College is often described as an investment in our future. We spend four years and, for many students, tens of thousands of dollars (in fact, the average cost of college in the United States is 39,406 dollars) in exchange for a degree that is supposed to lead to a better job and a higher salary. Because of this, it makes sense to think about college as a financial investment. Higher education is expensive, and students deserve to know whether taking on that cost is likely to improve their lives. The financial calculation has become especially difficult as tuition has risen and student debt has become a defining feature of American college life. So when young people ask whether college is worth it, I understand the question, but I think it is important we examine the assumption that the value of an education can be determined by what it gives us in return.
There are plenty of practical reasons to go to college. It can provide professional training, develop writing and communication skills and introduce students to people and ideas they would not otherwise encounter. For many of us, it also marks the first time we have to navigate adulthood largely on our own. But this mindset still treats education as a means to something else. While it is true that college is worthwhile because it makes us better employees, better citizens or better prepared adults there is also a more fundamental reason to value it.
Learning does not always need to be useful, but this idea has become surprisingly difficult to defend. We have become accustomed to asking what something is for. A degree should lead to a career. A class should teach a marketable skill. A major should lead to a job. Even when we defend the humanities, we often do so by pointing out that studying history or philosophy develops “critical thinking,” as though the subject itself needs to be defended in court before we are allowed to pursue it. There is nothing wrong with those skills. They are valuable. But they are not the only reason to learn.
Consider philosophy. A philosophy class might ask whether human beings have free will, whether morality exists independently of human opinion or what makes a government legitimate. None of these questions comes with a clear career path attached to it. That does not make them frivolous. Knowing how other people have answered these questions changes the way we understand the world. It gives us concepts for thinking about problems we might otherwise struggle to articulate. It exposes us to arguments we may ultimately reject, but that we would not have been capable of considering before. The same is true across the humanities. Studying history can change how you understand the present. Literature can introduce you to experiences far removed from your own. Political theory can make familiar institutions look strange enough to question. Art can teach you to pay attention to things you might otherwise overlook. None of these experiences need to increase your salary to have value.
This is not an argument for ignoring the financial reality of college. Students should not be encouraged to take on life-changing amounts of debt for an education they cannot afford. Colleges should be held accountable for rising costs, and students should have access to honest information about employment and earnings. But there is a difference between recognizing that education has a cost and deciding that its only legitimate return is financial.
In fact, that distinction matters because treating students entirely as economic actors changes what we expect from college. If the purpose of higher education is simply to produce workers, then the obvious solution is to eliminate anything that does not directly contribute to employment. But that would leave out a large part of what education has historically been for.
Universities have always been places where people pursue questions because they are worth asking. The idea that knowledge can be valuable without an immediate practical application is hardly new. What is relatively new is how strongly we have come to expect every part of our education to justify itself economically. College should certainly prepare students for the working world. But it should also give them the opportunity to encounter ideas that have no obvious use, ask questions with no obvious answer and become interested in things simply because they are interesting.