What Is College For?

Andrew Delbanco discusses the purpose of college, highlighting economic benefits, political importance, and the value of liberal education in fostering individual growth and enhancing democratic citizenship.

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The American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - William Deresiewicz

William Deresiewicz theamericanscholar.org

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Students have lost sight of the teleology, or final purpose, of the education system.7 When you’re in fifth grade, you know clearly that your goal is to get to sixth grade—and it goes like that up through twelfth grade, at which point you’ve spent the past four years of your life preparing for something called “college” along carefully defined line

Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

Elite Education | The Point Magazine

Jonny Thakkar thepointmag.com

Brian Sholis added

- “If one function of a college like Swarthmore should be to create a good elite, another should be to give young people a taste for the life of the mind understood as an end in itself.”

The Point • Elite Education | The Point Magazine

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Ultimately, the true measure of any educational experience lies in how it empowers individuals to think critically, pursue meaningful goals, and contribute to society in ways that resonate with their authentic aspirations, conventional or otherwise, while maintaining reasonable levels of personal well-being.

Arpit Chaturvedi • Pipeline or Catalyst? The Dual Paths of Elite Education

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As colleges lost their monopoly on information, college became less about learning and more about signaling. Whatever value they once provided is diminishing. Peter Thiel argues that college has become an expensive insurance policy for upper middle class parents who don’t want to see their children fall through the cracks of society.

David Perell • What the Hell Is Going On?

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Despite the favorable opinions of undergraduates and alumni, a closer look at the record…shows that colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should. Many seniors graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers.

Clayton M. Christensen • The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out

“The system forgot to teach them, along the way to the prestige admissions and the lucrative jobs, that the most important achievements can’t be measured by a letter or a number or a name,” Deresiewicz wrote. “It forgot that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.