Editorial: College experience not just career preparation

Countless adults believe college was the highlight of their lives. Now, however, many of their… Countless adults believe college was the highlight of their lives. Now, however, many of their children anticipate an underwhelming academic experience.

According to a recently released UCLA survey, only 58 percent of last year’s freshman class predicted that college would satisfy them. Whether or not they expected to distinguish themselves — 70.9 percent rated their “academic ability” as “highest 10 percent” or “above average” — many respondents regarded higher education with more trepidation than enthusiasm.

Although we can think of several common reasons for freshmen to feel apprehensive — financial uncertainty, a daunting workload — we suspect their pessimism underscores a little-acknowledged socioeconomic reality: For today’s adolescents, college is no longer an exciting opportunity — it’s an obligatory initiation into the professional world.

Fortunately for the majority of us, America’s workforce is better educated than ever before. According to 2010 Census data, almost 28 percent of Americans ages 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree — a roughly 23 percent increase from 1940. But as college educations become prerequisites for high-paying careers, students seem less and less inclined to acknowledge that they’re good for anything else.

In the same survey, respondents cited obtaining a better job as the most important reason to attend college. Unsurprisingly, cultivating a well-rounded personality was much less of a priority: Only 26.3 percent of students aspired to develop a “meaningful philosophy of life” and only .6 percent planned to study a foreign language.

Regardless of their reasons for pursuing a degree, we urge students to appreciate college’s less quantifiable advantages. Without attending a university, many people would never have met their spouses, developed their critical thinking abilities or discovered their lifelong interests. Indeed, despite bleak economic forecasts, you’d be hard-pressed to find graduates who believe their non-professional extracurricular activities were a waste of time.

In any case, a university education may not be the rare privilege it once was, but it’s hardly ubiquitous. As such, the opportunity to refine your career prospects — and to forge lifelong friendships in doing so — should still be considered invaluable.

Ultimately, higher education is what you make of it. If you reduce college to a financial transaction — tuition money in exchange for enhanced lifetime earnings — you’re almost guaranteed to find the actual experience unbearably dull. If, however, you exploit the possibilities available to most undergraduates — exposure to diverse worldviews, involvement in student organizations — you’re more likely to believe you obtained your money’s worth.