College as job training

On the estimable Diane Rehm show, several guests discussed the value of a college education. Nearly every position, statement or question assumed that economic value is the best (or only) measure of college as a contributor to a person's life success. In this case, read "career success".

I am dismayed that we have come down to this pedestrian notion - college is job training, nothing more. A good cost/benefit analysis will resolve the question of whether the expense (and debt) is worthwhile. It is high time we recalled the loftier notion of the meaning of an education.

We are, after all, citizens of a republic. We need to be informed so we can select effective and virtuous (in the sense of civic virtue) officials to represent us. As parents we must answer difficult questions our children pose to us. We can't just tell them to run a spreadsheet to clarify a thorny geopolitical and ideological issue.

It's all well and good for the Chinese to stress science and math only. They are not a republic, people have no freedom of speech or expression, and there is only one political party. Let's at least agree that we should include political science among the subjects we, citizens of a great nation, are charged to sustain for our children and posterity.

Our founders would be dismayed if all we looked for out of a fine education was to make a buck. How about being able to make good decisions on all that great technology we create. Have we forgotten the inconvenience to the world of that great German science of the 1930s and 1940s that was placed in the hands of bad people.

So knock it off already with this narrow analysis. We are a republic, we need to be well and broadly informed, our place in the world makes it essential to understand more than currency exchange rates.