It's so easy to get swept up in the anti-college debates of the day:
Should tenure be abolished? Are the liberal arts necessary?

And at the top of the list, causing the most hand-wringing:
What can we do to tamp down the rising costs of a college education?

Let's remind ourselves of the reason we attend, in the first place. If your answer is "To qualify for a job," you're off base.

I'll share a story with you about the time I had a discussion with one of my professors, who was doubling as an undergraduate advisor.

"Why are you selecting this major?" he asked, which is a pertinent question.

"Because I want to get a degree and enjoy the process," I replied in utter candor. That was good enough for him, and without realizing the full import of what I said, I believe I uttered the magical words that unlock the fortress of wisdom.

College is not about qualifying for a particular vocation. There are trade techs that abound where you can learn about plumbing or electrical wiring.

Traditional colleges and universities, at least in the first two years of study, teach you to think by studying the great ideas of humankind. These concepts, articulated as they were by Emerson and Thoreau, by Freud and Pavlov, by Darwin and theologians, create the stuff of reflection and judgment that can serve us for a lifetime.

Listening to one's fellow students debating capital punishment in a speech class does much to prepare us to be citizens and leaders in democracies. We learn that the power to choose is accompanied by the responsibility to choose, wisely.

There is no other place quite like a university where ideas can be discussed as deeply, as meaningfully, and as thrillingly. Where else but in a student lounge can you see a Peanuts poster proudly displayed that shows Lucy and Charley Brown locked in dialogue with the caption that reads: "We don't get much done, but we have some great discussions!"

Speaking of plumbers, I went to school with one, and of all people we might think was a misfit in that milieu he was the opposite. He thrived, grateful for every morsel of knowledge he could retrieve to ponder as he plied his pickup to the next job. He was one of the best exemplars of "living in the moment" and preparing for the future that I have ever encountered.

I didn't keep up with him but I'll bet his years invested in the classroom paid off in tremendous satisfaction.

But did he earn more money with his degree?

If that question seems oddly out of place in this essay, it should. It is irrelevant.

The quality of life, and by that I would say nearly everyone's life, is improved with college study.

Price isn't value, and college isn't about money.

It's about the IDEAS, and about who and what we become in the process of pursuing them.

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