The Myth of Higher Education

You have to go to college and get a degree to get a job and be set for life.  Anyone near my age grew up firmly hearing and believing that and likely investing tons of time, energy, and dollars into chasing that.  I firmly believe there was a time when a college degree was a way to join an exclusive club (although likely those who could afford college were likely already members of the club, and the very few who got scholarships or somehow cobbled together enough money to go got to join) that was otherwise inaccessible to the average person.  Going to a university was a prestigious accomplishment and something you used as a basis for your identity for the remainder of your life.  Being an alumnus meant something and informed people you encountered that you were accomplished and intelligent and necessitated that you be taken seriously.  At one point, simply having a degree meant you were qualified for jobs in which you had no real actual hands on education because it simply said, “I can learn, and here is tangible proof of it on my wall”.  At some point there was a shift.  A degree was no longer the ticket to get ahead in fact it became a minimum requirement.  Then things got more competitive and it mattered not just that you HAD a degree, but where it was from, what it was in, and how high in your class you had been.  Suddenly, the diploma was just the entry point to “career” and not a launchpad.  Millions of us had been spoon-fed this idea that obtaining this magical degree was all that was required to get the life we wanted, that somehow university classes and graduation would be transformative and we would process through this great educational metamorphosis and emerge inherently better and more desirable on the other side.  What bullshit.   

I have a degree.  Actually, I have two.  Both a bachelors as well as a master’s degree, and the bachelor’s degree only served as an entry point to get my master’s.  I recognize the career path I have been on for the last decade plus would have been inaccessible to me without both of my degrees, however my two degrees are not at all related and the latter represents a massive about face in terms of “what am I doing with my life?”.  Combined I went well into six figures of debt to get all of this valuable learning.  Yet here I still sit baffled at many things in life, outdone by people with substantially less education than me.  Obtaining a degree only shows that you can absorb enough teaching and parrot it back in a variety of forms of testing, and as a white male many tests are already skewed in my favor.  When I graduated with my undergraduate degree, I felt a combination of relief and sheer panic.  I wasn’t equipped for the real world.  I didn’t have an identity or a clue about my future, but I was fucking DONE with school, thank god.  “I’m never doing that again” – me about 4 years before doing that again.  I applied for jobs that I didn’t quite meet the minimum qualifications for, because suddenly every entry level job required one to two years of experience, which I found mystifying.  If I need the experience to simply enter the field, how do I get the experience?  Internships weren’t sufficient because those typically only lasted a semester.  I vividly recall having two interviews scheduled in one day. 

My first interview the interviewer was almost an hour late starting the interview and then spent the entire interview being combative and making me feel like my achievement of graduating with a degree was just ultimately impressing.  It concluded with me feeling like a failure and that I was being blown off when I was told “we will reach out in a week or two”.  I was so demoralized I went straight home and didn’t even bother going to the second interview because I simply didn’t have the physical or emotional endurance to go through another interview.  I ate some fast food and took a depression nap.  My cell phone ringing awakened me but I didn’t answer it, assuming it was the second interview asking where I was.  Instead it was the first interview, asking me to come in the following week for a follow up interview with the manager who would be my supervisor for the position I had interviewed for.  I never returned that phone call, and subsequently settled for a management position in my retail position I had worked part-time in during school that had become a full-time status upon graduation.  I recall talking to the other members of management from other stores and my own and feeling like I had wasted years and accumulated a mountain of debt to take a job that I could have just worked my way up to.  At the time, I felt like I had underachieved by being in retail management.  It didn’t bring me a sense of accomplishment or an identity.  I was making ok money, not far from what I would have made at the jobs I interviewed for.  I liked my boss and considered sticking around and rising through the local stores ranks to a corporate position.  Then a day came where I was moved away from the boss I genuinely enjoyed working with and for and it all went to pot from there.  I left the company and was floating.  My degree was so far serving no purpose for me.  It wasn’t for another year and a half before my degree mattered, and only then to get me into a grad school program that has me in my current career.

As I read “The Second Mountain”, by David Brooks I find his experience in college vastly different from my own.  He talks about the professors igniting a passion in him and planting a seed that decades later blooms as part of his purpose.  I am nearly 20 years removed from my undergrad degree being conferred upon me, and I have very few memories from professors that sparked anything in me.  I wonder if the educational system has changed drastically in the 20 years that separate his experience from mine, or if it’s because I chose a course of study that I ended up having zero interest in.  Or is this a reflection on me, do I lack, or did I lack passions or were my motivations for college off, did my belief that any old degree would do to get me into career land lead me astray?  I certainly recall having an interest in courses that I decided against pursuing because I didn’t think there was money involved with them, and ultimately preferred the courses that resulted in my minor far more than the courses related to my major.  In “The Second Mountain”, Brooks alludes to a shift in education that was starting when he was in school, moving more into a research focus away from a humanistic focus.  Focusing on a small portion of the human experience, more nuanced and specific rather than a broad overview of the world and how it operates.

Ultimately, I think we have reached a place in society where people can say “college isn’t for everyone” as well as “you don’t need a college degree to make a good living”.I am grateful for that shift, but I think we need to take it a step further.University should be a time where they grow better humans.Where we focus on finding what it is that we should DO rather than finding out what society will pay us the most to do.I recognize that some people did that anyway, but not all of us figured that out.Beyond that, a university should be setting us up for success along the path we choose.There are certainly opportunities for people to discover those if they go looking, but I don’t feel that most of the modern institutions are engaging the students and ensuring they are able to find their way and function immediately following graduation.Instead we enter the world much like a newborn, blinking our eyes in disbelief at this new world and having no clue how to take our first steps and often relying on our caregivers to show us the way.In my years following grad school I have learned more on my own or from mentors than I learned in the 7 years I spent in higher education settings.Honestly, in doing near daily reading focusing on personal growth rather than hobbits I feel like I have experienced more growth than with all of my “higher” education combined.Education is a lifelong pursuit, and one I honestly feel that universities are not getting right.You can achieve a higher education simply by having a library card and some motivation.Higher education as we have been led to believe is just one path, and it’s a myth that it is necessary for many careers.Sadly, for careers like doctor or lawyer it is still the only path forward.But for many of us, there are so many other paths we can take that may result in vocation which is far better than career.