purpose of higher education essay

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What’s the Value of Higher Education?

Have political and fiscal debates about higher education lost sight of the value of education for individuals and society? Dr. Johnnetta Cole discusses how universities can inform and inspire.

• Dr. Johnnetta Cole President Emerita, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art; President Emerita, Spelman College and Bennett College

This interview was conducted at the Yale Higher Education Leadership Summit , hosted by Yale SOM’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute on January 30, 2018.

The value of a college degree can be measured in a number of different ways: increased lifetime earnings potential, a network of classmates and fellow alumni, subject-matter expertise, a signal of stick-to-itiveness, potentially a marker of class or the capacity to move across classes. There are also less tangible benefits, like becoming a more well-rounded individual and part of a well-informed public.

Yale Insights recently talked with Dr. Johnnetta Cole about how she measures the value of higher education. Cole is the former president of Spelman College and Bennett College, the only two historically black colleges and universities that are exclusively women’s colleges. After retiring from academia, she served as the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. In addition, she served on the boards of a number of corporations, including Home Depot, Merck, and Coca-Cola. She was the first African-American chair of the board for the United Way of America.

Q: Why does higher education matter?

I would say that we could get widespread agreement on what I’m going to call the first purpose of higher education: through this amazingly powerful process of teaching and learning, students come to better understand the world.

There might be some disagreement on the second purpose. I’d say it is to inspire students to figure out how they can contribute to helping to make the world better. Certainly, higher education is about scholarship, but it’s also about service. It’s about creativity. It’s about matters of the mind, but it’s also, or at least it should be, about matters of the heart and the soul.

Q: Has the public perception of universities changed in recent years?

Throughout the history—and herstory—of higher education, there have been doubters, those who have critiqued it. But I have a concern, and some polls tell us, in this period in which we are living, many people believe that higher education is not contributing in a positive way to American life.

That’s something that we need to work on, those of us who are deeply engaged in and care about higher education, because I think when one looks with as much objectivity as possible, the truth is, and it’s always been, that higher education contributes substantially.

Q: You’ve led two historically black colleges for women. What is the role of special mission institutions?

In my view, we still need special mission institutions. Remember Brandeis, Notre Dame, and Brigham Young are special mission institutions.

With respect to historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), not every African American wants to or does go to an HBCU. The same is true of women and women’s colleges. But for those who wish that kind of education, and if the fit is right, it’s almost magical.

I think it is as basic as having an entire community believe that you can. On these campuses, we believe that black students can do whatever they set their minds to do. On the women’s campuses, we believe that women can reach heights that have not been imagined for women.

HBCUs are not totally free of racism. Women’s colleges are not utopias where there are no expressions of gender inequality or sexism. But they come far closer than at our predominately white and co-ed institutions.

Q: One of the big issues with higher education now is cost. How do we solve the affordability problem?

The affordability question is highly complex and serious. James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced.” I believe that this is a perfect example. Colleges and universities are not just raising tuitions so they can make big profits. Pell grants are no longer at least a reasonable response to the affordability question.

We’ve got to figure this out because, in a democracy, accessibility to education is fundamental. The idea that something as precious, as powerful, as a solid education is only accessible to some and not to others, is an assault upon democracy.

Q: You came out of retirement to lead the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Why was the draw so strong?

I’ve managed, systematically, to get a failing grade in retirement.

I grew up in the South, in the days of legalized segregation—you could also call it state-sponsored racism. I didn’t have access to symphony halls. I didn’t have access to art museums. I still remember the library that I went to in order to travel the world through books, was the A. L. Lewis Colored Public Library.

As a young girl, I fell in love with the visual arts, especially African and African-American art. I went off to Fisk University at age 15 and began to see the real works of art for which we only had reproductions in my home. From Fisk, I went to Oberlin, where the Allen Memorial Art Gallery was a special place of solace for me

The opportunity with the Smithsonian wasn’t something I sought; I was asked to apply. My doctorate is in anthropology, not art history, so I was reluctant, but they told me they were looking for a leader, not an art historian. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. The work was an almost indescribable joy.

Generally, our museums across America do not reflect who America is, nor do they reflect how our world looks. They need to be far more diverse in terms of their boards, staff, exhibitions, educational programs, and visitorship.

What the African art museum has is a unique opportunity because it can speak to something that binds us together. If one is human, just go back far enough, I mean way back, and we have all come from a single place. It is called Africa.

Here’s a museum that says to its visitors, “No matter who you are, by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, ability or disability, or nationality, come to a place where the visual arts connect you to the very cradle of humanity.”

During those eight years when I had the joy of being the director of the National Museum of African Art, I would greet our visitors by saying “Welcome home! Welcome to a place that presents the diverse and dynamic, the exquisite arts of Africa, humanity’s original home.”

Q: Do you think that our education and cultural institutions are properly valued in our society?

I have to say no. Because if we did, we would take better care of them. If we did, we would make sure that not some but all of our educational institutions from kindergarten through post-secondary education, into graduate and professional schools, have the means to do what needs to be done.

If we really value all of our cultural expressions, whether it’s dance or music, visual arts, theater, when there is a budget shortfall, we wouldn’t say, “These are the first things to go.” We wouldn’t say, “Kids can do without music in their public school.” It’s one thing to say we love an institution; it’s another to care for and protect an institution. I think we can do far better.

The Value of Higher Education Essay

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Malcolm Forbes once said, “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one”

Education is undoubtedly the one factor that eventually decides the level of progress attained by a nation or a people; it is what separates the third world from the developed world and the poor from the rich. Although the process of formal education starts at the kindergarten level and goes on till a student graduates from high school, in today’s competitive world, this is not enough.

Basic education is a necessity and must be pursued by one and all, but it only suffices the basic needs of life. In order to meet the growing demands of the global job market and to be recognized professionally, higher education is not only a need but a necessity. Higher education acts as a stepping stone between college and the world of employment, it helps one to obtain a better salary by becoming a more attractive alternative for employers and also broadens one’s horizons in terms of knowledge and experience by allowing a person to specialize and excel in a particular field.

Although pursuing higher education is an expensive affair in most developed countries like the USA or UK, but the benefits are immense. On the last count, there were more than 53000 courses at 329 higher education institutions within the UCAS scheme in the UK. The benefits that graduates enjoyed included an approximate 17% higher earnings than those with just school leaving certificates, and the figure rises to approximately 25% for those who pursued courses in

engineering, law or medicine. In addition to this, only about 6% of the graduates remain unemployed six months after graduation.

Thus, to summarize, not only does higher education offer life benefits such as the experience of greater perspectives, increased confidence in one’s field of choice, and in-depth knowledge of how to deal with situations that may arise in your career but also increases one’s employability and assures a greater starting salary. The benefits of obtaining a higher education far outweigh its risks and make it a valuable asset in a person’s life and career.

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What Is the Purpose and Future of Higher Education?

A sociologist explores the history and future of higher education..

Posted February 18, 2019 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

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A recent story asked, “ Can small liberal arts colleges survive the next decade? ” This question is important as we see the closure of some small schools, mostly in areas away from big cities. Yet, as University of California Riverside sociology and public policy distinguished professor Steven G. Brint notes based on his new book Two Cheers for Higher Education , “There’s always been a small number of colleges that close every year—usually fewer than a dozen—and more are opened for the first time than closed.” This illustrates, among other things, why it is important to consider a historical perspective on higher education to place recent individual news stories in context. That’s exactly what his latest book does: It explores the rich history of higher education, leading him to argue that overall higher education appears to be doing quite well, but also that there remain important concerns for higher education on the horizon.

I asked Steven questions about the purpose of higher education, why he argues higher education is doing quite well, and what his concerns are for its future. Anyone interested in the rich history of higher education and how that informs the future of higher education should read this book. Going to college or university is increasingly a fixture and perhaps even an obsession for parents and students, and understanding the history of that industry is useful to help us think about why we encourage students to go to college in the first place.

What, in your view, is the purpose of higher education?

The aims of higher education change over time. In the United States, the original purposes were to prepare students for a few “learned professions,” especially the clergy, and to provide a strong, religiously tinged moral education. Many of the activities that we now associate with higher education—extra-curricular clubs, majoring in a defined specialization, faculty research, access for socioeconomically disadvantaged students—came later.

Today, we would have to start by recognizing the fundamental fact that the purposes of higher education are highly differentiated by the stratum in the system institutions occupy. The aims of community colleges are very different from those of research universities. I do not talk about community colleges in the book, though I did write a book on community colleges early in my career . The great majority of the 3,000 or so four-year colleges and universities are primarily devoted to teaching students, mainly in occupational fields that in theory equip graduates to obtain jobs. Students will receive a smattering of general education in lower-division and will have opportunities to participate in extra-curricular activities. The latter are more important for many students than classroom studies. Students hone interpersonal skills on campus, make contacts that can be useful for instrumental purposes as well as ends in themselves. For those who finish, their diplomas do provide a boost in the labor market, more for quantitative fields than for other fields.

Research universities are of course the most complex environments and the range of their activities is difficult to catalog in a short answer. In addition to providing instruction in hundreds of programs, they run hundreds of student clubs and organizations, contribute to the selection of high achieving students for graduate degrees, train and mentor graduate and professional students, produce thousands or tens of thousands of research papers annually, reach out to industrial partners, field semi-professional athletic teams, solve community problems, run tertiary care hospitals, patent new discoveries and attempt to create environments conducive to learning for a very wide variety of students. One could say that these activities, taken together, constitute the enacted purposes of research universities.

However, when you look at their activities from the perspective of public policy, the focus will tend to be on three main purposes: (1) human capital development (in other words, improving the cognitive and non-cognitive skills of students), (2) basic research and research in the national interest, and (3) the provision of access for students from lower-income and under-represented minority backgrounds. Implicitly, Two Cheers for Higher Education focuses more on these primary aims of public policy than on some of the ancillary activities of universities. Of course, some of the activities that could be considered ancillary—such as student clubs and the patenting of new discoveries—are clearly related to these public policy aims. For that reason, I do also discuss them at some length in the book.

At a time when we see stories of colleges closing, why is it that you argue that higher education is doing quite well?

We do see some colleges closing and more colleges merging. There’s always been a small number of colleges that close every year—usually fewer than a dozen—and more are opened for the first time than closed. We do hear a lot of talk about mergers in recent years, and some of the regional public universities in rural areas are definitely struggling. Where population is declining steadily, it becomes harder to make the case for the local college. But population is not declining in urban areas or in suburban areas around big cities. Here we see new colleges rising or existing colleges growing larger. Higher education is doing quite well in the parts of the country that are seeing growth in population and wealth. Sometimes higher education has been an important influence in attracting employers, new jobs, and new wealth. The state of Georgia is an interesting example. It now has the 10th largest economy of the 50 states, and the investments that state leaders and donors have made in Georgia Tech, Emory, the University of Georgia, and Georgia State University have played an important role in the state’s impressive development.

Though your book is largely positive about higher education, you note some concerns about the future of higher education. What are those?

According to public opinion surveys, the major concerns of Americans have to do with cost, the quality of undergraduate education, and liberal bias in the classroom. I address each of these issues in the book. One hopes that criminal justice reform may allow most of the 50 states to invest more heavily in higher education, reducing family’s burdens. I also advocate a universal, income-contingent loan repayment policy similar to the ones that already exist in England, Australia and several other countries. My research has led me to agree with the critics that the quality of undergraduate education is too low for too many. I show in the book how the lessons of the sciences of learning can be embedded without much more than forethought in even large lecture classes. The evidence on liberal bias is mixed. Clearly, minorities remain subject to many discriminatory and wounding acts on college campuses. At the same time, where we find a liberal orthodoxy there’s a risk that assumptions and commitments will substitute for evidence and reasoning. We do need more spaces on campus where contemporary social and political issues can be discussed and debated.

I also discuss what academic and political leaders can do about the threat to the physical campus represented by online competition , by the tremendous growth of campus administrative staff (compared to the slow growth of faculty), and the deplorable increase in poorly-paid and sometimes poorly-prepared adjunct instructors.

I hope that the evidence and recommendations that I provide will stimulate new thinking and action in each of these areas of concern. The U.S. is fortunate to have the strongest system of higher education in the world, but many problems arose during the period I cover. It will be important to address these problems before they undermine public support for institutions that are now central to the country’s future well-being.

Brint, S. G. (2018). Two cheers for higher education: Why American universities are stronger than ever--and how to meet the challenges they face . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jonathan Wai, Ph.D. , is Assistant Professor of Education Policy and Psychology and the 21st Century Endowed Chair in Education Policy at the University of Arkansas.

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• Published: 13 October 2017

Rethinking higher education and its relationship with social inequalities: past knowledge, present state and future potential

• Theocharis Kromydas 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  3 , Article number:  1 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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The purposes and impact of higher education on the economy and the broader society have been transformed through time in various ways. Higher education institutional and policy dynamics differ across time, but also between countries and political regimes and therefore context cannot be neglected. This article reviews the purpose of higher education and its institutional characteristics juxtaposing two, allegedly rival, conceptual frameworks; the instrumental and the intrinsic one. Various pedagogical traditions are critically reviewed and used as examples, which can potentially inform today’s policy making. Since, higher education cannot be seen as detached from all other lower levels of education appropriate conceptual links are offered throughout this article. Its significance lies on the organic synthesis of literature across social science, suggesting ways of going forward based on the traditions that already exist but seem underutilized so far because of overdependence in market-driven practices. This offers a new insight on how theories can inform policy making, through conceptual “bridging” and reconciliation. The debate on the purpose of higher education is placed under the context of the most recent developments of increasing social inequalities in the western world and its relation to the mass model of higher education and the relevant policy decisions for a continuous increase in participation. This article suggests that the current policy focus on labor market driven policies in higher education have led to an ever growing competition transforming this social institution to an ordinary market-place, where attainment and degrees are seen as a currency that can be converted to a labour market value. Education has become an instrument for economic progress moving away from its original role to provide context for human development. As a result, higher education becomes very expensive and even if policies are directed towards openness, in practice, just a few have the money to afford it. A shift toward a hybrid model, where the intrinsic purpose of higher education is equally acknowledged along with its instrumental purpose should be seen by policy makers as the way forward to create educational systems that are more inclusive and societies that are more knowledgeable and just.

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Introduction.

The mainstream view in the western world, as informed by the human capital theory sees education, as an ordinary investment and the main reason why someone consumes time and money to undertake higher levels of education, is the high returns expected from the corresponding wage premium, when enters the labour market (Becker, 1964 , 1993 ). Nevertheless, things in practice are more complicated and this sequence of events is unlikely to be sustained, especially in recession periods like the one we currently live in. On the contrary, one notion of education, related somewhat to the American liberal arts tradition, is the intrinsic notion, which interprets that the purpose of education is to ‘equip people to make their own free, autonomous choices about the life they will lead’ (Bridges, 1992 : 92). There might be an economic basis underpinning this individual choice, but the intrinsic notion permits more subjective motivations, which are not necessarily affected by economic circumstances.

Robinson and Aronica ( 2009 ) argue that education, have become an impersonal linear process, a type of assembly line, similar to a factory production. They challenge this view and call for a less standardised pedagogy; more personalised to students needs as well as talents. Education is not similar to a manufacturing production-line, since students are highly concerned about the quality of education they receive as opposed to motor cars, which are indifferent to the process by which they are manufactured. Along these lines, Waters ( 2012 ), following Weber’s ( 1947 , 1968 ) rationale on the role of bureaucracy in modern societies, adds that this manufacturing process is achieved through rigid, rationalised and productively efficient but totally impersonal bureaucracy, operated in a way that sees children as raw materials for the creation of adults, which is the final product properly equipped to reproduce “itself” by being a parent to a new born “raw material” and so forth. Durkheim ( 1956 , 2006 ) sees this as a mechanism where adults exercise their influence over the younger in order to maintain the status quo they desire. However, since education entails ontological as well as epistemological implications, primary focus should be given to learning in such a way that educative and social functions could be amalgamated, rather than solely focusing on the delivery of existing knowledge per se, which becomes a reiterated process and an unchallenged absolute truth (Freire, 1970 ; Heidegger, 1988 ; Dall’ Alba and Barnacle, 2007 ).

This article focus on higher education; since it is the last stage before somebody enters the labour market and thus the instrumental view becomes more dominant over the intrinsic view, compared to the lower levels of education. Higher education, is being traditionally offered by universities. The first established university in Europe is the University of Bologna, where the term “academic freedom” was introduced as the kernel of its culture (Newman, 1996 ). Graham ( 2013 ) distinguishes between three different models of higher education. These are: the university college, the research and the technical university. He provides a historical review of the origins of these three models. The university college is the oldest one, where Christian values were the core values. Later on, when scientific knowledge questioned the universal theological truth, another type of university has been established, where research was the ultimate goal of the scholarship. This type of university has subsequently transformed by the introduction of the liberal arts tradition, flourished in the US. The research university model, originated circa 16 th century in Cambridge and established in Berlin by the introduction of the Humboldian University, shared a common aim: the pursuit of knowledge and its dissemination to the greater society. The third model of university is the technical one. It has been established in an industrial revolution context in Scotland and particularly in Glasgow in the premises of what is currently known as the University of Strathclyde. While the introduction of capitalism changed radically the structure and the format of labour relations, the technical model was based on the idea that industrial skills had to be acquired by formal education and somehow verified institutionally in order to be applied to the broader society. This is the first time where the up to then distinct fields of education and industry, started to be conceived as inextricably tight in a rather linear way.

These different models of higher education cultures and traditions still exist, but in reality, Universities worldwide follow a hybrid approach, where all traditions collaborate with each other. However, there are some universities that still carry the reputation and tradition of a specific model and to some extent this tradition differentiates them from all others. It is not the scope of this research to analyse this in detail, as the main aim is to offer an institutional and policy narrative, exploring the purpose of higher education and its relationship with social inequalities, focusing primarily on the western world.

Nowadays, in a rapidly changing word, the major debate is placed under the forms of institutional transformation of higher education. Brennan ( 2004 ), based on Trow ( 1979 , 2000 ), allocates three forms of higher education. The first one is the elite form, which main aim is to prepare and shape the mind-set of students originated from the most dominant class. The second is the mass form of higher education, which transmits the knowledge and skills acquired in higher education into the technical and economic roles students subsequently perform in the labour market. Lastly, the third is the universal form, which main purpose is to adapt students and the general population to the rapid social and technological changes.

This article reviews the contemporary trends in higher education and its widespread diffusion as interacted with the evolutions in western economies and societies, where social inequalities persist and even become wider (Dorling and Dorling, 2015 ). The narrative used in this article is more suitable to conceptualise higher education in a western world context, though we acknowledge that via globalisation, the way education and particularly higher education is delivered in the rest of the world seems to follow similar to the Western worlds paths, despite the apparent differences in culture, social and economic systems as well as writing systems. Footnote 1

An interdisciplinary and critical synthesis of the relevant literature is conducted, presenting two stances that are largely considered as rival: The instrumental one that treats higher education as an ordinary investment with particular financial yields in the labour market and the more intrinsic one which sees higher education as mainly detached from the logic of economic costs and benefits. The theoretical rivalry is apparent since in the former approach higher education is an inevitable property of labour market and thus an indispensable part of the mainstream economic neoliberal regime, whereas the latter sees no logical link between higher education and labour market purposes and therefore the content and substance of learning and knowledge acquisition in education and specifically in higher education should not be market-driven or aligned to the functions of specific economic regimes. However, this article argues that educational systems, and particularly their higher levels, are amalgamated parts of contemporary societies and therefore theories and practices need to move away from rather futile binary rationales.

The remainder of this paper explains why both the intrinsic and instrumental approaches are doomed to fail in practice when used in isolation. In a rapidly diverging and polarised world, where social inequalities rise within as well as between countries, common sense dictates social theories and practices to move towards reconciliation rather than stubborn rivalry. In that spirit, this paper argues that the intrinsic and instrumental approach are in fact complementary to each other. Such view can inform policy making towards building more inclusive educational systems; organically tight with the broader society. The narrative this article uses departs and expands on the rationale of eminent critical pedagogists such as Freire, Bronfenbrenner, Bourdieu and Kozol in order to challenge the current instrumental world-view of education, at least as this is apparent in the western world. Then the article moves into offering a reasoning for an organic synthesis of existing knowledge in order the two rival theories to be actualised in practice as a unified and reconciled pedagogical strategy. This reasoning builds on the research conducted by Durst’s ( 1999 ), Payne ( 1999 ) and Lu and Horner ( 2009 ). Durst ( 1999 ) suggests a “reflective instrumentalism”, where student’s pragmatic view that education is just a way of finding a well-paid job, operated in tandem with critical pedagogical canons, is indeed possible. Payne ( 1999 ) proposes a similar approach, where students are equipped with the necessary tools to find a job in the labour market; however educators should engage students with this knowledge in a critical way in order to be able to produce something new. Likewise Lu and Horner ( 2009 ) note that educators and students need to work together in such a way that perceptions of both are amenable to change and career choices are critically discussed in a constantly changing social context.

The purpose of higher education in western societies

Mokyr ( 2002 ) suggests that education should be integrated by both inculcation and emancipation in order to serve individual intellectual development as well as social progression. Shapiro ( 2005 ) emphasizes the need for the higher education institutions to serve a public purpose moving beyond narrow self-serving concerns, as well as to enforce social change in order to reflect the nature of a society that its members desire. More recently, in philosophical terms Barnett ( 2017 , p 10) calls for a wider conceptual landscape in higher education where “The task of an adequate philosophy of higher education…is not merely to understand the university or even to defend it but to change it”. )

The purpose of education and its meaning in the contemporary western societies has been also criticised by Bo ( 2009 ), suggesting that education has become a contradictory notion that leaves no space for emancipation since it gives no opportunity for improvisation to students. Thus, the students feel encaged within the system instead of being liberated. Bo agrees with Mokyr, who highlighted the need for recalling the basic notions of education from ancient philosophies: that education should be integrated by both inculcation and emancipation in order to serve individual intellectual development as well as social progression (Mokyr, 2002 ; Bo, 2009 ).

Not all individuals and societies agree on the purposes and roles of higher education in the modern world. However, in any case, it is a place where teaching and research can be accommodated in an organised fashion for the promotion of various types of knowledge, applied and non-applied. It is a place where money and moral values compete and collaborate simultaneously, where the development of labour market skills and competences coexist with the identification and utilisations of people’s skills and talents as well as the pursuit of employment, morality and citizenship.

The post-WWII era has been characterised by the mass model of higher education. Before this, higher education was for those belonging to higher social classes (Brennan, 2004 ). This model became the kernel of educational policies in Europe and generally, in the western world (Shapiro, 2005 ). Such policies have been boosted by the advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which enhance commercial and non-commercial bonds between countries and higher education institutions, transforming the role of higher education even further, making it rather universal (Jongbloed et al., 2008 ). Higher education’s boundaries have become vague and the predefined “social contract” between its institutions and those participated in them, is more complicated to be defined in absolute terms. Higher education institutions are now characterised by economic competition in a strict global market environment, where governments are not the key players anymore (Brennan, 2004 ).

Moreover, student demographics in higher education are constantly changing. Higher education is now an industry operating in a global market. Competition to attract talents from around the world is growing rapidly as an increasing number of countries offer additional graduate and post graduate positions to non-nationals, usually at a higher cost compared to nationals (Barber et al., 2013 ). Countries such as China or Singapore that are growing economically very rapidly are investing huge amounts of money to develop their higher education system and make it more friendly to talented people from around the world. The advent of new technologies have changed the traditional model of higher education, where physical presence is not a necessary requirement anymore (Yuan et al., 2013 ). Studying while working is much easier and therefore more mature students have now the opportunity to study towards a graduate or post-graduate degree. All these developments have increased the potential for profit; however it also requires huge amount of money to be invested in new technologies and all kinds of infrastructures and resources. The need for diversification in funding sources is simply essential and therefore all other industries become inevitably more engaged (Kaiser et al., 2014 ). On top of all these, climate change, the rise of terrorism, the prolonged economic uncertainty and the automazation of labour will likely increase cross-national and intraoccupational mobility and therefore the demand for higher education, especially in the recipient countries of the economically developed western world will inevitably rise. Summing up, higher education institutions operate under a very fluid and unpredictable environment and therefore approaches that are informed by adaptability and flexibility are absolutely crucial. The hybrid approach we propose where instrumental and intrinsic values are reconciled is along these lines.

Modern views of higher education place its function under a digital knowledge-based society, where economy dominates. Labour markets demand for skills such as technological competence and complex problem-solving by critical thinking and multitasking, which increases competition and in turn, accelerates the pace of the working day (Westerheijden et al., 2007 ). Haigh and Clifford ( 2011 ) argue that high competency, in both hard and soft skills, is not enough, as higher education needs to go deeper into changing attitudes and behaviours becoming the core of a globalised knowledge-based-economy. However, the trends of transferring knowledge and skills by universities, which “increasingly instrumentalize, professionalize, vocationalize, corporatize, and ultimately technologize education” (Thomson, 2001 : 244), have been extensively criticised in epistemological as well as in ontological terms (Bourdieu, 1998 ; Dall’ Alba and Barnacle, 2007 ). Livingstone ( 2009 ) argues that education and labour market have different philosophical departures and institutional principles to fulfill and therefore conceptualising them as concomitant economic events, with strong causal conjunctions, leads to logical fallacies. Livingstone sees the intrinsic purposes of education and contemporary labour market as rather contradictory than complimentary and any attempt to see them as the latter, leads to arbitrary and ambiguous outcomes, which in turn mislead rather than inform policy making. The current article, building on the arguments of Durst’s ( 1999 ), Payne ( 1999 ) and Lu and Horner ( 2009 ) challenges this view introducing a “bridging” rationale between the two theories, which can be also actualized in practice and inform policy making.

When education, and especially higher education, is considered as a public social right that everyone should have access to, human capital, as solely informed by the investment approach, cannot be seen as the most appropriate tool to explain the benefits an individual and society can gain from education. Citizenship can be regarded as one of these tools and perhaps concepts, such as the social and c ultural capital or habitus , which contrary to human capital acknowledge that students are not engaged with education just to succeed high returns in the labour market but apart from the economic capital, should be of equal importance when we try to offer a better explanation of the individuals’ drivers to undertake higher education. (Bourdieu, 1986 ; Coleman, 1988 ). Footnote 2 For example, Bourdieu ( 1984 ) thinks that certificates and diplomas are neither indications of academic or applied to the labour market knowledge, nor signals of competences but rather take the form of tacit criteria set by the ruling class to identify people from a particular social origin. Yet, Bourdieu does not disregard the human capital theory as invalid; however he remains very sceptical on its narrow social meaning as it becomes a property of ruling class and used as a mechanism to maintain their power and tacitly reproduce social inequalities.

Higher education attainment cannot be examined irrespectively of someone’s capabilities, as its conceptual framework presupposes a social construction of interacting and competing individuals, fulfilling a certain and, sometimes common to all, task each time. Capabilities, certainly, exist in and out of this context, as it includes both innate traits and acquired skills in a dynamic social environment. Sen ( 1993 : 30) defines capability as “a person’s ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being; [it] represents the alternative combinations of things a person is able to do or be”. Moreover, Sen argues that capabilities should not be seen only as a means for succeeding a certain goal, but rather as an end itself (Sen, 1985 ; Saito, 2003 ; Walker and Unterhalter, 2007 ).

Capabilities are a prerequisite of well-being and therefore, social institutions should direct people into fulfilling this aim in order to feel satisfied with their lives. However, since satisfaction is commonly understood as a subjective concept, it cannot be implied that equal levels of life satisfaction, as these perceived by people of different demographic and socio-economic characteristics, mean social and economic equality. Usually, the sense of life satisfaction is relative to future expectations, aspirations and past empirical experiences, informed by the socio-economic circumstances people live in (Saito, 2003 ).

According to the capability approach, assessing the educational attainment of individuals or the quality of teachers and curriculum are not such useful tasks, if not complemented by the capacity of a learner to convert resources into capabilities. Sen’s ( 1985 , 1993 ) capability approach, challenges the human capital theory, which sees education as an ordinary investment undertaken by individuals. It also remains sceptical towards structuralist and post-structruralist approaches, which support the dominance of institutional settings and power over the individual acts. According to Sen ( 1985 , 1993 ), educational outcomes, as these are measured by student enrolments, their performance on tests or their expected future income, are very poor indicators for evaluating the overall purpose of education, related to human well-being. Moreover, the capability approach does not imply that education can only enhance peoples’ capabilities. It also implies that education, can be detrimental, imposing severe life-long disadvantages to individuals and societies, if delivered poorly (Unterhalter, 2003 , 2005 ).

From Sen’s writings, it is not clear whether the capability approach imply a distinction between instrumental and intrinsic values. Even if someone attempts an interpretation of the capability approach by arguing that it is only means that have an instrumental value, whereas ends only an intrinsic one, it is still unclear how can we draw a line between means and ends in a rather objective way. Escaping from this rather dualistic interpretation, a common-sense argument seems apparent: Capabilities have both intrinsic and instrumental value. Material resources can be obtained through people’s innate talents and acquired skills; however through the same resources transformed into capabilities a person who does not see this as an end but rather as a means, can also become a trusted member of the community and a good citizen, given that some kind of freedom of choice exists. Thus, resources apart from their instrumental value can also have an intrinsic one, with the caveat that the person chooses to conceive them as means towards a socially responsible end.

The American tradition in student development goes back to the liberal arts tradition, which main aim is to build a free person as an active member of a civic society. The essence of this tradition can be found in Nussbaum ( 1998 : 8)

“When we ask about the relationship of a liberal education to citizenship, we are asking a question with a long history in the Western philosophical tradition. We are drawing on Socrates’ concept of ‘the examined life,’ on Aristotle’s notions of reflective citizenship, and above all on Greek and Roman Stoic notions of an education that is ‘liberal’ in that it liberates the mind from bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world.”

Nowadays, liberal arts tradition is regarded as the delivery of interdisciplinary education across the social sciences but also beyond that, aiming to prepare students for the challenges they are facing both as professionals and as members of civic society. However, as Kozol notes in reality things are quite different (Kozol, 2005 , 2012 ). Kozol devoted much of his work examining the social context of schools in the US by focusing on the interrelationships that exist, maintained or transformed between students, teachers and parents. He points out that segregation and local disparities in the US schools are continuously increasing. The US schools and especially urban schools are seen as distinctive examples of institutions where social discrimination propagates while the US educational system currently functions as a mechanism of reproducing social inequality. Kozol is very critical on the instrumental purpose of market-driven education as this places businesses and commerce as the “key players”, since they shape the purpose, content and curriculum of education. At the same time, students, their parents as well as teachers, whose roles should have been essential, are displaced into some kind of token participants.

Hess ( 2004 ) might agree that US schools have become vehicles of increasing social inequalities but he suggest a very different to Kozol’s approach. Since schools are social institutions that operate and constantly interact with the rest of economy they have to become accountable in the way that ordinary business are, at least when it comes to basic knowledge delivery. Hess insists that all schools across the US should be able to deliver high quality basic knowledge and literacy. Such knowledge can be easily standardised and a national curriculum, equal and identical to all US school can be designed. By this, all schools are able to deliver high quality basic knowledge and all pupils, irrespective of their social background, would be able to receive it. Then, each school, teacher and pupil are held accountable for their performance and failure to meet the national standards should result in schools closed down, teachers laid off and pupils change school environment or even lose their chance to graduate. Hess distinguishes between two types of reformers; the status quo reformers who do not challenge the state control education and the common-sense reformers who are in favour of a non-bureaucratic educational system, governed by market competition, subjected to accountability measures similar to those used in the ordinary business world.

While Hess presents evidence that the problem in higher education is not underfunding but efficiency in spending, the argument he makes that schools can only reformed and flourish through the laws of market competition is not adequately backed up as there are plenty of examples in many industrial sectors, where the actual implementation of market competition instead of opening up opportunities for the more disadvantaged, has finally generated huge multinationals corporations, which operate in a rather monopolistic or at best oligopolistic environment, satisfying their own interests on the expense of the most deprived and disadvantaged members of the society. The ever growing increasing competition in the financial, pharmaceutical or IT software and hardware (Apple Microsoft, IOS and Android software etc.) sectors have not really helped the disadvantaged or the sector itself but rather created powerful “too big to fail” corporations that dominate the market if not own it.

Hess indeed believes that the US educational system apart from preparing students for the labour market has a social role to fulfil. When the purpose of higher education is solely labour market-oriented teaching and learning become inadequate to respond to the social needs of a well-functioned civic democracy, which requires active learners and critical thinkers who, apart from having a job and a profession, are able “ to frame and express their thoughts and participate in their local and national communities”(p. 4) . Creating rigorous standards for basic knowledge in all US schools is a goal that is sound and rather achievable. However, when such goals are based on a Darwinian like competition and coercion where only the fittest can survive they become rather inapplicable for satisfying the needs of human development, equity and sustainable social progress.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory ( 1979 , 2005 , 2009 ) (subsequently named from Bronfenbrenner himself as bioecological systems theory) is also an example of schools as organic ingredients of a single concentric system that includes four sub systems; the micro, the meso, the exo and the macro as well as the chronosystem that refers to the change of the other four through time. The Micro system involves activities and roles that are experienced through interpersonal relationships such as the family, schools, religious or social institutions or any interactions with peers. The meso system includes the relationships developed between the various microsystem components, such as the relationship between school and workplace or family and schools. The exosystem comprises various interactions between systems that the person who is in the process of development does not directly participates but influence the way microsystems function and impact on the person. Some examples of exosystems are the relationships between family and peers of the developing person, family and schools, etc. The macrosystem incorporates all these things that can be considered as cultural environment and social context in which the developing person lives. Finally, the chronosystem introduces a time dimension, which encompasses all other sub-systems, subjecting them to the changes occurred through time. All these systems constantly interact, shaping a dynamic, complex but also natural ecological environment, in which a person develops its understanding of the world. In practical terms, this theory has found application in Finland, gradually transforming the Finish educational system to such a degree that is now considered the best all over the world (Määttä and Uusiautti, 2014 ; Takala et al., 2015 ). Finally, Bronfenbrenner is also an advocate that poverty and social inequalities are developed not because of differences in individual characteristics and capabilities but because of institutional constraints that are insurmountable to those from a lower socio-economic background.

Freire ( 1970 , 2009 ) criticizes the way schooling is delivered in contemporary societies. The term he uses to describe the current state of education is “banking education”, where teachers and students have very discrete roles with the former to be perceived as depositors of knowledge and the latter as depositories. This approach sees the knowledge acquired within the institutional premises of formal education as an absolute truth, where reality is perceived as something static aiming to preserve the status quo in education and in turn in society and satisfy the interests of the elite. This actual power play means that those who hold knowledge and accept its acquiring procedure as static, become the oppressors whereas those who either lack knowledge or even hold it but challenge it in order to transform it, the oppressed. From the one side the oppressors achieve to maintain their dominance over the oppressed and on the other side the oppressed accept their inferior role as an unchallenged normality where their destiny is predetermined and can never be transformed. Therefore, through this distinction of social roles, social inequalities are maintained and even intensified through time. Freire sees the “banking education” approach as a historical hubris since social reality is a process of constant transformation and hence, it is by definition dynamic and non-static. What we actually know today cannot determine our future social roles, neither can prohibit individuals from challenging and transforming it into something new (Freire, 1970 ; Giroux, 1983 ; Darder, 2003 ).

The banking education approach resembles very much the ethos of the human capital theory, where individuals utilise educational attainment as an investment instrument for succeeding higher wages in the future and also climb the levels of social hierarchy. The assumption of linearity between past individual actions and future economic and social outcomes is at the core of banking education and thus human capital theory. However, this assumption introduces a serious logical fallacy that surprisingly policy makers seem to value very little nowadays, at least in the Western societies. Freire ( 2009 ) apart from criticizing the current state of education argues that a pedagogical approach that “demythologize” and unveils reality by promoting dialogue between teachers and students create critical thinkers, who are engaged in inquiry in order to create social reality by constantly transforming it. This is the process of problem-posing education , which aligns its meaning with the intrinsic view of education that regards human development as mainly detached from the acquisition of material objects and accumulation of wealth through increased levels of educational attainment.

Originated in Germany, the term Bildung —at least as this was interpreted from 18 th century onwards, after Middle Ages era where everything was explained in the prism of a strict and theocratic society- shaped the philosophy by which the German educational system has been functioning even until nowadays (Waters, 2016 ). Bildung aims to provide the individual education with the appropriate context, through which can reach high levels of professional development as well as citizenship. It is a term strongly associated with the liberation of mind from superstition and social stereotypes. Education is assumed to have philosophical underpinnings but it needs, as philosophy itself as a whole does too, to be of some practical use and therefore some context needs to be provided Footnote 3 (Herder, 2002 ).

For Goethe ( 2006 ) Bildung , is a self-realisation process that the individual undertakes under a specific context, which aims to inculcate altruism where individual actions are consider benevolent only if they are able to serve the general society. Although Bildung tradition, from the one hand, assumes that educational process should be contextualised, it approach context as something fluid that is constantly changing. Therefore, it sees education as an interactive and dynamic process, where roles are predetermined; however at the same time they are also amenable to constant transformation (Hegel, 1977 ). Consequently, this means that Bildung tradition is more closely to what Freire calls problem-posing education and therefore to the intrinsic notion of education. Weber ( 1968 ), looked on the Bildung tradition as a means to educate scientists to be involved in policy making and overcome the problems of ineffective bureaucracy. Waters ( 2016 ) based on his experiences with teaching in German higher education argue that the Bildung tradition is still apparent today in the educational system in Germany.

However, higher education, as an institution, involves students, teachers, administrators, policy makers, workers, businessmen, marketers and generally, individuals with various social roles, different demographic characteristics and even different socio-economic backgrounds. It comes natural that their interests can be conflicting and thus, they perceive the purpose of higher education differently.

Higher education expansion and social inequalities: contemporary trends

Higher education enrolment rates have been continuously rising for the last 30 years. In Europe, and especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, policies are directed towards widening the access to higher education to a broader population (Bowl, 2012 ). However, it is very difficult for policy-makers to design a framework towards openness in higher education, mainly due to the heterogeneity of the population the policies are targeted upon. Such population includes individuals from various socio-economic, demographic, ethnic, innate ability, talent orientation or disability groups, as well as people with very different social commitments and therefore the vested interests of each group contradict each other, rendering policy-making an extremely complicated task (CFE and Edge Hill University, 2013 ).

A collection of essays, edited by Giroux and Myrsiades ( 2001 ), provided valuable insights to the humanities and social sciences literature regarding the notion of corporate university and its implications to society’s structure. As Williams ( 2001 : 18) notes in one of this essays:

“Universities are now being conscripted directly as training grounds for the corporate workforce…university work has been more directly construed to serve not only corporate-profit agendas via its grant-supplicant status, but universities have become franchises in their own right, reconfigured to corporate management, labor, and consumer models and delivering a name-brand product”.

Chang et al. ( 2013 ) argues that institutional purposes do not always coincide with the expectations students have from their studies. In most cases, students hold a more pragmatic and instrumental understanding towards the purpose of higher education, primarily aiming for a better-paid and high quality jobs.

Arum and Roksa ( 2011 ) claim that students during their studies in higher education make no real progress in critical thinking and complex problem-solving. Nonetheless, it is notable that those who state that they seek some “deeper meaning” in higher education, looking at a broader picture of things, tend to perform better than those who see university through instrumental lenses (Entwistle and Peterson, 2004 ). These findings question the validity of the instrumental view in higher education as it seems that those that are intrinsically motivated to attend higher education, end up performing much better in higher education and also later on in the labour market. Therefore, in practice, the theoretical rivalry between the intrinsic and instrumental approach operate in a rather dialectic manner, where interactions between social actors move towards a convergence, despite the focus given by policy makers on the instrumental view.

Bourdieu ( 1984 , 1986 , 1998 , 2000 ) based on his radical democratic politics, argued that education inequalities are just a transformation of social inequalities and a way of reproduction of social status quo. Aronowitz ( 2004 ) acknowledged that the main function of public education in the US is to prepare students to meet the changes, occurred in contemporary workplaces. Even if this instrumental model involves the broad expansion of educational attainment, it also fails to alleviate class-based inequalities. He is in line with Bourdieu’s argument that social class relations are reproduced through schooling, as schools reinforce, rather than reduce, class-based inequalities. More recently, similar findings from various countries are very common in the literature (Chapman et al., 2011 ; Stephens et al., 2015 )

Apple ( 2001 ) argues that despite neoliberalism’s claims that privatisation, marketization, harmonisation and generally the globalisation of educational systems increase the quality of education, there are considerable findings in numerous studies that show that the expansion of higher education happens in tandem with the increase of income inequality and the aggravation of racial, gender and class differences. Gouthro ( 2002 ) argues that there has been a misrepresentation of the basic notions that characterise the purpose of education, such as critical thinking, justice and equity. Ganding and Apple ( 2002 ) went one step further by suggesting an alternative solution, which lies on the decentralisation of educational systems, using the “Citizen School” as an example of an educational institution, which prioritises quality in education and its provision to impoverished people. Finally, they call for a radical structural reform on educational systems worldwide, where the relationship between various social communities and the state is based on social justice and not on power.

Brown and Lauder ( 2006 ) investigated the impact of the fundamental changes on education, as related to the influence that various socio-economic and cultural factors have on policy making. Remaining sceptical against the empirical validity of human capital theory, they conclude that it cannot be guaranteed that graduates will secure employment and higher wages. Contrary to Card and Lemieux’s ( 2001 ) findings, the authors argue that when the wage-premium is not measured by averages, but is split in deciles within graduates, it is only the high-earning graduates that have experienced an increasing wage-gap during this period. Increasing incidences of over-education, due to an ever-increasing supply of graduates compared to the relatively modest growth rates of high-skilled jobs, have also been observed. Any differences in pay, between graduates and non-graduates, can be ascribed more to the stagnation of non-graduates' pay, rather than to graduates’ additional pay, because of their higher educational attainment. More recently, Mettler ( 2014 ) argues that the focus on corporate interests in policy making in the US has transformed higher education into a caste system that reproduces and also intensifies social inequalities.

There are evidence, which illustrate that families play a distinctive role in encouraging children’s abilities and traits through a warm and friendly family environment. As higher education requires a significant amount of money to be invested, families with high-income have more chances and means to promote their children’s abilities and traits as well as their career prospects, when compared with the low-income ones. Certainly, there are other factors, which can affect children’s prospects, but the advantage in favour of high-income families is relatively apparent in the empirical literature (Solon, 1999 ).

Livingstone and Stowe ( 2007 ), based on the General Social Survey (GSS), conducted an empirical study on the school completion rates partitioning individuals into family and class origin, residential area as well as race and gender. They focused on the relatively low completion rates of low-class individuals, from the inner city and rural areas of the US. Their findings reveal that working-class children are being discriminated on their school completion rates, compared with the mid- and high-class children. Race and gender discrimination has been detected in rural areas but not in inner cities and suburb areas, where the completion rates are more balanced.

Stone ( 2013 ), finally sees things from a very different perspective, where inequalities exist mainly because of simply bad luck. He argues in favour of lots, when a university has to decide whether to accept an applicant or not. Even if, an argument like this seems highly controversial, it consists of something that has been implemented in many countries, several times in the past (Hyland, 2011 ). The argument that an individual deserves a place in university just because he/she scored higher marks in a standardised sorting examination test does not prove that he/she will perform better in his/her subsequent academic tasks. Likewise, if an individual, who failed to secure a place in university due to low marks, was given a chance to enter university through a different procedure, he/she might have performed exceptionally well. Yet, human society cannot solely depend on lotteries and computer random algorithms, but sometimes, up to a certain point and in the name of fairness and transparency, there is a strong case for also looking on the merits for using one (Stone, 2013 ).

Furthermore, Lowe ( 2000 ) argued that the widening of higher education participation can create a hyper-inflation of credentials, causing their serious devaluation in the labour market. This relates to the concept of diploma disease, where labour markets create a false impression that a higher degree is a prerequisite for a job and therefore, induce individuals to undertake them only for the sake of getting a job (Dore, 1976 ; Collins, 1979 ). This situation can create a highly competitive credential market, and even if there are indications of higher education expansion, individuals from lower social class do not have equal opportunities to get a degree, which can lead them to a more prestigious occupational category. This is, in turn, very similar to the Weberian theory of educational credentialism, where credentials determine social stratum (Brown, 2003 ; Karabel, 2006 ; Douthat, 2005 ; Waters, 2012 ).

The concept of credential inflation has been extensively debated from many scholars, who question the role of formal education and the usefulness of the acquisition of skills within universities (Dore 1997 ; Collins, 1979 ; Walters, 2004 ; Hayes and Wynard, 2006 ). Evans et al. ( 2004 ) focuses on the tacit skills, which cannot be acquired by formal learning, mainly obtained by work and life experience as well as informal learning. These skills are competences related to the way a complex situation could be best approached or resemble to personal traits, which can be used for handling unforeseen situations.

Policy implications

Higher educational attainment that leads to a specific academic degree is a dynamic procedure, but with a pre-defined end. This renders the knowledge acquired there, as obsolete. Policies, such as Bologna Declaration supports an agenda, where graduates should be further encouraged to engage with on-the-job training and life-long education programmes (Coffield, 1999 ). Other scholars argue that institutions should have a broader role, acknowledging the benefits that higher educational attainment bring to societies as a whole by the simultaneous promotion of productivity, innovation and democratisation as well as the mitigation of social inequalities (Harvey, 2000 ; Hayward and James, 2004 ). Boosting employability for graduates is crucial and many international organisations are working towards the establishment of a framework, which can ensure that higher education satisfies this aim (Diamond et al., 2011 ). Yet, this can have negative side-effects making the employability gap between high- and low-skilled even wider, since there is no any policy framework specifically designed for low-skilled non-graduates on a similar to Bologna Declaration, supranational context. Heinze and Knill ( 2008 ) argue that convergence in higher education policy-making, as a result of the Bologna Process, depends on a combination of cultural, institutional and socio-economic national characteristics. Even if, it can be assumed that more equal countries, in terms of these characteristics, can converge much easier, it is still questionable if and how much national policy developments have been affected by the Bologna Declaration.

However, the political narrative of equal opportunities in terms of higher education participation rates does not seem very convincing (Brown and Hesketh, 2004 ; The Milburn Commission, 2009 ). It appears that a consensus has been reached in the relevant literature that there is a bias towards graduates from the higher social classes, but it has been gradually decreasing since 1960 (Bekhradnia, 2003 ; Tight, 2012 ). Nonetheless, despite the fact that, during the last few decades, there has been an improvement in the participation rates for the most vulnerable groups, such as women and ethnic minorities, the inequality is still obvious in some occasions (Greenbank and Hepworth, 2008 ). Machin and Van Reenen ( 1998 ) trace the causes of the under-participation in an intergenerational context, arguing that the positive relationship between parental income and participation rates is apparent even from the secondary school. Likewise, Gorard ( 2008 ) identifies underrepresentation on the previous poor school performance, which leads to early drop-outs in the secondary education, or into poor grades, which do not allow for a place in higher education. Other researchers argue that paradoxically, educational inequality persists even nowadays, albeit the policy orientation worldwide towards the widening of higher education participation across all social classes (Burke, 2012 ; Bathmaker et al., 2013 ).

There are different aspects on the purpose of higher education, which particularly, under the context of the ongoing economic uncertainty, gain some recognition and greater respect from academics and policy-makers. Lorenz ( 2006 ) notes that the employability agenda, which is constantly promoted within higher education institutions lately, cannot stand as a sustainable rationale in a diverse global environment. This harmonisation and standardisation of higher education creates permanent winners and losers, centralising all the gains, monetary and non-monetary, towards the most dominant countries, particularly towards Anglo-phone countries and specific industries and therefore social inequalities increase between as well as within countries. Some scholars call this phenomenon as Englishization (Coleman, 2006 ; Phillipson, 2009 ).

Tomusk ( 2002 , 2004 ) positioned education within the general framework of the recent institutional changes and the rapid rise of the short-term profits of the financial global capital. Specifically, the author sees World Bank as a transnational organisation. Given this, any loan agreement planned from the World Bank regarding higher education reforms in developing countries, has the same ultimate, but tacit, goal, which is the continuous rise of the national debt and in turn, the vitiation of national fiscal and monetary policies, in order the human resources of the so called “recipient countries”, to be redistributed in favour of a transnational dominant class.

Hunter ( 2013 ) places the debate under a broader political framework, juxtaposing neo-liberalism with the trends formulated by the OECD. She concludes that OECD is a very complex and multi-vocal organisation and when it comes to higher education policy suggestions, there is not any clear trend, especially towards neo-liberalism. This does not mean that economic thinking is not dominant within the OECD. This is, in fact, OECD’s main concern and it is clear to all. Hunter ( 2013 : 15–16) accordingly states that:

“Some may feel offended by the vocational and economic foci in OECD discourse. Many would like to see HE held up for “higher” ideals. However, it is fair for OECD to be concerned with economics. They do not deny that they are primarily an organization concerned with economics. It is up to us, the readers, politicians, scholars, voters, teachers, administrators, and policy makers, to be aware that this is an economic organization and be careful of from whom we get our assumptions”.

Hyslop-Margison ( 2000 ) investigated how the market economy affects higher education in Canada, when international organisations and Canadian business interfere in higher education policy making, under the support of government agencies. He argues that such economy-oriented policies deteriorate curriculum theory and development.

Letizia ( 2013 ) criticises market-oriented reforms, enacted by The Virginia Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2011, placing them within the context of market-driven policies informed by neoliberalism, where social institutions, such as higher education, should be governed by the law of free market. According to Letizia, this will have very negative implications to the humanistic character of education, affecting people’s intellectual and critical thinking, while perpetuating social inequalities.

The term Mcdonaldisation has been also used recently to capture functional similarities and trends in common, between higher education and ordinary commercial businesses. Thus, efficiency, calculability, predictability and maximisation are high priorities in the American and British educational systems and because of their global influence, these characteristics are being expanding worldwide (Hayes and Wynard, 2006 ; Garland, 2008 ; Ritzer, 2010 ).

The notion of Mcdonaldisation is very well explained by Garland ( 2008 , no pagination):

“Mcdonaldisation can be seen as the tendency toward hyper-rationalisation of these same processes, in which each and every task is broken down into its most finite part, and over which the individual performing it has little or no control becoming all by interchangeable. It may be argued that the labour processes involved in advanced technological capitalism increasingly depend on either the handling and processing of information, or provision of services requiring instrumentalised forms of communication and interaction, just as the same “professional” roles frequently consist of largely mechanized, functional tasks requiring a minimum of individual input or initiative, let alone creative or critical thought, a process illustrated in blackly comic by the 1999 film Office Space”.

Realistically, higher education cannot be solely conceptualised by the human capital approach and similar quantitative interpretations, as it has cultural, psychological, idiosyncratic and social implications. Additionally, Hoxby ( 1996 ) argued that policy environment and systems of governance in higher education play a significant role to an individuals’ decision-making process to obtain further education and unfortunately, policy makers regard this aspect as static that can never be transformed.

Lepori and Bonaccorsi ( 2013 ), following Latour and Woolgar’s ( 1979 ) rationale of the high importance of vested interest in scientific endeavours, argue that higher education trends are too complex to be reduced and captured adequately, by the use of economic indicators as related to the labour market. However, the market and money value of higher education should not be neglected, especially in developing countries, as there is evidence that it can help people escape the vicious cycle of poverty and therefore it has a practical and more pragmatic purpose to fulfil (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004 ). According to World Bank ( 2013 ), education can contribute to a significant decrease of the number of poor people globally and increase social mobility when it manages to provides greater opportunities for children coming from poor families. There are also other studies that do not only focus to strict economic factors, but also to the contribution of educational attainment to fertility and mortality rates as well as to the level of health and the creation of more responsible and participative citizens, bolstering democracy and social justice (Council of Europe, 2004 ; Osler and Starkey, 2006 ; Cogan and Derricott, 2014 ).

Mountford-Zimdars and Sabbagh ( 2013 ), analysing the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, offer a plausible explanation on why the widening of participation in higher education is not that easy to be implemented politically, in the contemporary western democracies. The majority of the people, who have benefited from higher educational attainment in monetary and non-monetary terms, are reluctant to support the openness of higher education to a broader population. On the contrary, those that did not succeed or never tried to secure a place in a higher education institute, are very supportive of this idea. This clash of interests creates a political perplexity, making the process of policy-making rather dubious. Therefore, the apparent paradox of the increase in higher educational attainment, along with a stable rate in educational inequalities, does not seem that strange when vested interests of certain groups are taken into account.

Moreover, the decision for someone to undertake higher education is not solely influenced by its added value in the labour market. Since an individual is exposed to different experiences and influences, strategic decisions can easily change, especially when these are taken from adolescents or individuals in their early stages of their adulthood. Given this, perceptions and preferences do change with ageing and this is why there are some individuals who drop out from university, others who choose radical shifts in their career or others who return to education after having worked in the labour market for many years and in different types of jobs.

Higher education has expanded rapidly after WWII. The advent of new technologies dictates the enhancement of people’s talents and skills and the creation of a knowledge-based-economy, which in turn, demands for even more high-skilled workers. Policy aims for higher education in the western world is undoubtedly focusing on its diffusion to a broader population. This expansion is seen as a policy instrument to alleviate social and income inequalities. However, the implementation of such policies has been proved extremely difficult in practise, mainly because of existent conflicted interests between groups of people, but also because of its institutional incapacity to target the most vulnerable. Nonetheless, it has been observed a constant marketization process in higher education, making it less accessible to people from poor economic background. Concerns on the persistence of policy-makers to focus primarily on the economic values of higher education have been increasingly expressed, as strict economic reasoning in higher education contradicts with political claims for its continuing expansion.

On the other hand, there are studies arguing that the instrumental model can make the transition of graduates into the labour market smoother. Such studies are placed under the mainstream economics framework and are also informed by policy decisions implemented by the Bologna Process, where competitiveness, harmonisation and employability are the main policy axes. The Bologna Process and various other institutions (e.g., the EU, World Bank, OECD) have provided a framework under which higher education can be seen as inextricably linked with labour market dynamics; however, the intrinsic notion of higher education is treated more as a nuisance and less as a vital component on this framework. Nevertheless, this makes the job competition between graduates much more intense and also creates very negative implications for those that remain with low qualifications as they effectively become socially and economically marginalised.

The purpose of higher education and its role in modern societies remains a heated philosophical debate, with strong practical and policy implications. This article sheds more light to this debate by presenting a synthetic narrative of the relevant literature, which can be used as a basis for future theoretical and empirical research in understanding contemporary trends in higher education as interwoven with the evolutions in the broader socio-economic sphere. Specifically, two conflicting theoretical stances have been discussed. The mainstream view primarily aims to assist individuals to increase their income and their relative position in the labour market. On the other hand, the intrinsic notion focus on understanding its purpose under ontological and epistemological considerations. Under this conceptual framework, the enhancement of individual creativity and emancipation are in conflict with the contemporary institutional settings related to power, dominance and economic reasoning. This conflict can influence people’s perceptions on the purpose of higher education, which can in turn perpetuate or otherwise revolutionise social relations and roles.

However, even if the two theoretical stances presented are regarded as contradictory, this article argues that, in practical terms, they can be better seen as complementing each other. From one hand, using an instrumental perspective, an increase in higher education participation, focusing particularly on the most vulnerable and deprived members of society, can alleviate problems of income and social inequalities. The instrumental view of education has a very important role to play if focused on lower-income social classes, as it can become the mechanism towards the alleviation of income inequalities. On the other hand, apart from the pecuniary, there are also other non-pecuniary benefits associated with this, such as the improvement in the fertility and mortality and general health level rates or the boost of active democracy and citizenship even within workplaces and therefore a shift of higher education towards its intrinsic purposes is also needed. (Bowles and Gintis, 2002 ; Council of Europe, 2004 ; Brennan, 2004 ; Brown and Lauder, 2006 ; Wolff and Barsamian, 2012 ).

Summing up, education is not a simply just another market process. It is not just an institution that supply graduates as products that have some predetermined value in the labour market. Consequently, acquired knowledge in education verified by college degrees is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the labour market to create appropriate jobs, where graduates utilise and expand this knowledge. In fact, the increasing costs of higher education, mostly due to its internationalisation, and the rising levels of job mismatch create a rather gloomy picture of the current economic environment, which seems to preserve the well-paid jobs mostly to those from a certain socio-economic class background. At the same time, poor students are vastly disadvantaged to more wealthy ones, considering the huge differences in terms of higher as well as their past education, their parent’s education and also certain elitist traditions that work towards perpetuating power relations in favour of the dominant class.

As Castoriadis ( 1997 ) notes, it is impossible to separate education from its social context. We, as human beings, acquire knowledge, in the sense of what Castoriadis calls paideia , from the day we born until the day we die. We are being constantly developed and transformed along with the social transformations that happen around us. The transformation on the individual is in constant interaction with social transformations, where no cause and effect exists. Formal schooling has become nowadays an apathetic task where no real engagement with learning happens, while its major components such as educators, families and students are largely disconnected with each other. Educators, cynically execute the teaching task that a curriculum dictates each time, families’ main concern is to attach a market value to their children educational attainment, “labelling” them with a credential that the labour market allegedly desires, while students pay attention to anything else apart from the knowledge they get per se and therefore they care too little for its quality and also its practical use.

To tackle the ever-growing social inequalities due to the narrow economic policy making in education, we need a radical shift towards policies that are informed from Freire’s problem-posing education and Sen’s capabilities approach, get insights in terms of structure from Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory, while giving context according to the Bildung tradition also acknowledging that education, apart from instrument, is a vehicle towards liberation, cultural realisation as well as social transformation. In practical terms, real-world examples from Finland or Germany can be used, which policy makers from around the world should start paying more attention to, moving away from narrow and sterile instrumentalism that has spectacularly failed to tackle social inequalities.

In the context of a modern world where monetary costs and benefits are the basis of policy arguments, a massification and broader diffusion of higher education to a much broader population implies marketisation and commercialisation of its purpose and in turn its inclusion on an economy-oriented model where knowledge, skills, curriculum and academic credentials inevitably presuppose a money-value and have a financial purpose to fulfil. The policy trends towards an economy-based-knowledge, through a strict instrumental reasoning, rather than the alleged knowledge-based-economy seems to persist and prevail, albeit its poor performance on alleviating income and social inequalities. Yet, in a global context of a prolonged economic stagnation and a continuous deterioration of society’s democratic reflexes, a shift towards a model, where knowledge is not subdued to economic reasoning, can inform a new societal paradigm of a genuine knowledge-based-economy, where economy would become a means rather than an ultimate goal for human development and social progress.

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For example, Confucian tradition is very rich, when it comes to education and human development. It is indeed very interesting to see how the basic principles of Confucian education, such as humanism, harmony and hierarchy, has been transformed through time and especially after the change in China’s economic model by Den Xiaoping’s reforms towards a more open economic system and along this a more business-oriented and globalised educational system. Perhaps the Chinese tradition in education, which mainly regards education as a route to social status and material success based on merit and constant examination can explain why the human capital theory is more applicable. On the other hand, additional notions in the Confucian tradition that education should be open to all, irrespective of the social class each person belongs to (apart perhaps from women and servants that were rather considered as human beings with limited social rights), its focus on ethics and its purpose to prepare efficient and loyal practitioners for the government introduces an apparent paradox with human capital theory but not necessarily with the instrumental view of education. This contradiction deserves to be appropriately and thoroughly examined in a separate analysis before it is contrasted to the Western tradition. For this reason the current research focuses only on the Western world leaving the comparison analysis with educational traditions found around the world, among them the Confucian tradition, as a task that will be conducted in the near future.

The use of capital in Bourdieu is criticised by a stream of social science scholars as rather promiscuous and unfortunate (Goldthorpe, 2007 ). They argue that a paradox here is apparent as in English linguistic etymological terms, the word capital implies, if not presupposes market activity. The same time Bourdieu criticises Becker’s human capital tradition as solely market-driven and a tacit way where the ruling class maintain their power through universities and other institutions. Waters ( 2012 ) argue that the use of the term “capital” in both Becker’s and Bourdieu’s writings is unfortunate, while both use the term to mean different things. Bourdieu’s understanding on the nature of “habitus” is a much more applicable term to explain the social role of education systems. Habitus is not capital, even if there is constant interaction between the two. Becker on the other hand, seem to neglect social and cultural capital as well as Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, which in turn is about the reproduction of society and power relations by universities and other institutions.

Some might have valid ontological objections on this, in terms of the purpose of philosophy as a whole; however the concept of Bildung has given education a role within society that moves away from individualism and the constant pursuit of material objects as ultimate means of well-being.

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American Higher Education: An Obligation to the Future

By vartan gregorian, president, carnegie corporation of new york.

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In recent years, there has been a debate raging among policymakers, students, educators, concerned parents, and many others about the purpose of higher education: is it meant to help develop an inquiring mind and a deep appreciation for the value of how knowledge enriches one’s lifelong personal and professional achievements or should it be simply focused on gaining the skills to pursue a well-paying career? In other words, we seem to have divided higher education into a black-and-white scenario in which either an individual becomes a sort of pie-in-the-sky dreamer, well-read and able to quote great thinkers but probably starving in a garret while unable to get a decent job, or else he or she graduates from college and immediately plunges into the world of technologically complex, high-stakes, high-financial-reward work and becomes a “great success.”

Perhaps the time has come to reconsider that either-or proposition about higher education. The issue is too complex to be addressed in such a simplified manner. For example, as a new study 1 from the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) reports, “Students, parents, and policymakers interested in the ‘return on investment’ of college education [often assume] that a major in a liberal arts field has a negative effect on employment prospects and earnings potential.” But the AACU study makes clear there is compelling evidence that a liberal arts degree continues to be a sound investment, especially in these difficult economic times. The facts show that compared to students who major in professional, preprofessional, or STEM fields, liberal arts majors fare very well in terms of both earnings and long-term career success.

The specifics are indeed eye-opening. They reveal that over the long-term, humanities graduates actually fare better than their peers who are focused on particular professional fields. Upon graduating from college, those who majored in the humanities and social science made, on average, $26,271 in 2010 and 2011, slightly more than those in science and mathematics but less than those in engineering and in professional and pre-professional fields. However, by their peak earning age of 56 to 60, these individuals earned $66,185, putting them about $2,000 ahead of professional and pre-professional majors in the same age bracket. 2 Further, employers want to hire men and women who have the ability to think and act based on deep, wide-ranging knowledge. For example, the report finds that 93 percent of employers agree that candidates’ demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their undergraduate major, and 55 percent said that what they wanted from potential employees was both field-specific knowledge and skills and a broad range of knowledge and skills. Even more evidence of hiring managers’ interest in richly educated individuals is the finding that four out of five employers agree that all students should acquire broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences. 3

Students do not have to make artificial choices between what they want to know about the world and the skills they need to succeed in it.

All this is heartening news in that it reminds us that the current generation of students—and those who follow after them—do not have to make artificial choices between what they want to know about the world and the skills they need to succeed in it. But there are some who are still not persuaded of this. In fact, it is interesting to note there is yet another choice that various pundits have recently suggested students should consider—not going to college at all. The rationale behind that notion is that while the knowledge gained in college and university classrooms may be both wonderful and enlightening, it is not necessarily useful in “real life.” That seems an empty argument to me and one that is refuted, for instance, by a quick glance at a recent list of the Forbes 400 richest people in America, which shows that 84 percent hold postsecondary degrees. Similarly, of the Fortune 500 CEOs, 93 percent have a college degree—many in the humanities and social sciences. The success of these individuals and others underscores a point I have often made to students: that one of the immeasurable values of a liberal arts education is how it can open up a world of possibilities, including life and career paths to follow that might otherwise have seemed unimaginable to a young man or woman just starting out. But that is a wonderful challenge for someone who is motivated to explore their own potential: after all, if the only purpose of education is to train an individual for a specific job or skill, life would be much simpler—and, I might add, perhaps much less interesting.

With all that said, it remains clear that increasing our expertise in technology and related fields is critical to the progress of our society. Nevertheless, it is still useful to remind ourselves that the greatest service technology can provide us is as an adjunct to knowledge, not as a replacement for it. Technology by itself is not a creator of content. Though the Internet and all the technological devices that now connect us to it have made it possible for much of humanity to have access to a virtual Library of Alexandria, access alone does not equal knowledge. The ability to carry around the entire corpus of Greek literature on an iPhone or some similar device may be astonishing, but that does not mean that the individual who possesses such a device actually knows anything about Greek literature. One still has to read. One still has to listen and see with one’s own eyes. One still has to ponder ideas, explore the realms of both material and spiritual knowledge, and discuss these matters with other people.

It is still useful to remind ourselves that the greatest service technology can provide us is as an adjunct to knowledge, not as a replacement for it.

In that connection, I would argue that the deep-seated yearning for knowledge and understanding endemic to human beings is an ideal that a liberal arts education is singularly suited to fulfill. Albert Einstein, in his inimitable fashion, went right to the heart of the matter, asserting that the practical men and women among us try to explain all phenomena by cause and effect. But, Einstein said, “This way of looking at things always answers only the question ‘Why?’ but never the question, ‘To what end?’” 4 To search for even a glimpse of the answers to such great philosophical conundrums one needs to know not only what is taught in a classroom, but also how to think for oneself.

Of course, one also has to know history, particularly the history of one’s own nation. In that regard, as Americans, we have an obligation, as citizens to whom the future of our country has been entrusted, to understand the obstacles we have faced in the past and both the problems and opportunities that lie ahead. As Benjamin Franklin said, issuing a still-timely challenge in response to a query at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, what the Founding Fathers had created was “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Keep it we must, and we will, but to do so we need an informed and educated citizenry who can take full advantage of the almost 4,200 colleges and universities in our country, including some 1,700 public and private two-year institutions. And let me point out that computers and Web sites have yet to put those colleges and universities out of business. Why is this? Because of one simple reason: we are not a virtual society yet. Not yet. Human beings, by their very nature, are rational, spiritual, and social beings. They are not abstractions. They are not socioeconomic, consumer or entertainment units destined to be confined inside the small world of their cubicles and subject to what I call “cubicle alienation.” Even though people can watch almost any movie they want on-demand from their cable service or on DVDs, men and women still go to movie houses to share the experience of being immersed in a story told through sound and images in the company of other human beings. People have Bibles, Talmuds, and Korans in their homes but they still go to churches, synagogues, and mosques to share their common bonds and traditions. People need to be part of a community—and for many, the college classroom provides an invaluable experience of community and collaboration.

The diversity of talents, interests and aims of the men and women who look to higher education to help them reach their goals is mirrored by the diversity of our colleges and universities, from which our system of higher education draws great strength. Individual institutions have traditionally emphasized different local, regional, national and international needs by providing educational opportunities to diverse populations, expanding scientific and technical knowledge, providing opportunities for continuing education, and other means.

But that certainly wasn’t always the case. Higher education was actually available to only a small proportion of America’s population until Congress enacted the Land Grant College Act in 1862. This legislation—the first Morrill Act—which was, astonishingly passed in the middle of the Civil War (making it clear how strongly both President Lincoln and Congress felt about the importance of education, as well as about the future of the nation) in effect, put universities where the people were. The Act not only provided much greater access to higher education, it also promoted specialized training and spurred the development of both theoretical knowledge and its practical application. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and the Morrill Act helped to provide the research and the educated work-force that were desperately needed in agriculture, mining and manufacturing.

Today, there are new challenges, and one of the greatest facing higher education is how to protect the diversity of our colleges and universities at a time when it seems that instead of emphasizing variety and competition—which affects all aspects of higher education, from recruiting students to developing curricula—there is a worrisome trend towards uniformity. Joseph Aoun, President of Northeastern University, expressed similar ideas in a recent op-ed 5 in which he discusses how higher education must begin to respond to an increasingly diverse student body, with different needs, different goals, and different expectations. His particular emphasis is on the growing number of students who are not following the path directly from high school graduation to the college campus. As he points out, “The ‘traditional’ college student aged 18 to 22 is no longer the norm. Many people still think that the typical college student is an 18- to 22-year-old who’s attending a four-year residential institution. But according to some estimates, nontraditional students—returning adults, part-time students, midcareer professionals, and every other permutation of learner—now make up 85 percent of all undergraduates.”

The diversity of talents, interests and aims of the men and women who look to higher education to help them reach their goals is mirrored by the diversity of our colleges and universities.

I believe that startling statistic helps to provide an answer to the question with which I began this essay: is there a value to the kind of education that promotes the ability to become a lifelong learner? Clearly, the answer is a resounding yes, if education is going to be a resource available to all Americans that can parallel their path through life, if that is what they need. Noted author and Columbia University professor Andrew Delblanco addresses similar concerns in his recent book, College: What It Was, Is, And Should Be 6 , suggesting that higher education should offer more to students than a rigid curriculum and a lock-step parade towards a degree. As he suggests, though more and more students are going to college with “the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential” (a phenomenon he attributes to the accelerating commercialization of American higher education), guiding young men and women down this path is a mistake. In fact, he argues, it means that they are losing the chance to experience the traditional—and wonderful—attributes of the undergraduate years, “an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers…” He also worries that this kind of multi-faceted, aspirational education is in danger of becoming available only to the wealthy and privileged, which would would pose a great danger to the progress of American society. While science, technology, engineering, and math play an increasingly prominent role in our globalized economy, innovation still requires original and imaginative thinking. The new discoveries that will improve the living conditions, health, and welfare of men, women, and children around the world will not be found without those who have the education to work toward those discoveries. And if we do not nurture the talent among us, who will provide literature and art and music for ages yet to come?

These are some of the purposes for which we, as a society, created, supported, and continue to value a liberal arts-oriented college education. As W.E.B. DuBois said, “The true college will ever have one goal—not to earn meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes.” 7

For myself, I believe that the immeasurable value of American higher education and the potential it has to open doors to a future of one’s own making is the proverbial pearl beyond price that we must all cherish. That is one of the reasons I am so gratified that some of our nation’s most eminent university leaders, along with prominent scientists, engineers, and others are sharing their thoughts and ideas about higher education in this special edition of the Carnegie Reporter . I am pleased to be able to contribute to their work by including an address I gave to the President’s Council of the University of Tokyo (below), of which I am a member.

In many ways—and I can attest to this from personal experience—education is the bridge that allows us to travel from where we are to that further place where we can become who we want to be and do all the wonderful things we might otherwise only dream of. Whatever we can do as educators and citizens to strengthen that bridge is an obligation to the future that we all share.

Presentation by Vartan Gregorian to The Seventh President’s Council of the University of Tokyo

June 8, 2010.

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U.S. colleges and universities enroll more than 19 million students and annually grant nearly 3 million degrees. Higher education employs more than 3.6 million people, including 2.6 million faculty, in what amounts to a more than $380 billion business.

The diversity of our education system gives it strength, great strength. Individual institutions have traditionally emphasized different functions that have complemented each other by addressing different local, regional, national, and international needs. They also provide educational oppotunities to diverse populations by expanding scientific and technical knowledge, and providing opportunities for continuing education, and also opening their doors to the world. Until several years ago, two-thirds of all students from foreign countries studying abroad were in the United States; two-thirds of the entire international student body that went abroad studied in the United States.

In the last century, enrollment in American higher education grew from 4 percent of the college-age population in 1900 to almost 70 percent by the year 2000. Our student body, moreover, is incredibly diverse. Following a long period of little or no growth in total enrollment, the nation’s institutions of higher education are now seeing the biggest growth spurt since the baby boom generation arrived on campus in 1960.

Between 1995 and 2015, enrollments are expected to increase 16 percent, and one-third of the increase will be members of minority groups. By 2015, minority enrollment is anticipated to rise by almost 30 percent to 2 million in absolute numbers, representing almost 38 percent of undergraduate education.

Clearly there is a strong case to be made for the fact that American higher education is a vital and successful endeavor. But let me take a few moments here to review its history and highlight several aspects of higher education in the United States in order to understand the underpinnings of its success.

The first major opportunity for the expansion of American higher education came in 1862. Even in the middle of the Civil War, and despite the fact that 500,000 people died in the greatest tragedy of American history, President Abraham Lincoln enacted the Morrill Act, which established land-grant universities throughout the United States. The Morrill Act coincided with the Industrial Revolution, and it helped to establish universities just about everywhere the people of the United States were, and where they needed institutions of higher education that addressed their particular needs. Some of our current universities grew from these roots such as the University of California, Irvine, which deals with agriculture; in Wisconsin, the state university includes a focus on the fact that the dairy industry is important; in Minnesota, the mining industry, and on and on. Because of the needs of the state, the resources of states were tapped at the time and folded into the educational curriculum.

The second most important revolution that happened, in addition to land-grant universities—which, by the way, have produced, since their inception, some 20 million degrees— was the establishment of the National Academy of Sciences. Again, it is remarkable to note that Lincoln had such faith in the strength and continuity of the U.S. that in 1863, while the Civil War raged on, President Lincoln signed another piece of landmark legislation—a law that created the National Academy of Sciences. The Academy, which was established to advise Congress on “any subject of science or art,” has done that job well and expanded to include the National Research Council, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.

It was not until World War II, though, that the federal government began supporting university research in a significant way. Prior to that, research was done in Europe and in corporate laboratories. To strengthen U.S. growth in science, President Franklin Roosevelt established a commission headed by Vannevar Bush, a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His landmark report was published in 1945 and adopted by President Truman. In this piece, a beautiful report entitled Science: The Endless Frontier , Bush noted that the business of industry naturally took the lead in applied research but was deterred by marketplace considerations from conducting pure research. Bush argued that it was the federal government’s responsibility to provide adequate funds for basic research, which pioneers the frontiers of human knowledge for the benefit of society. He also wrote that the nation’s universities were, by their very nature, best suited to take the lead in conducting basic research. Public funding, he said, would promote competition among researchers and projects could be selected on the merits through a peer review process. Bush suggested a federal agency should oversee the program, and Congress created the National Science Foundation to do the job in 1950.

The agency got off to a slow start, but after October 1957, when Sputnik was launched, support for science, science education, and basic research rose rapidly. From 1960 to 1966, federal spending on research not associated with defense leapt from $6 billion a year to almost $35-$40 billion. Until recent years, federal investment in research rarely fell below $20 billion a year, and much of this money went to universities. Giving the universities—that’s the difference— giving the universities the lead in basic research turned out to be a brilliant policy. Instead of being centralized in government laboratories as science tended to be in other parts of the world, scientific research became decentralized in American universities. This policy spurred a tremendous diversity of investment. It also gave graduate students significant research opportunities and helped spread scientific discoveries far and wide for the benefit of industry, medicine, and society as a whole.

Another revolutionary phase in American higher education came about in 1944 and was known as the GI Bill of Rights. This legislation ranks up there in importance with the Morrill Act because the law, enacted at the height of World War II, opened the doors of America’s best colleges and universities to tens of thousands of veterans returning from the battlefields, ordinary Americans who had never dreamt of going to college, and who were now actually being encouraged to do so by their government. The G.I. Bill made an already democratic system of higher education even more democratic in ways that were simply inconceivable in Europe and other parts of the world. In the following decades, the GI Bill—and its legislative offspring enacted during the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan—have resulted in the public investment of more than $60 billion in education and training for about 18 million veterans, including 8.5 million in higher education. Currently, the United States offers an education benefit as an incentive for people to join its all-voluntary military forces.

Shortly after World War II, in 1946, Congress also created the prestigious Fulbright scholarships, which all of you are familiar with, and which have been enormously successful. All in all, there have been some 235,000 American and foreign Fulbright scholars—146,000 alone from countries other than the U.S. The program was created, by the way, as one of the best ways of investing in international education.

The noted sociologist David Riesman said that the greatest contribution to the American economy in the post-war period was the liberation of women.

In 1947, the democratization of higher education was advanced when the President’s Commission on Higher Education recommended that public education be made available up to the 14th grade, thus opening the door to the development of community colleges, or two-year colleges, which are now playing a major role in American higher education, but also point to some of the problems I will discuss later.

In a more recent effort to promote international cooperation and security, Congress enacted the National Security Act of 1991, which provides scholarships for undergraduates and graduate students to study many of the less well-known languages and cultures in key regions of the world, including East Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, not to mention Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Africa.

Another major landmark was the creation of federal loan grant guarantees and subsidy programs as well as outright grants for college students. In the decades since its founding in 1965, the Federal Family Education Loan Program has funded more than 74 million student loans worth more than $180 billion. And in the years since the 1973 Pell Grant program—named after Senator Claiborne Pell— was created, more than $100 billion in grants have been awarded to an estimated 30 million postsecondary students.

Last but not least, let me add something important about Pell grants: when they were proposed, there was a big debate about whether to give the money to university presidents or to give it directly to students so the funds would be portable. It was decided—in fact, Clark Kerr of University of California who led the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education recommended—that the money be designated as portable by students because this would create competition among universities. Many of Clark Kerr’s friends stopped talking to him after that recommendation, including his president. Thus, we can see that land-grant universities, the National Academy of Sciences, the GI Bill, Pell grants, and a host of other innovative strategies for advancing American higher education and increasing access to colleges and universities played a major role in enriching and expanding American education at the college and university level.

Naturally, the civil rights movement in the United States and the end of formal, legal discrimination also contributed to advancing higher education and educational access. In this connection, I should mention that my late friend, the noted sociologist David Riesman, said that the greatest contribution to the American economy in the post-war period was the liberation of women. He was right, because today, almost 54-58 percent of students enrolled in American higher education are women and that, along with the advancement of minorities—especially Asians and African Americans—is truly revolutionary.

Now, let me turn to the problems facing American higher education. There are many things I can talk about. Problem number one is that when there was no competition, America could afford duplication in its higher education. The nation could afford to have thousands of colleges and universities because they provided educated leaders and skilled labor, but at the same time, unskilled workers—those who could not afford higher education or even dropped out of school, could still find jobs in manufacturing and so on, but today, that’s not the case. So duplication in education is no longer affordable, and quality has become very important and a key to competition among educational institutions.

Perhaps the second most important problem is the state of public universities which, as I indicated earlier, were created to be funded by public sources. Private institutions had to rely on private sources, on philanthropy. And parenthetically, ladies and gentlemen, as you know, philanthropy is a big deal in the United States. Annually some $350 billion dollars in philanthropic giving is disbursed by Americans, and not only the rich; 70 percent of those sums come from families with incomes of less than $100,000 dollars a year. Giving has become an American phenomenon. Even during presidential campaigns and debates, candidates now have to reveal the amounts of their philanthropic giving because otherwise they will be known as being stingy, being cheapskates.

But now, the barriers between public and private funding of universities have all but disappeared. Both private and public universities seek support from private sources as well as from the public, with one major difference: when I came as a freshman to Stanford University in 1956, tuition and fees were $750 dollars at Stanford, $50 dollars at the University of California, Berkeley—yes, 50, five-oh. Now, all the costs have gone astronomically high. Colleges and universities have to keep up with inflation and support the costs of laboratories; technology; of stocking their libraries; building and maintaining dormitories and other facilities; paying for athletics; paying for health and other types of insurance; providing health, food, counseling and other services; legal and government affairs departments, public affairs departments, etc. In short, universities, nowadays, are like city states. But what has changed over the years is that individual states can no longer afford by themselves to pay for public higher education. For example, I’m told that today, only 8 or 9 percent of the funding needed for the University of Michigan comes from the state of Michigan; in Missouri, it’s 9-10 percent; Maryland, 9-10 percent; etc. The rest has to come from tuition, fees, federal research grants, federal loans and grants as well as philanthropy, which was not how the system of supporting public higher education was supposed to work.

In addition, when Pell grants were inaugurated, there were two components: loans and outright grants. As time has passed, the proportion of loans and grants has changed so that today, more loans are given than grants. Hence, students often have to borrow money to pay back the loans, and if they are unable to pay their debts or go into bankruptcy as a result of their debt burden, this will adversely affect their future, including their ability to find jobs and advance in their careers. If, on the other hand, they take jobs with low pay and because of their low salaries remain unable to pay their loans, it discourages some people from embarking on careers where the financial rewards are not great but the mission is important to society and the nation. As a former teacher myself, I have first-hand experience of that type of situation. If you become a teacher with a $30,000-a-year salary and you have to pay six-to-ten thousand a year for your college debt, especially if you get a higher degree, that’s a very serious challenge.

©Robert Ford/iStock/Thinkstock

So these are some of the problems. But there is still another that is among the most important of all, and that is the following: we all agree that what makes universities great is the quality of their faculties. I have always believed that the faculty is the bone marrow of the university. Students come and go, administrators come and go—even visionary leaders, though they be few and far between, come and go—but a university’s faculty provides continuity. In that connection, the challenge is that many universities cannot afford to maintain or recruit high-quality faculty nor can they have the same number of top-level faculty that they did in the past. As a result, they resort to replenishing their ranks with adjunct and part-time faculty. Part-time faculty size has increased from 22 to almost 40 percent in many universities, making the overall quality of their faculty questionable. I’m not referring to the Harvards, Princetons, Yales and others of that rank; I’m talking about those small colleges and public universities that cannot afford to maintain an excellent faculty roster and so must rely on part-timers in order to preserve themselves during difficult financial times. Remember, when you have part-time faculty, you save money because you don’t have to give them offices, or provide benefits or sabbaticals or other types of resources. It’s almost like piece-work is being introduced into higher education.

One of the greatest challenges facing our society is how to distinguish between information, which may be true, false or some tangled combination of both, and real knowledge.

In addition, naturally, during times of financial crisis such as we find ourselves in now, another challenge that arises is that there is a growing impulse to do what is expedient, such as reducing the number of academic units required to graduate. Hence, I am not surprised that once again there are also voices raised, asking why can’t the time required for BA and other degrees be reduced to three years? After all, some say, Oxford started with four years and then reduced it to three. Harvard copied the four-year system and it has been with us since the beginning of the higher education system in the U.S., but why does it have to remain that way? Let’s reduce it. Quality, depth and richness of education don’t seem to factor into these suggestions.

This brings me to what may be the core crisis facing higher education today, and that is the onslaught of information that now accosts almost every human being in our borderless, always tuned in, always connected and interconnected globalized world. Perhaps nowhere is this flood of information more apparent than in the university—particularly in the United States. Never mind that much of the information is irrelevant to us and unusable. No matter, it still just keeps arriving in the form of books, monographs, periodicals, web sites, instant messages, social networking sites, films, DVDs, blogs, podcasts, e-mails, satellite and cable television shows and news programs, and the constant chirping of our Blackberries and smart phones—which, by the way, I hope you have turned off, if just for now!

While it is true that attention to detail is the hallmark of professional excellence, it is equally true that an overload of undigested facts is a sure recipe for mental gridlock. Not only do undigested facts not constitute structured knowledge but, unfortunately, the current explosion of information is also accompanied by its corollary pitfalls, such as obsolescence and counterfeit knowledge.

And, if you will indulge me for sacrificing the English language for a moment, another phenomenon we are confronting is the “Wikipediazation” of knowledge and education. At least in part, this is a result of the fact that we are all both givers and takers when it comes to running the machinery of the Information Age, particularly the virtual machinery. I am talking, of course, about the Internet. Let me tell you about a notorious event involving Wikipedia that has come to represent how easily false information can virally infect factual knowledge. What has come to be known as the Seigenthaler Incident began in 2005 when a false biography of the noted journalist Robert Seigenthaler, Sr., who was also an assistant to Robert Kennedy when he was Attorney General in the 1960s, was posted on Wikipedia. Among the scurrilous “facts” in the biography were that “For a short time, [Seigenthaler] was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.”

This horrendous misinformation—represented as truth— existed on Wikipedia for 132 days before Seigenthaler’s son, also a journalist, happened upon it and called his father. Seigenthaler, Sr. then had Wikipedia remove the hoax biography, but not before the same false facts had migrated to many other sites. Probably, somewhere in the estimated 30 billion online pages, it still exists. Wikipedia has taken steps to address this problem, but estimates are that there may be somewhere around two million distinct sites on the Internet, with more being created all the time, and there is no central authority, no group, individual or organization to oversee the accuracy of the information they purvey.

Clearly, therefore, one of the greatest challenges facing our society and contemporary civilization is how to distinguish between information—which may be true, false, or some tangled combination of both—and real knowledge. And further, how to transform knowledge into the indispensable nourishment of the human mind: genuine wisdom. As T. S. Eliot said, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

Today’s universities—along with our colleges, libraries, learned societies and our scholars—have a great responsibility to help provide an answer to Eliot’s questions. More than ever, these institutions and individuals have a fundamental historical and social role to play in ensuring that as a society, we provide not just training but education , and not just education but culture as well. And that we teach students how to distill the bottomless cornucopia of information that is ceaselessly spilled out before them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, into knowledge that is relevant, useful, and reliable and that will enrich both their personal and professional lives.

This is not an easy task, especially in a nation where, as Susan Jacoby writes in her recent book, The Age of American Unreason , “the scales of American history have shifted heavily against the vibrant and varied intellectual life so essential to functional democracy. During the past four decades, America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been grievously exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by an ignorant popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic. This new form of anti-rationalism, at odds not only with the nation’s heritage of eighteenth-century Enlightenment reason but with modern scientific knowledge, has propelled a surge of anti-intellectualism capable of inflicting vastly greater damage than its historical predecessors inflicted on American culture and politics.”

What Jacoby so forcefully points out is that ignorance is absolutely not bliss when both the strength of our democracy and the future of our society is at stake. And it may well be, for not only are we distracted and overwhelmed by the explosion of images, news, rumor, gossip, data, information and knowledge that bombard us every day, we also face dangerous levels of fragmentation of knowledge, dictated by the advances of science, learning, and the accumulation of several millennia of scholarship. Writing about the fragmentation of knowledge and the advent of specialization, it was not so long ago that Max Weber criticized the desiccated narrowness and the absence of spirit of the modern specialist. It was also this phenomenon that prompted Dostoevsky to lament in The Brothers Karamazov about the scholars who “…have only analyzed the parts and overlooked the whole and, indeed, their blindness is marvelous!” In the same vein, José Ortega y Gasset, in his Revolt of the Masses , as early as the 1930s, decried the “barbarism of specialization.” Today, he wrote, we have more scientists, scholars and professional men and women than ever before, but fewer cultivated ones. To put the dilemma in 21st century terms, I might describe this as everybody doing their own thing, but nobody really understanding what anybody else’s thing really is.

Unfortunately, the university, which was conceived of as embodying the unity of knowledge, has become an intellectual multiversity. The process of both growth and fragmentation of knowledge underway since the seventeenth century has accelerated in our time and only continues to intensify. The modern university consists of a tangle of specialties and sub-specialties, disciplines and sub-disciplines, within which specialization continues apace. The unity of knowledge has collapsed. The scope and the intensity of specialization are such that scholars and scientists have great difficulty in keeping up with the important yet overwhelming amount of scholarly literature of their own sub-specialties, not to mention their general disciplines. Even the traditional historical humanistic disciplines have become less and less viable as communities of discourse. As the late professor Wayne C. Booth put it wistfully in a Ryerson lecture he gave more than twenty years ago that still, sadly, sounds like breaking news from the education front: Centuries have passed since the fateful moment…when the last of the Leonardo da Vincis could hope to cover the cognitive map. [Now], everyone has been reduced to knowing only one or two countries on the intellectual globe…[In our universities] we continue to discover just what a pitifully small corner of the cognitive world we live in.

In that regard, I would add that this fragmentation of knowledge into more and more rigid, isolated areas is contributing to a kind of lopsidedness in the way education is organized and a growing disconnect between value-centered education and the kind of training that is aimed specifically at career preparation. What is hopeful is that there is a growing realization among the leaders of the nation’s higher education sector that this lopsided system of education is both deficient and dangerous, that we need a proper balance between preparation for careers and the cultivation of values, that general and liberal education is the thread that ought to weave a pattern of meaning into the total learning experience, that unless such a balance is restored, career training will be ephemeral in applicability and delusive in worth; and value education will be casual, shifting and relativistic. I strongly believe that one of the great strengths of American higher education is that it is home for liberal arts education, which is a sound foundation for all the professions and professional schools.

Ignorance is absolutely not bliss when both the strength of our democracy and the future of our society is at stake.

In the words of Albert Einstein, “It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of a lively feeling for values. He or she must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and the morally good. Otherwise he or she—with his or her specialized knowledge—more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person.” That is why I believe, and every year, whether I was a Dean, President or Provost of a University, I always reminded incoming freshmen to remember the famous line in Sheridan’s Critic (1799), that the number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is precious few. It is the task of higher education to increase the number of those who do undergo that fatigue.

To sum up, it seems to me that by trying to reduce the requirements for a degree and at the same time, expecting to be able to break down education into specialized parts— each part swollen to overflowing with endlessly and exponentially increasing amounts of data and information—we are going in absolutely the wrong direction. Why? Because all this pushing and pulling and compartmentalizing presupposes that somehow, one’s education will eventually be finished, that it will come to an end where an individual can say, now I’ve graduated and I don’t have to learn anymore . But of course, you never graduate from your life and hence, you never really graduate from learning. One’s “formal” education is really just an introduction to learning where the skills to go on educating oneself are acquired and inculcated into everyday life—because learning is a lifelong endeavor. In that connection, when I was president of Brown, one day I decided, as a joke or as an ironic act, to propose awarding two kinds of degrees, one certifying that you know the following subjects, the other one certifying the subjects that you know, but most thought it was a crazy idea because parents would say, we paid you to educate our sons and daughters and instead, you’re giving us an uneducated person. So I decided that we’d just say the BA degree was, as I’ve described above, an introduction to learning, an undertaking that must be carried on throughout all the years of one’s life.

One of the greatest strengths of American higher education is that it is home for liberal arts education, which is a sound foundation for all the professions and professional schools.

In order to further make my point about lifelong learning, let me share this one last story with you. Some years ago, when asked to give a major speech to an illustrious gathering at Southern Methodist University, instead of a speech, I gave an exam. I said, imagine that you are the last person on earth. Nothing is left, no monuments, no other human beings, no libraries, no archives and hence, you are the best-educated person on the planet. Suddenly, the Martians land and they want to debrief you, the last human being standing, so they can preserve the history of humanity and the civilizations of the planet Earth. They begin by asking you questions such as: We heard that you had some objects that could fly, but that’s such an antiquated mode of transportation, so can you explain to us the principles by which these objects were made to fly? After all, your society awarded PhDs and MDs and all kinds of other degrees to people like yourself, so can you just prepare a schematic for us about these flying things? And we also heard that you had some kind of ships that could travel under water, but how was that possible? We also heard that you were able to phone each other, and despite mountains and oceans and so forth, you could talk to each other across thousands of miles; how did that work? And, oh yes, we’d also like to have the maps of all the continents, so can you draw them for us? Please include all the nations along with rivers, counties, capitals, and so forth. After all, we understand that you are an educated person, so these things should be easy for you.

Then I said to the gathering—still speaking on behalf of the head Martian—there’s another subject we Martians want to know about. We have a long list of the names of the religions that people on Earth followed, and they were well-represented in the United States. We don’t quite understand the differences between these religions and why you argued about them century after century. Here is just part of the list we have: Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Confucianism, the Baha’i faith, and then the different forms of Christianity: Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, Southern Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, Amish, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Greek Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, and Russian Orthodox. Could you please pick five of these and tell us where they agree and where they disagree? Of course, there was dead silence in the audience. So I concluded my “exam” by saying, I thank you for not being the last man or woman on Earth, because education is a life-long experience and endeavor, and I believe you might have some catching up to do…! In a way, perhaps we all have constant “catching up” to do when it comes to finding ways to address the many challenges facing our colleges and universities. But we will find them, I am sure, because in the words of Henry Rosovsky8, the economist and educator, in higher education, “‘made in America’ is still the finest label.” We all should have a hand in ensuring that continues to be true.

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What is the purpose of higher education?

Counsellors, students and parents can have very different ideas about what higher education should achieve. Can those ideas be reconciled?

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“Rankings are indicative of the quality of education.”

“Rankings do not reflect the quality of education.”

“I don’t want to study history/philosophy/humanities because I won’t be able to get a job.”

“Getting a broad base of knowledge in humanities will allow you to understand the world.”

“Being able to think critically is important.”

“I want to study business and make a lot of money.”

These remarks and snippets of conversations may sound familiar to any college counsellor.

Wrestling with students and parents over the validity of rankings, appropriate majors to study and the purpose of college education seems to be a perennial yet begrudgingly accepted part of the job. It’s almost as if we are speaking different languages – we understand each other, but the message does not penetrate. Why is this so?

I believe this wrangling reflects an underlying conceptual difference in the perceived goal of education. Specifically: do you see education as transactional or transformational?

Is education transactional or transformational?

The transactional-transformational dichotomy was originally developed to describe leadership styles. Transactional leadership focuses on regulation and organisation, as well as performance. Compliance is enacted through reward and penalty.

Transformational leadership focuses on inspiration, stimulation and self-development. Modeling and articulating your vision results in loyalty among your followers.

But these two categories can be applied to education as well.

Transactional model of education

The transactional model of education aims to equip students with the skills they need to achieve socially accepted measures of success. These outcomes are tangible: a high salary or a prestigious work placement.

In this model of education, rankings are touted as a trustworthy measure of a university’s capacity to produce successful graduates. Study pathways that aim to create students to fill a clearly delineated role in society (such as pre-professional courses of study) are drawing from this view of education.

Transformational model of education

The transformational model of education aims to develop individuals who are able to think critically and independently. Naturally, the outcomes are less tangible than those of the transactional model of education as it is decidedly less straightforward to measure the success of critical thinking.

The transformational model of education does not avoid (and even sometimes encourages) raising individuals to challenge what a society dictates. This is why proponents of this view eschew commonly accepted measures of success, such as rankings. An exemplar of this model of education is the liberal arts education common in the US.

Meeting basic needs

It is important to point out that it’s easier to develop and adhere to a transformational model of education when one’s basic needs have been met. This can overlap on to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs , where lower-level needs (safety, acceptance) correspond to the measures of success of the transactional view. Meanwhile, the upper-level needs (self-actualisation) can loosely map on to the measures of success of the transformational model.

Some of our students' parents grew up in environments where resources were scarce. If your aim is to make enough money to be able to create a comfortable life for yourself and your children, then developing capacity for critical thought is unlikely to be at the forefront of your mind.

Given the large sums of money that parents often invest in their children’s education, it’s easy to see why they can lean towards a transactional model of education, where the benefits are more tangible and immediate.

Bridging the gap

Tensions in college counselling arise when the other party across the table is constantly citing seemingly unimportant variables when making one of the most important decisions in a student’s life.

As counsellors, we need to be able to bridge this gap, in order to promote more effective conversations and, ultimately, find the right fit course and college for the student. Fostering a holistic rather than a dualistic model – thinking in terms of both/and, rather than either/or – should be our aim.

So, how can one move towards recognising and reconciling this difference in attitude?

Practical strategies

1. Examine your own internalised model of education. As the college counsellor, it’s especially easy to fall into the trap of feeling that your view of education is the correct one, but this is not helpful in facilitating effective communication. Reflecting on how culture and generation helped to form your worldview may help you to understand that the other party is not necessarily wrong, even when they hold a different opinion from you.

2. Have an open discussion with students and parents about the purpose of education. Introducing the educational philosophies of universities – which often incorporate both models – can be a good way to raise awareness of the validity of both approaches.

3. Consider both models of education when pitching universities and programmes to students and parents. University representatives already do this, by highlighting graduate outcomes and internship opportunities as well as areas where the ability to think independently is valued. Collaborate with them to pitch the rationale and outcomes of both approaches to students.

4. Share stories of alumni who have successfully bridged the gap. For example, you may know of an alumnus who became a successful consultant after studying a humanities course. Outlining various narratives helps parents and students to understand that there is more than one path to success .

5. Consider interdisciplinary majors that incorporate both approaches. Many universities already have and are creating programmes that touch upon both models of education, so that students do not necessarily need to choose one over the other.

6. Have regular conversations and build trust. Given the deep-seated nature of these ideas, getting the other party see the value of a different model of education requires trust built up over multiple conversations.

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Roy Y. Chan, Ph.D.

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Understanding the Purpose of Higher Education: An Analysis of the Economic and Social Benefits for Completing a College Degree

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Making Sense of the Higher Ed Debate

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President Barack Obama’s recent proposals to reform higher education have once again made the debate over the future of higher education big news. Today, higher education is under scrutiny to explain what it does and why, while reformers from the White House to Wall Street are eager to provide alternatives.

The discussion is often vitriolic, in part because of the intense pressure exerted by internal and external stakeholders and because higher education today includes a diverse array of institutions that are not always distinguished from each other. At a deeper level, however, our disagreements stem from the fact that we speak very different languages, each of which reflect, ultimately, different assumptions about the nature and purpose of collegiate education in America.

There are three dominant languages today. Many administrators, policy makers, and those involved in for-profit education tend to invoke a utilitarian understanding of higher education stemming, ultimately, from the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The Obama administration has embraced a pragmatic understanding that draws from the ideas of John Dewey and others at the turn of the last century. Faculty, especially in the traditional academic disciplines, echo Aristotle and emphasize the virtues of universities.

Utilitarianism

The dominant language of higher education among reformers, many administrators, and for-profit advocates is utilitarianism. In An Introduction to the Principles of Moral and Legislation (1789), Bentham defined utility as “that principle which approves or disapproves every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.” Happiness is defined by pleasure, unhappiness by pain. Every human being, in Bentham’s understanding, seeks to maximize pleasure and avoid pain. Legal and moral “sanctions,” like the threat of punishment, work because violating them can cause pain.

As a concept, utility has no content: it does not seek to define happiness as a particular good. Utilitarianism is a system that, without stating what ought to cause pleasure, tries to generate social happiness.

A utilitarian approach to higher education, therefore, assumes that colleges and universities must be primarily outward-looking, responding to the wishes of higher education’s clients. For-profits, in particular, do not seek to change their students’ preferences but instead treat their students as customers. Give the students the kinds of programs they want to achieve what they want. The customer, after all, is always right.

That mantra, moreover, has become part of the broader set of assumptions in traditional higher education. To many reformers and administrators, universities should offer the kinds of programs students want in the way that they want it to maximize utility. As Jeffrey Selingo writes in his book College (Un)Bound , “colleges are turning into businesses where customers — in this case, students — expect to be satisfied. They have come to regard their professors as service providers.”

Utilitarians believe that they are engaged in a noble service: to help students achieve their own personal pursuit of happiness. At the same time, the utilitarian approach offers no sense of what ought to constitute a higher education -- it makes no claims as to what ought to be a good human life worthy of happiness. It leaves these questions up to the students and the broader marketplace.

Of course, since John Stuart Mill, some utilitarians have believed that there are “higher” and “lower” forms of pleasure. Mill argued in the mid-19th century that we should not consider all preferences equal but, instead, defer to the preferences of people who are best-informed about what promotes long-term happiness.

Yet the utilitarian strain among higher education reformers is not informed by Mill, but by a simpler calculus in which students’ and employers’ preferences must be satisfied rather than changed. As Mark Edmundson has written, the modern university seeks “to serve — and not challenge — the students.”

If most higher education reformers and many administrators are utilitarian in outlook, we have, perhaps for the first time, a true pragmatist in the White House. President Obama, as historian James Kloppenberg argues in his recent book Reading Obama , is committed to a theory of knowledge and politics derived from a revival of ideas which originated among such thinkers as John Dewey.

Pragmatism is not to be confused with practicality. All kinds of people can be practical. Pragmatism, instead, is a particular stance in relation to knowledge and how it works.

To pragmatists, the issue is not what is true, but what works. In his famous essay on the “reflex arc” in psychology (1896), Dewey criticized those who distinguished between stimulus and response, noting that each existed in relation to the other. This early insight shaped Dewey’s discussion of society. Like the reflex arc, our ideas must exist in constant feedback with changing external realities — our beliefs must change with time. If inherited ideas stop working, they must be changed so that the means we use will bring us the ends we desire.

To Dewey and others of his generation, the scientific temper and the democratic temper were the same thing. Democracies should exhibit a spirit of experimentation, with truth always tested by the results it achieves. If the results are inadequate, then the ideas or truth are as well. Truth is not derived a priori but as a result of constantly testing hypotheses and a willingness to revise assumptions. Things will change as society changes. Truth must fit circumstances.

President Obama has emphasized these Deweyian elements throughout his tenure. He consistently denies any loyalty to policies because they are Democratic or Republican, arguing instead that we should “ experiment and invest on anything that works ." He believes in looking at outcomes alone. In health care, in K-12 education, and in higher education, he wants data-based decision making. He is less committed to the means used to achieve these outcomes. We can expand access to health care through a universal public system or through expanding the role of for-profit insurance providers. To some, there are fundamental differences between these two approaches. To Obama, on the other hand, the real question is whether more people have affordable health care. He does not ask what is inherently good, but rather what works.

The pragmatic approach has a hard time defining means and ends. In the case of higher education, the President has abandoned any commitment to inherited practices — as his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan noted, “ we need some disruptive innovation in higher education .” The President himself promised to “ shake up ” higher education and his recently announced reform plans tout alternative delivery models .

But how is the end of higher education to be defined? Here, pragmatism focuses on what is needed today . It does not look to the past; it is resolutely presentist in its commitments. What is today’s world and how does higher education best serve it?

Yet implicitly, there are assumptions. For Obama, the default answer is that higher education must adjust to changing economic needs: higher education is for jobs . Thus he promotes a “completion agenda” that seeks, by any means available, to produce more degrees at a cheaper cost. Where others might consider deeper questions of virtues and practices, the president wants the outcome that fits the world he sees. The means are less important. Hence, the White House’s College Scorecard which emphasizes employment and value but not values .

Obama defines the outcomes to fit the economic context of today and then sets Americans free to experiment how to achieve them — anything that works. To Obama, there are no goods internal to higher education.

When Obama proclaims that he is the only “ adult in the room ,” this is what he means: he is the only one mature enough to abandon what he considers inherited dogma in order to face the future. Obama imagines a future that is not tied to the past but overcomes it.

Virtue Ethics

Ironically, given how much college professors are accused of being radicals, and the fact that college professors helped articulate the ideas behind pragmatism, they are in fact the most committed to an ideal that dates to Aristotle and has been revived recently by Alasdair MacIntyre and Michael Sandel: virtue ethics.

From the utilitarian perspective, the university should satisfy the ends desired by students. For the pragmatist, both the means and ends change with time; there is no essence that must remain constant. For the Aristotelian, on the other hand, the ends are fairly constant as are the means, for the means cannot be separated from the ends. The means are the practices that sustain the virtues of a university — those characteristics that are vital for it to achieve its end.

This is not to suggest that universities cannot change, nor that faculty do not wish to innovate. It is to suggest that a university has a telos , or end — to encourage in its students and faculty the ability to acquire and to use knowledge to interpret the world. It is to be, in Francis Oakley’s words, a “community of learning.” The knowledge and dispositions developed by a good education will help students lead a good life, be effective citizens, and gain success in the workplace.

If the true end of the university, according to many professors, is the interpretation and acquisition of knowledge old and new, there are a set of “ intellectual virtues ” that sustain this end: curiosity, a commitment to truth regardless of its consequences for politics or profit, integrity, the ability and desire to seek knowledge and to use it to be a better person and citizen. A university seeks to help students develop these virtues and, in its faculty, embodies these virtues.

There are certain practices that are vital to sustaining the virtues, including academic freedom in the classroom and in scholarship; tenure and shared governance to insulate the academic life from the pressures of politics and commerce; and exposing students to the liberal arts and sciences through a curriculum that asks students to ponder the world in new ways.

These virtues exist only when and if there are people who practice them and therefore help sustain the good — or end — of the university. As Alsadair MacIntyre writes , some goods are internal to an activity. In chess, for example, a child may play in order to get candy, but that child has not come to appreciate “the goods internal to chess,” such as skill, strategy, and mastery. Such a child would not embody the virtues of a chess player.

The same can be understood via religious devotional practices. At stake is not just whether a church converts people, but whether those conversions are a) the right ones (vs. utilitarianism), and b) for the right reasons (vs. pragmatism). Thus ritual religious practices exist to reinforce the ultimate end of which the rituals form a part. There is no way, from this perspective, for the ultimate ends to be sustained if the rituals that give them daily life and meaning are obliterated.

The university, then, is to faculty a community of inquiry that engages in practices that sustain the intellectual virtues vital for knowledge. The virtues and the practices that sustain them are not arbitrary but essential to achieving the telos of the university. A university that was not committed to intellectual inquiry would cease to promote either the ends or the practices that sustain those ends. In other words, a university that emphasized awarding degrees or generating revenue or whatever students might desire, instead of a faculty and student body engaged in intellectual inquiry would no longer be a university any more than a child who seeks candy and cheats is really playing chess.

Implications

So what? One implication is, quite simply, that to abandon the practices and virtues that sustain the end of the university is to lose something valuable, much like abandoning the practice of chess would be to lose chess, even if, to the casual observer, it appeared that the game was still being played.

The virtues that are tied to the ends of the academic profession — to promote knowledge through scholarship and teaching — require that the university sustain certain kinds of practices. Aristotle considered virtues to be dispositions that are related to the achievement of a good — a good life, a good society. A good university, thus, must cultivate certain virtues or dispositions in both faculty and students.

When professors look at for-profit schools, MOOCs, the shift from liberal arts to more vocational degrees, schools like Western Governors University that lack faculty and outsource thinking , the growth of adjunct teaching , and the commercialization of research, they do not see a threat primarily to their livelihood but to institutions that cultivate virtues that are unlikely to be preserved if utilitarians or pragmatists have their way. Academics take their inheritance seriously and hope to hand it on to the next generation of students and scholars.

The practices of academic life are not just historical artifacts from a past time (as pragmatism would have it) nor are they simply ways to give people whatever they want (as utilitarians would have it) but the essential attributes of an academic institution. To lose the practices may mean to lose the good itself. As the political theorist Joseph Raz argues in his Tanner lecture , “some values exist only if there are (or were) social practices sustaining them.” Those values must be worth sustaining, but their sustenance cannot be taken for granted.

The stakes, then, are quite high. They concern whether we want colleges and universities to take their cue from Bentham, from Dewey, or from Aristotle. College professors, especially those in the liberal arts and sciences, need to own up to their own assumptions and practices and even celebrate them.  Professors believe in practices and virtues that are associated with a good education. Professors thus sustain ways of thinking and doing that are threatened in a society dominated by utilitarian and pragmatic modes of thought.    

For all involved in discussions of the future of higher education, however, being aware that we speak different languages may help us engage with each other more thoughtfully. It will no doubt help us understand why we have such a hard time talking to each other.

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"The Purpose of Education"

Author:  King, Martin Luther, Jr. (Morehouse College)

Date:  January 1, 1947 to February 28, 1947

Location:  Atlanta, Ga.

Genre:  Published Article

Topic:  Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views

Writing in the campus newspaper, the  Maroon Tiger , King argues that education has both a utilitarian and a moral function. 1  Citing the example of Georgia’s former governor Eugene Talmadge, he asserts that reasoning ability is not enough. He insists that character and moral development are necessary to give the critical intellect humane purposes. King, Sr., later recalled that his son told him, “Talmadge has a Phi Beta Kappa key, can you believe that? What did he use all that precious knowledge for? To accomplish what?” 2

As I engage in the so-called “bull sessions” around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the “brethren” think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

The late Eugene Talmadge, in my opinion, possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America. Moreover, he wore the Phi Beta Kappa key. By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated?

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.

If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, “brethren!” Be careful, teachers!

1.  In 1925, the  Maroon Tiger  succeeded the  Athenaeum  as the campus literary journal at Morehouse. In the first semester of the 1947–1948 academic year, it won a First Class Honor Rating from the Associated Collegiate Press at the University of Minnesota. The faculty adviser to the  Maroon Tiger  was King’s English professor, Gladstone Lewis Chandler. King’s “The Purpose of Education” was published with a companion piece, “English Majors All?” by a fellow student, William G. Pickens. Among the many prominent black academicians and journalists who served an apprenticeship on the  Maroon Tiger  staff were Lerone Bennett, Jr., editor of  Ebony ; Brailsford R. Brazeal, dean of Morehouse College; S. W. Garlington, city editor of New York’s  Amsterdam News ; Hugh Gloster, president of Morehouse College; Emory O. Jackson, editor of the  Birmingham World ; Robert E. Johnson, editor of  Jet ; King D. Reddick of the  New York Age ; Ira De A. Reid, chair of the Sociology Department at Atlanta University; and C. A. Scott, editor and general manager of the  Atlanta Daily World . See  The Morehouse Alumnus , July 1948, pp. 15–16; and Edward A. Jones,  A Candle in the Dark: A History of Morehouse College  (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, 1967), pp. 174, 260, 289–292.

2.  Martin Luther King, Sr., with Clayton Riley,  Daddy King: An Autobiography  (New York: William Morrow, 1980), p. 143. In an unpublished autobiographical statement, King, Sr., remembered a meeting between Governor Eugene Talmadge and a committee of blacks concerning the imposition of the death penalty on a young black man for making improper remarks to a white woman. King, Sr., reported that Talmadge “sent us away humiliated, frustrated, insulted, and without hope of redress” (“The Autobiography of Daddy King as Told to Edward A. Jones” [n.d.], p. 40; copy in CKFC). Six months before the publication of King’s article, Georgia’s race-baiting former governor Eugene Talmadge had declared in the midst of his campaign for a new term as governor that “the only issue in this race is White Supremacy.” On 12 November, the black General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia designated his inauguration date, 9 January 1947, as a day of prayer. Talmadge died three weeks before his inauguration. See William Anderson,  The Wild Man from Sugar Creek: The Political Career of Eugene Talmadge  (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), pp. 226–237; Joseph L. Bernd, “White Supremacy and the Disfranchisement of Blacks in Georgia, 1946,”  Georgia Historical Quarterly  66 (Winter 1982): 492–501; Clarence M. Wagner,  Profiles of Black Georgia Baptists  (Atlanta: Bennett Brothers, 1980), p. 104; and Benjamin E. Mays,  Born to Rebel: An Autobiography  (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), pp. 221–223.

Source:   Maroon Tiger  (January-February 1947): 10.  

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Higher education is worth it, but colleges must do more for their grads.

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What institutions can do to improve the post-graduation return for their students and increase ... [+] public confidence in higher education.

It’s not only older Americans who are losing faith in the nation’s colleges and universities. Generation Z shares their skepticism.

Recent surveys of those born after 1996 — current high school and college students and recent college graduates — have found that many members of this generational cohort are mistrustful of higher education and don’t believe it’s worth the expense . These growing doubts have manifested themselves in declining rates of college attendance. Undergraduate enrollment has experienced a steady slide since 2010 . In 2023, for example, only 61.4% of high school graduates enrolled immediately in college — the lowest rate in more than 30 years.

But earnings data still paint a much rosier picture about higher education. Data from the federal government and numerous other research studies consistently show that a college degree pays off both in the short term and over the long run. A recent deep-dive into earnings data and college expenses for nearly 6 million American individuals with college degrees should expect to see rates of economic return of 9% to 10% annually throughout their careers.

So where’s the disconnect? America’s colleges and universities spend far too much of their time cogitating the purpose of higher education and its role in the world. But we know what students want: for college to give them the skills, knowledge and credentials to help them secure a good job that propels them to a good career and a good life. This finding is consistent across all demographic subgroups and all degree pathways — and it’s far and away the top reason why individuals pursue a college degree. And going back to school isn’t out of the question either. For the Class of 2025, 46% are interested in continuing their education with a graduate degree.

Americans demand a strong return on investment for their higher education dollar. As the debate over college costs and debt continues, here are three things institutions can do right now to improve the post-graduation return for their students and increase public confidence in higher education.

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Many institutions are rightly worried about revenues and expenses. While the rate of college closures has increased to one per week , the FAFSA rollout debacle and longer-term demographic trends will further depress college enrollment. For decades, colleges have spent lavishly on campus facilities and student amenities to create unparalleled campus experiences attractive to students. But if students are choosing college to set them up for long-term success, it makes increasing sense to spend limited institutional revenues on people and programs that can prepare students for careers.

While more institutions are beginning to beef up their career services efforts, career services leaders serve as vice presidents at fewer than 3% of colleges. As a former career services leader who had three very different levels of seniority or influence on three campuses, this stat suggests to me that institutional support for careers is not yet on par with that of academics, athletics, research and enrollment management.

Colleges have an opportunity to rethink how they spend Federal Work-Story Program dollars to provide more professional value to students. Congress spends more than $1 billion annually so colleges can employ 600,000 students, but these part-time campus jobs are rarely aligned with students’ majors or their career interests. Institutions should offer on-campus jobs in research labs and administrative offices that impart technical and durable skills that can help set up their students for career success.

For students looking for career-connected work off campus, institutions can create internship funds that provide stipends and grants to students who take unpaid work-based learning opportunities. Students should be paid for their work, but it’s just as important for student employment to have real learning and growth potential beyond financial aid or a paycheck.

Students should be required to have internships.

The impact of internships is undeniable . Research shows that working a paid internship during college is associated with a wage premium of nearly $3,100 one year after a student graduates. Yet access to internships among college undergraduates remains far too limited , which suggests that colleges should do more to provide their students access to valuable work-based learning opportunities.

Career conversations should be integrated into every classroom.

A college’s career services office can’t do it alone. It needs faculty partners. Professors can do things as simple as assigning students to attend career center events or giving them extra credit for registering for an online career platform. Faculty can invite career services representatives to speak to their classes or list potential career skills alongside the desired learning outcomes for each assignment on the syllabus. Institutions can create the space for faculty to do “tours of duty” — shadowing alumni for a week on the job and having them identify the particular skills they learned in class that have proven integral to their professional success.

America’s colleges and universities continue to play a critical role in helping individuals lift up themselves and their communities and creating the talent required to keep our nation strong. To regain the confidence of a skeptical public and improve the return on higher education investment, institutions should put their money where their mouths are and do even more to prepare students for careers.

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Read the college essay a Harvard grad wrote about McDonald's that landed him offers from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton

• Cofounder of AI company Exa Jeffrey Wang wrote his college application essay about McDonald's.
• The Harvard graduate said he wanted to make his essay authentic and entertaining.
• Wang said he got into Yale, Harvard, and Princeton using the same essay.

When Jeffrey Wang was a high-school senior in Connecticut in 2014, he wasn't sure what to write about for his college application essay.

He thought about writing his essay on a subject he enjoyed at school or a project he'd worked on. But he knew others would have the same idea .

Wang told Business Insider he grew up in a middle-class family in the suburbs of Cheshire, CT. He felt he didn't have anything extraordinary to write about.

"I hadn't spent any summers abroad, and I hadn't done any fancy programs," he said.

He wanted to show his personality

He read Harry Bauld's book, 'On Writing the College Application Essay,' which made him realize college admissions officers wouldn't have time to read each essay diligently.

He said he realized his primary objective should be to entertain the admissions officer reading his essay .

"For the most part, they're just looking for character," Wang said. He decided to write about studying at McDonald's.

He told BI he thought it might pique an admissions officer's interest and illustrate his character: someone who did well at school but also hangs out at a McDonald's.

Wang said he also wanted to use his essay to challenge assumptions admissions officers might have. "I'm an Asian-American with a perfect SAT score. Maybe that looks pretty cookie-cutter on paper," he said.

Authenticity is key

The essay summarizes how Wang discovered his local McDonald's was an ideal place to study and meditate. He mentioned he liked interacting with different community members and how it was a more efficient and affordable study space than other options. The underpinning message is finding joy or peace in unusual places.

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"For the most part, it was a pretty authentic essay," Wang said, adding that he included a few "intellectual references," such as a novel and a physicist, to show the admissions officer he was smart. He said if he were to write it now, he'd leave out the big words and references.

His parents were worried the topic was too risky, but Wang said he felt confident, and if an admissions officer didn't like it — the school wasn't the right fit.

He got into Yale, Harvard, and Princeton

Growing up, Wang dreamed of attending Yale in his home state of Connecticut. He applied to Yale under early decision , using his essay about McDonald's.

Wang received an offer of financial aid from Yale, but he told BI he wanted to see if he could get more from other colleges.

He applied to Harvard, Duke, Princeton, MIT, and others with the same essay. He got into both Princeton and Harvard, and received offers of financial aid from them both. Business Insider has verified these offers with documentation.

Wang chose to study computer science at Harvard in 2015 because he said it was the best for STEM subjects, and he wanted to be further away from home.

He still tries to live authentically

Wang said if his friends read his essay now, 10 years after he submitted it, they'd recognize his personality in it. It shows his "scrappy" attitude to life, he said.

After graduating from Harvard in 2019, he started working as a software engineer for a tech company in San Francisco. He quit in 2022, and cofounded his startup Exa, a search engine for AI, in 2023.

Wang believes that prioritizing authenticity helped his success since college. "If you do things that you feel are authentic or that are right, you'll be rewarded for it," he said.

Do you have a college admissions success story? Email Ella Hopkins at [email protected] .

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