There was a time when I considered myself a professional student. I graduated college with 30% more courses than required, and all I had to show for it was not another bachelor degree, but a couple of minors. After that, I spent another 4 years obtaining not a PhD, but a couple of masters degrees. By the time I finished my formal education, I had attended five universities and a couple of community colleges. Meanwhile, folks with a lot less education were getting way ahead of me in their careers, and it often made me question where I was going with all this education I was getting.
There’s a hot debate about what values universities should provide to their students. Affixed weightily to this topic is job prospects upon graduation, since the American education system has successfully instilled in the public mind that a 4-year degree is required in order to get a decent job. I had, too, pondered this question for quite some time, if not anything, for my own benefits. And I believe that beyond a vocation, higher education should ignite an interest to embark on a philosophical journey of what it means to be a citizen, to be a human, and what is a life well lived. Throughout my years of schooling, I can count a few professors who had such profound impact upon me, be it vocationally or philosophically.
One of them was Dr. W. Dr. W. told outrageous stories about his family and his consulting days. He once said that it took him 9 years to convince his wife to marry him. I think he understood that teaching was an art, and the teacher was the actor whose job was to inspire students. In his course, we read and produced art pieces to reflect our thoughts and feelings upon what we read. He submitted and got one of my art pieces published on the university’s art and literary journal publication. The piece wasn’t all that amazing, but he must have seen that I was an overly enthusiastic student. He shared with his students a list of must-reads, of which I kept a few on my bookshelf to this day.
The first course that I took with Dr. L. was about Applied Statistics. One may not believe that statistics can be appealing, but he made it so engaging that I kept on taking his classes. Dr. L. was sharp and no nonsense, and he reinforced his teaching with real life examples from his days as a consultant, peppered with jokes about statisticians and stories about motorbiking across the country every summer. I must have known then that his teaching was invaluable, because I kept all of his materials, and they later proved to have a direct impact upon my work. His only course that I didn’t take was on Ethics because it wasn’t a graduation requirement, but I wish that I did.
When I was studying in Italy, I took a course on International Affairs. The professor was tough and condescending. He would shred our essays to pieces, but he also got CNN to interview our class about the war on Iraq. He was such a pain in the ass that to vent behind his back, we would gossip about his wife and how ever she could put up with him. Yet in being demanding, he challenged me to consider complex topics in a cohesive way. I hadn’t thought much of geopolitics previously, and he helped open my mind to think of it critically and systematically. The only textbook that I still keep on my bookshelf was assigned by him.
And then there was Dr. G., endlessly patient and kind. He was the only professor I knew that never minded explaining things to his students, over and over again, until they understood them. I loved Dr. G. so much that I enlisted him as my advisor for a senior design project, just so I could spend a few hours a week with him. I think I saw in him a father figure that I was missing. Years after graduation, I still wrote to him, and he’d always write back. I asked him for a letter of recommendation for a masters program application, and he did. I don’t know what he saw in me. Perhaps he, too, saw a kid who needed a father.
The age of automation and artificial intelligence is coming to reign upon us, and it is ever more critical to examine what about living that education should prepare its students. For a long time, we have largely derived our meaning of life from our vocations. That many of these jobs are mundane and soulless has been a well-accepted fact, but they provide men with financial means to support themselves and their families, and that in itself gives meaning to these jobs. Yet as automation and AI inevitably take over many of these blue-collar and white-collar jobs, we need to recalibrate our economic system – redefining the economic benchmarks and ways in which men can provide for themselves.
Beyond just a job and money, having something to do keeps men busy, and a busy day keeps the fretting away. Yet as many of our jobs are flitting away, we will sooner or later have to come to a head with our own existential angst – of what we would do with our days if we no longer have to worry about our next meal? This is the need that education could and should fill.
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