I am fortunate to work for one of Utah’s outstanding tech companies. It may come as a surprise then, that while in school, I studied political science, English literature and law. True, my profession of regulatory compliance leans heavily on my legal training, but with each passing year I become more aware that my undergraduate college degree has been the greatest career springboard of my life.
Over the years, many of us have been told by well-meaning folks that we better study hard so we can “get a good job and make lots of money.” Like telling children to eat vegetables so they can have dessert, this phrase has been repeated so often that some of us have actually started to believe it. In time, we have failed to realize that lucrative job prospects only scratch the surface of why every American should pursue learning and why — as a rule — leaders in particular need the learning we associate with a university education.
John R. Park, a founding father of Utah’s amazing higher education system, once said, “Always remember in your teaching that the grand purpose of your labors is to make citizens — active, thinking, intelligent, industrious and moral men and women. This you cannot do by any narrow routine of school forms.”
We need to look no further than the original beneficiaries of the GI bill to confirm this wisdom. That generation of renaissance men and women built an intellectual foundation on the general courses associated with the liberal arts and then marched forward with focused training in one hand and the “great books” of Western tradition in the other. Though Depression-raised, the Greatest Generation would become the most prosperous in world history, even conquering the moon. They also made massive strides in civil rights, medicine and overcoming poverty. Do we honestly think we would be better off today if we went back in time and cut out the language, philosophy, history, literature and math classes those heroes excelled at?
Decades later, we again hear calls for efficiency that measure educational success only by dollar signs. If we measured all careers by that yardstick, what would that mean for honored professions like the military and teaching? Those professions may not pay the most, but we cannot be happy or free without them. Furthermore, in a highly competitive world, Utah’s system of higher education will not attract our brightest local students unless our colleges and universities provide full offerings. Nor can we afford a brain drain of the brightest professors.
I’ll never forget taking Ethics 1010 — a philosophy class — to fill a general requirement in college. Instead of being a class to “get out of the way,” it helped me examine — and ultimately strengthen — my own beliefs about right and wrong. Recent events in the worlds of cryptocurrency and fintech demonstrate that a person can be very astute in a specialized field and still end up ruining countless lives and landing in prison. We can expect more of that if we establish educational priorities in shortsighted ways.
Of course, not everyone’s path will follow a traditional college education, and financial success is a laudable personal goal. That said, America needs a critical mass of university educated citizens who have been trained to deal with moral as well as technical problems, and who have learned both the pitfalls and triumphs of our shared past. These abilities will not always conform to whatever career happens to top today’s highest paying list.
John R. Park was right. Citizenship is at the heart of American higher education. If we are going to survive and thrive in the challenging years to come, that concept must be re-embraced as never before.