The Problem

Well, it‘s time to throw down the gauntlet and say: the price of education, on every plane of human sacrifice, is too high. The last semester of my college experience, for which I paid quite healthily, proved this aphorism in spades. I was under the impression for the majority of this semester that my education was mostly free, paid for by a scholarship which the school had awarded. Unfortunately, that scholarship was pulled out from under me just weeks before the end of the semester and I was locked out of all my accounts and campus services until I could find some way to cough up $2,900 in tuition. Here’s what I spent those $2,900 on: one teacher of the arts with a god complex who stood before our class and blew smoke six hours a week and one teacher of the sciences who stood before a class of five hundred students and, essentially, recited the textbook three hours a week. Thereafter I spent $150 to rent two e-textbooks for the semester that cost nothing to print and $300 on fees of whose purpose I am still not clear.

And the price of this semester’s learning must have surely included the approximately eighteen hours of lonely study I pushed through every week in order to receive fairly mediocre, albeit passing, grades. The price must have included the feeling of isolation experienced in two classes of five hundred and three hundred students, respectively. And the list goes on.

By the end of this particular semester, I decided that perhaps the price was too high, in a way, because of the university of my choosing. I’m a pretty metropolitan guy by nature, but I had chosen to attend a school in a very rural area because of that particular school's excellent piano performance program (when I first enrolled I had dreams of becoming a concert pianist and had received a full-tuition scholarship to pursue those dreams). But, like the vast majority of aspiring concert pianists, I came to find that, despite the fact that I’ve got plenty of technical chutzpah, becoming a professional pianist was simply not a realistic option for me (I may be good, but not that good), and decided to switch to a finance major, losing my scholarship. It seemed there was nothing left to keep me at this more rural university with its boundless acres of farmland (their finance program was good - but not that good). So I decided to transfer to a more hip, urban university, despite paying almost $700 more, in tuition alone, for that particular choice.

Needless to say, after all the work and decision-making, the summer came as a welcome relief. I got to move home, away from my snoring roommate, away from the burden of schoolwork, and away from the interpersonal drama that comes from living in a community of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds. So I settled into trying to find a job so I could start saving up the $12,000 it would take to get me through the next year of my schooling.

But all of this paying and paying and paying began to get me wondering: am I behaving rationally? Is there a reason I am choosing to follow this particular educational course instead of another? Is this the most efficient way to be learning? Why am I getting an education at all?

Well, there seems to be a pretty intuitive answer to the latter of my concerns: an education is important in and of itself. Robert Kiyosaki, financial guru, is known to say, “Ultimately, it is your financial intelligence… that makes you rich.” Peter Brougham: “Education makes a people… easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.” Joseph Addison: “What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.” So education is valuable - that seems self-evident. But couldn’t there be a better way to get an education?

One challenge I face is that I’m not entirely sure what I want to study. I am currently pursuing finance, but I don’t really know that a career in finance is ultimately what would make me the most happy. I know that if I invest in a career in finance, I’m fairly certain to get a significant monetary return on my investment. But I’m not sure if the aforementioned career would lead to a genuinely fulfilling life for me.

My dad is a big proponent of doing what you love, something for which I respect him a great deal. I’ve talked with him about my plight of not being sure what I want to study, and have suggested that perhaps I take a break from school until I do know what I want to do, to which he observes that a person will never know what he wants to do unless he goes into the world and tries a lot of things, and a great way is to go to college, taking classes in many subjects until one strikes a chord.

Sounds like wise advice to me, but expensive. $12,000 a year seems like a pretty big down payment on finding yourself. Couldn’t there be a better way to find out what I want to do? Why? Why pay so much for my education? Why pay so much for textbooks? Why pay so much for professors to read those textbooks to me? Why continue to feel isolated in a system that is meant to unite me with other human beings?

I am intrigued by what Emerson, who was clearly well-educated, had to say about higher education: “We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.”

Now, of course, I have to insert a concession here. Is getting a college education worth it? Is the benefit you get from a college education greater than the cost exacted for getting it? Without a doubt. It’s the best system that we have right now. Well, that is to say, it’s really the only system we have right now. And it’s full of - I believe - benevolent people intending to improve their community. But could there be a better way? Could there be a more stimulating, enlightening, efficient way? To this I must respond with equally emphatic fervor - yes! And with the price of education getting higher every year, the flaws in this system - the inefficiencies - will prove to be fatal unless something changes. The system of higher learning stands to be fixed. And I intend to show that it is possible to fix it.