to have healthy, happy and economically rewarding lives without going to college. Health and happiness may not be directly related to college attendance (though some evidence suggests otherwise) but the evidence of the economic value of a college education is irrefutable. So why, then, is it being refuted?
In the midnight hour, one’s thoughts run wild and I often wonder if it’s not an attempt to maintain seemingly entrenched class differences. You see, the messages questioning the value of college, especially liberal arts colleges, are not being sent to the very wealthy. Rather, the suggestion is that those of us who grew up in working class or impoverished families (I count myself among this group) need not worry ourselves about the outcomes of a liberal arts education. We can eke out a perfectly fine existence if we are “job ready.”
