Is It Worth The Cost?
Just how much effect will be exerted on American colleges and their popularity by an article in the May Atlantic by Dr. I. M. Rubinow, it is rash to say; but the movement to send boys and girls to college has such momentum at present that it may take some time for critics in the magazines to retard it. From the article itself and sundry comments there on it is a fair inference that Dr. Rubinow—he is a doctor of philosophy, and has three children of his own in college —regards the current brand of collegiate education as almost a national menace, threatening to undermine the economic well-being of the United States.
Just why, feeling as he does, he sent those three children to college at all remains something of a mystery; but it is possible they are regarded as among the exceptional few whom the author admits to be capable of deriving benefit. There are only a few, we are told. For all but a rather insignificant minority, our author says, four years of college education amount to little more than a prolonged and costly vacation, during which the majority not only derive no preparation for life, but worse still become positively unfitted for it. If that be true—which we doubt most seriously —something ought to be done about it. But it strikes us as one of those perplexing cases where there is just truth enough involved to make it very difficult to separate the truth from the twaddle.
The costliness is clear. The author cites figures to his purpose. Assuming that there are about 600,000 young people in the colleges of the country and that their average expenditure—average, mind you—is $l5OO a year, one may perform a simple operation by multiplying these terms and obtain a grand total of $900,- 000,000. To this must be added a very considerable sum representing the upkeep and other incidents to the construction and maintenance of the plant required, obtaining the still more appalling annual total of from three to five billions,according as one is inclined to minimize or magnify the factors. Is what we get out of it worth even three billions a year? Dr. Rubinow very obviously has no serious doubts. He would answer in the negative.
It is true that the 600,000 young people hived in the colleges "produce" nothing, but it is hardly fair to regard that as settling the case. Indeed if the whole 600,000 were producing all the time, it might be a genuine calamity. It is taking less and less time, in modern days, to produce what the world wants and there is a consequent increment of leisure. It is possible that these young people are learning how better to employ their idle time. At all events they ought to be learning. Whether they are or not is another question, and in assuming that too many of them are not even learning that Dr. Rubinow may be on firmer ground.
One may dismiss at once any claim that the value of a college education is to be expressed in dollars and cents. One must evaluate it in some other way, if at all. It may be admitted that the undergraduates of the land are, for the period of their course, economically unproductive and that, industrially considered, they are idle. But what of that ? The more serious indictments are that they are be;ng unfitted for productivity later on ; that they are either indifferent, or positively hostile to education and take just as little of it as they can; that they acquire tastes which they will be unable to afford; that they tend to become economically useless. Is all that true?
Of some, no doubt. It is not easy to establish that it is true of the majority. Thus far there is no discernible sign that the country is suffering economically from the influx of a great body of young men and women every year who are unfitted for life. Nevertheless there is a danger of that—if the thing be overdone; and the amazing growth of the colleges has prompted apprehensions in other minds than that of Dr. Rubinow that it will be overdone, if the growth continues at the present rate. This critic apparently fears that the country will find itself saddled with a huge standing army of loafers, more to be dreaded as a burden than a huge standing army of unproductive military troops. The working population—the proletariat if you like—will have to work harder than ever to keep these pampered and privileged darlings clothed, fed and amused, (It is at this point that one is struck by a certain Slavic flavor in a name like Rubinow. The indictment begins to sound rather like the outgivings of Muscovite political philosophy.) Of that result we are not so much afraid, because it is improbable that the working population would consent to do any such thing. Nor are we sure that the average run of college graduates can justly be called loafers, despite the fact that they have spent four years in unproductive study, without revealing too much enthusiasm for mere learning.
The object of a liberal education, by the way, is not primarily to fit those who obtain it to earn a living. Rather is it to make possible a wiser and more profitable enjoyment of the living after it has been earned. "The art of living together" has been suggested by President Hopkins as a short summary of what the student is trying to learn. How much is that worth, provided it is beinglearned in fact? It is probably an exaggeration to say that the four college years are for most a protracted vacation, which teaches young men only to love idleness and to abhor work. If it were that, the fact should be more apparent already than it is. It is misleading to assume that whatever does not directly conduce to make a young man a producing member of society is waste. It may well be that college education costs too much, and it has been remarked that "too many are going to college" (who ought not to go because they really do waste their own and others' time.) But it is not going to be so easy for Dr. Rubinow to prove that the United States is being improverished, economically and socially, by its colleges as it is for him to say so.
All of which is not to say that there is no food for thought in the article referred to, or even that it is something no one has ever thought about before. It is merely to file a word of protest against the too ready acceptance of rash generalities, based on premises too narrow to carry such a superstructure of pessimism. It is recalled that a gloomy critic in Boston some years ago predicted that, as things were then drifting, the United States would "vulgarize the world." Of that, also, there has seemed to be some danger, and it may be that the flooding of the country with young men and women who have been given at least a bowing acquaintance with better things may be an antidote worth a very considerable sum, if not the astronomical total of billions by which the alarmed Dr. Rubinow is so impressed.
