Um, No, the Purpose of Education Isn’t to Increase Your ‘Earning Potential’
We can benefit from something without pursuing that benefit.
During the Tory leadership race two summers ago, Rishi Sunak, now the Prime Minister, pledged to scrap degrees that did not increase the ‘earning potential’ of those who took them. He also promised to create a ‘Russell Group’ of technical colleges. And he said he would introduce a British baccalaureate; this, he said, would stop pupils from dropping English and maths at 16. He added that the existing curriculum was not fit for purpose, for it did not prepare young people for the ‘economy of tomorrow’.
Let us ignore Sunak’s plans for teeny tiny children and focus on higher education for the moment. It is of course sensible from time to time to ask whether it is serving its students. Education is important; in fact, its importance is one of the few things on which we all (somehow) manage to agree. As it is, many students leave university groaning under the weight of debt. Then there is the economics of education that any ruler has to consider: a country cannot generate much wealth if its citizens have no useful knowledge or skills. So Rishi’s scrutiny of education is perfectly justified.
A country cannot generate much wealth if its citizens have no useful knowledge skills.
Bit his notion of ‘value’ in respect of education might not be. It is surely too narrow and utilitarian to judge a subject according to a purely economic standard because prosperity is plainly not the be-all and end-all of things, despite much behaviour to the contrary. It is a means to an end: money gives us the freedom to do or acquire things we believe (rightly or wrongly) will make our lives meaningful. Learning, by contrast, is an end in itself.
Viewing education in this way does not strip it of its capacity to confer an economic benefit, however. We can benefit from something without making that benefit the purpose of the pursuit. Consider a relationship. It is undoubtedly beneficial. It gives its parties (in theory, at least) comfort, strength, companionship, hope and so on, which help them to thrive, economically and otherwise. It also involves pooling resources, which increases the financial security of those involved. But what kind of person would seek out a relationship on the grounds that it would be beneficial in such a utilitarian way? Such a relationship could hardly be loving, for there can be no love when the first motivation is for profit. And education works much the same way. It confers a financial benefit in the end, but by focusing squarely on that we strip it of much of its primary value. We just do the bare minimum to attain the degree that brings us the job we want.
We can profit from something without pursuing that profit. Consider a relationship.
Well (I hear you ask) what is that value? It depends on what we study. But, among things, learning enriches our understanding of the world, nourishes curiosity, improves problem-solving, strengthens empathy and encourages lifelong personal growth. We may not be able to say in strictly rationalist terms why there is value in learning Latin or Ancient Greek, beyond its giving us a firm foundation for other languages, or the means to read the classics in their original. Yet as a subject of study, Latin has endured through the centuries, and been part of an education that has shaped the lives of great men and women. Few people regret learning it, even if they are useless at saying what it gave them.
The humanities inevitably come up when the perceived worth of subjects is under discussion. Humanities grads will have had the experience of being asked, having told someone what they studied, ‘What are you going to do with that, then?’ Studying the humanities is tricky to do, but we can at least say that they nurture human qualities: they give students the means to rehearse complex emotions and scenarios through stories — to learn how and what and to what degree to feel — and to draw on the wisdom contained within them. They teach emotional intelligence. They teach rhetorical power. And students who study these subjects live in a world rich with meaning, where others see facts, which must be worth something.
The humanities nurture human qualities. They give students the means to rehearse complex emotions and scenarios through stories.
It is also worth noting that what increases a student’s ‘earning potential’ today might not tomorrow. This was true forty years ago; but it is truer today, thanks to advancements in technology and change afoot in the world of work. ‘Nokia, one billion customers — can anyone catch the cellphone king?’ ran a breathless Forbes front cover in 2007. On the 29th June that year, the iPhone appeared. Who uses Nokia now? Things change; thus, the more relevant the subject to the present moment, the greater the risk may be that it will soon become irrelevant. If every country on earth disarmed tomorrow, studies in nuclear disarmament would become obsolete.
Learning for the sake of learning cultivates a lifelong love of learning, and that is rendered fragile by the pursuit of a subject for sheer monetary gain. Already, we read of children who are sick to the back teeth of being forced to code and abandon it at the first opportunity. You yourself, reader, may have had the experience of attempting to monetise a hobby and finding your love for that hobby fading. It is much the same. To drag ourselves through a three- or four-year degree because of the promise of prosperity on the other side makes learning miserable or superficial or both, and though prosperity may come at the end, it is at the price of a broader, wider, more global view of the world (which may also include prosperity), and the satisfaction of know we are not completely empty-headed.
