why higher education essay

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What’s the Value of Higher Education?

Have political and fiscal debates about higher education lost sight of the value of education for individuals and society? Dr. Johnnetta Cole discusses how universities can inform and inspire.

• Dr. Johnnetta Cole President Emerita, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art; President Emerita, Spelman College and Bennett College

This interview was conducted at the Yale Higher Education Leadership Summit , hosted by Yale SOM’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute on January 30, 2018.

The value of a college degree can be measured in a number of different ways: increased lifetime earnings potential, a network of classmates and fellow alumni, subject-matter expertise, a signal of stick-to-itiveness, potentially a marker of class or the capacity to move across classes. There are also less tangible benefits, like becoming a more well-rounded individual and part of a well-informed public.

Yale Insights recently talked with Dr. Johnnetta Cole about how she measures the value of higher education. Cole is the former president of Spelman College and Bennett College, the only two historically black colleges and universities that are exclusively women’s colleges. After retiring from academia, she served as the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. In addition, she served on the boards of a number of corporations, including Home Depot, Merck, and Coca-Cola. She was the first African-American chair of the board for the United Way of America.

Q: Why does higher education matter?

I would say that we could get widespread agreement on what I’m going to call the first purpose of higher education: through this amazingly powerful process of teaching and learning, students come to better understand the world.

There might be some disagreement on the second purpose. I’d say it is to inspire students to figure out how they can contribute to helping to make the world better. Certainly, higher education is about scholarship, but it’s also about service. It’s about creativity. It’s about matters of the mind, but it’s also, or at least it should be, about matters of the heart and the soul.

Q: Has the public perception of universities changed in recent years?

Throughout the history—and herstory—of higher education, there have been doubters, those who have critiqued it. But I have a concern, and some polls tell us, in this period in which we are living, many people believe that higher education is not contributing in a positive way to American life.

That’s something that we need to work on, those of us who are deeply engaged in and care about higher education, because I think when one looks with as much objectivity as possible, the truth is, and it’s always been, that higher education contributes substantially.

Q: You’ve led two historically black colleges for women. What is the role of special mission institutions?

In my view, we still need special mission institutions. Remember Brandeis, Notre Dame, and Brigham Young are special mission institutions.

With respect to historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), not every African American wants to or does go to an HBCU. The same is true of women and women’s colleges. But for those who wish that kind of education, and if the fit is right, it’s almost magical.

I think it is as basic as having an entire community believe that you can. On these campuses, we believe that black students can do whatever they set their minds to do. On the women’s campuses, we believe that women can reach heights that have not been imagined for women.

HBCUs are not totally free of racism. Women’s colleges are not utopias where there are no expressions of gender inequality or sexism. But they come far closer than at our predominately white and co-ed institutions.

Q: One of the big issues with higher education now is cost. How do we solve the affordability problem?

The affordability question is highly complex and serious. James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced.” I believe that this is a perfect example. Colleges and universities are not just raising tuitions so they can make big profits. Pell grants are no longer at least a reasonable response to the affordability question.

We’ve got to figure this out because, in a democracy, accessibility to education is fundamental. The idea that something as precious, as powerful, as a solid education is only accessible to some and not to others, is an assault upon democracy.

Q: You came out of retirement to lead the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Why was the draw so strong?

I’ve managed, systematically, to get a failing grade in retirement.

I grew up in the South, in the days of legalized segregation—you could also call it state-sponsored racism. I didn’t have access to symphony halls. I didn’t have access to art museums. I still remember the library that I went to in order to travel the world through books, was the A. L. Lewis Colored Public Library.

As a young girl, I fell in love with the visual arts, especially African and African-American art. I went off to Fisk University at age 15 and began to see the real works of art for which we only had reproductions in my home. From Fisk, I went to Oberlin, where the Allen Memorial Art Gallery was a special place of solace for me

The opportunity with the Smithsonian wasn’t something I sought; I was asked to apply. My doctorate is in anthropology, not art history, so I was reluctant, but they told me they were looking for a leader, not an art historian. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. The work was an almost indescribable joy.

Generally, our museums across America do not reflect who America is, nor do they reflect how our world looks. They need to be far more diverse in terms of their boards, staff, exhibitions, educational programs, and visitorship.

What the African art museum has is a unique opportunity because it can speak to something that binds us together. If one is human, just go back far enough, I mean way back, and we have all come from a single place. It is called Africa.

Here’s a museum that says to its visitors, “No matter who you are, by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, ability or disability, or nationality, come to a place where the visual arts connect you to the very cradle of humanity.”

During those eight years when I had the joy of being the director of the National Museum of African Art, I would greet our visitors by saying “Welcome home! Welcome to a place that presents the diverse and dynamic, the exquisite arts of Africa, humanity’s original home.”

Q: Do you think that our education and cultural institutions are properly valued in our society?

I have to say no. Because if we did, we would take better care of them. If we did, we would make sure that not some but all of our educational institutions from kindergarten through post-secondary education, into graduate and professional schools, have the means to do what needs to be done.

If we really value all of our cultural expressions, whether it’s dance or music, visual arts, theater, when there is a budget shortfall, we wouldn’t say, “These are the first things to go.” We wouldn’t say, “Kids can do without music in their public school.” It’s one thing to say we love an institution; it’s another to care for and protect an institution. I think we can do far better.

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12 Effective “Why This College?” Essay Examples

What’s covered.

• Essay 1: UPenn Nursing
• Essay 2: UPenn
• Essay 3: UW Madison
• Essay 4: Northwestern
• Essay 5: NYU
• Essay 6: NYU
• Essay 7: Boston University
• Essay 8: Boston University
• Essay 9: Tufts
• Essay 10: Tufts
• Essay 11: Georgia Tech
• Essay 12: Georgia Tech

Where to Get Your Essays Edited

The “ Why This College?” essay is one of the most common supplemental prompts. These school-specific essays help colleges understand if you’re a good fit for them, and if they’re a good fit for you.

In this post, we’ll share 12 “Why This College?” essay examples from real students and explain what they did well, and what could be improved. Read these examples to understand how to write a strong supplemental essay that improves your chances of acceptance.

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized.

Essay Example #1: UPenn Nursing

Prompt: How will you explore your intellectual and academic interests at the University of Pennsylvania? Please answer this question given the specific undergraduate school to which you are applying (650 words).

Sister Simone Roach, a theorist of nursing ethics, said, “caring is the human mode of being.” I have long been inspired by Sister Roach’s Five C’s of Caring: commitment, conscience, competence, compassion, and confidence. Penn both embraces and fosters these values through a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum and unmatched access to service and volunteer opportunities.

COMMITMENT. Reading through the activities that Penn Quakers devote their time to (in addition to academics!) felt like drinking from a firehose in the best possible way. As a prospective nursing student with interests outside of my major, I value this level of flexibility. I plan to leverage Penn’s liberal arts curriculum to gain an in-depth understanding of the challenges LGBT people face, especially regarding healthcare access. Through courses like “Interactional Processes with LGBT Individuals” and volunteering at the Mazzoni Center for outreach, I hope to learn how to better support the Penn LGBT community as well as my family and friends, including my cousin, who came out as trans last year.

CONSCIENCE. As one of the first people in my family to attend a four-year university, I wanted a school that promoted a sense of moral responsibility among its students. At Penn, professors challenge their students to question and recreate their own set of morals by sparking thought- provoking, open-minded discussions. I can imagine myself advocating for universal healthcare in courses such as “Health Care Reform & Future of American Health System” and debating its merits with my peers. Studying in an environment where students confidently voice their opinions – conservative or liberal – will push me to question and strengthen my value system.

COMPETENCE. Two aspects that drew my attention to Penn’s BSN program were its high-quality research opportunities and hands-on nursing projects. Through its Office of Nursing Research, Penn connects students to faculty members who share similar research interests. As I volunteered at a nursing home in high school, I hope to work with Dr. Carthon to improve the quality of care for senior citizens. Seniors, especially minorities, face serious barriers to healthcare that I want to resolve. Additionally, Penn’s unique use of simulations to bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world application impressed me. Using computerized manikins that mimic human responses, classes in Penn’s nursing program allow students to apply their emergency medical skills in a mass casualty simulation and monitor their actions afterward through a video system. Participating in this activity will help me identify my strengths and areas for improvement regarding crisis management and medical care in a controlled yet realistic setting. Research opportunities and simulations will develop my skills even before I interact with patients.

COMPASSION. I value giving back through community service, and I have a particular interest in Penn’s Community Champions and Nursing Students For Sexual & Reproductive Health (NSRH). As a four-year volunteer health educator, I hope to continue this work as a Community Champions member. I am excited to collaborate with medical students to teach fourth and fifth graders in the city about cardiology or lead a chair dance class for the elders at the LIFE Center. Furthermore, as a feminist who firmly believes in women’s abortion rights, I’d like to join NSRH in order to advocate for women’s health on campus. At Penn, I can work with like-minded people to make a meaningful difference.

CONFIDENCE. All of the Quakers that I have met possess one defining trait: confidence. Each student summarized their experiences at Penn as challenging but fulfilling. Although I expect my coursework to push me, from my conversations with current Quakers I know it will help me to be far more effective in my career.

The Five C’s of Caring are important heuristics for nursing, but they also provide insight into how I want to approach my time in college. I am eager to engage with these principles both as a nurse and as a Penn Quaker, and I can’t wait to start.

What the Essay Did Well

This essay has many positive aspects, but the most impressive one is the structure. Utilizing the Five C’s of Caring to discuss Penn’s offerings was a genius way of tying in this student’s passion for nursing while also making their essay exciting and easy to read. Beginning each paragraph with the respective adjective helped focus the paragraph and allowed the student to demonstrate how they exemplify each quality without explicitly stating it. The student wasn’t afraid to think outside the box and add creativity to their essay structure, which really paid off.

Another positive is how specific and specialized the Penn resources and opportunities the student mentions are. This essay did not fall into the trap of name-dropping professors or programs. In every paragraph, there was a connection to something the student wants to do at Penn to further themselves in the respective characteristic they were describing.

Not only did this student mention a resource at Penn—whether it was a professor, a class, or a club—in every paragraph, but they elaborated on what that resource was and how it would help them achieve their goal of becoming a nurse. The what and how is what sets this essay apart from other supplements that just name-drop resources for the sake of it. The amount of detail this essay went into about some of these resources makes it clear to the admissions officers reading the essay that this student has seriously looked into Penn and has a strong desire to come to campus and use these resources.

What Could Be Improved

One thing this essay could do to make it stronger is improve the first paragraph. The student does a good job of setting up Sister Roach and the Five C’s, but they don’t mention anything about their desire to study or pursue nursing. The first paragraph mentions both Sister Roach and Penn, but left out the student. This could be fixed by simply adding something along the lines of “I can’t wait to embody these values as a nursing student at Penn” to the paragraph.

Essay Example #2: UPenn

Prompt: Considering the specific undergraduate school you have selected, how will you explore your academic and intellectual interests at the University of Pennsylvania?  For students applying to the coordinated dual-degree and specialized programs, please answer these questions in regard to your single-degree school choice; your interest in the coordinated dual-degree or specialized program may be addressed through the program-specific essay. (300-450 words)

I always loved watching the worms when it rained. I used to put my little raincoat on, sit on the doorsteps, and watch them move toward the puddles. My younger brother, forever intent on destroying the world around him, would try to stomp on the worms, and I would run after him screaming. In my imagination, the brain looked like a pile of squiggly worms. However, my neuroscience curiosity has since grown beyond a worm’s habits.

For example, my mother thought that I was insane when I wanted to watch American Murder: The Family Next Door . To her immense relief, I was interested in the psychology of the criminal rather than the crime itself. Although neuroscience is my primary interest, I also hope to learn more about the intersection between law and medicine at the UPenn College of Arts and Sciences. I’ve been able to explore this topic through various projects at school such as presentations on juvenile crime and the death penalty.

At the University of Pennsylvania, I look forward to taking classes like Forensic Neuroscience (BIBB 050) as well as Neuroscience and Society (PSYC 247) both of which directly combine my two interests. Hopefully, the Take Your Professor to Dinner program resumes as I would make sure to talk to Dr. Daniel Langleben about his research on forensic functional brain imaging over a meal of Philly cheesesteaks.

I also hope to participate in the Race, Science, and Society Program where I can discover how race biases and neuroscience go hand-in-hand and contribute to the fight against racism. The Beyond Arrests: Re-Thinking Systematic-Oppression Group immediately caught my attention while looking at Penn’s opportunities to engage in relevant dialogue. My fascination with the criminal system began with reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment , and Penn will both fuel that curiosity as well as introduce new questions about the world of justice reform.

As an eight-year Latin scholar and a five-time reader of the Percy Jackson franchise, I would like to take classes in the Penn Classical Studies department where I can learn more about the impact of ancient cultures on society today. Classes such as Greek and Roman Medicine (CLST 271) would intersect my interests in medicine and classical civilizations.

Although I do harbor a deep love for Philly cheesesteaks and enjoyment of running in strange places like the Woodlands Cemetery, the range of programs to support my diverse interests and unmatched opportunities to put learning into action make me confident that the University of Pennsylvania is the best university for me to succeed.

The real strength in the essay lies in the sheer number of details this student is able to include in a short space, without sacrificing style and flow. The first two paragraphs really have nothing to do with Penn, but the inclusion of them makes this response feel like an essay, rather than a list of offerings at Penn. Striking the balance is important, and the anecdote at the beginning ultimately humanizes the writer.

From the three unique courses to the specific professor and his research to the race and criminal justice programs, this student has clearly done their homework on Penn! The key to this essay’s success isn’t just mentioning the offerings at Penn that excite the student, but the context that explains how each opportunity fits into the student’s academic interests.

Adding book titles like Crime and Punishment and Percy Jackson to support their passion for the criminal justice system and classics are extra details that help us learn more about how this student pursues their passions outside of the classroom. Finding little ways to humanize yourself throughout the essay can take it from good to great.

One area of improvement for this essay is the structure. It follows a very traditional “ Why This College? ” framework—start with an anecdote, then discuss classes, and then extracurriculars and programs—that gets old quickly for admissions officers.

A great way to add some spice to the format would be to use a sample schedule for the day. This essay mentions three different classes, two different groups, and a Take Your Professor to Dinner opportunity. Together, that’s the recipe for a full day at UPenn!

There are a few ways to play around with an essay that follows a typical day-in-the-life. Maybe each paragraph starts with a time and explains what they do during that hour. Maybe they narrate walking through campus on their way from one class to the next and what they just learned. However they choose to go about it, adding in a playful spin to the traditional essay structure is one of the best ways to instantly set an essay apart from the crowd. 

Essay Example #3: UW Madison

Prompt: Tell us why you decided to apply to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition, please include why you are interested in studying the major(s) you have selected. If you selected undecided, please describe your areas of possible academic interest. (650 words)

Essay – # Day 117

7:30 am… As I open my eyes, I look at the pinboard in front of my bed. Written in red block letters are two of the many goals of my life: “Make life better and more independent for the Visually impaired; Inspire kids to explore the field of STEM, making them the future problem solvers.“

Keeping these goals afresh in mind, I freshen up and prepare for the first class of the day, ​ECE 533 Image Processing. As the professor explains the Applications of Image Processing in Computer Vision, a light bulb sparks in my mind. I can modify the head contraption of PERIPHIS to identify objects in peripheral vision and alert the wearer via an earpiece using Text to Speech (TTS). 

After the class, I see Professor Mohit Gupta at the WISION Lab, where he shares his insights from the Block World Cameras system, which helps to geometrize 3D Man-made environments. We brainstorm ways we can implement this system on PERIPHIS.

Deep in the discussion and intrigued by my curiosity, he asked me where my interest in this niche field sparked during high school, and then I recount the incident from 9th grade: 

“In Hindi – Agar aaj mere paas paise hote to ye din na dekhna padta” (If I had money, I would not have had to see this day.) 

These were the words of Aadiya, a glaucoma patient, who couldn’t help but cry in despair as she injured herself in an accident just because she couldn’t sense the incoming traffic. During my visit to “Baroda Association for Blind (BAB)” for a survey, I saw and experienced firsthand how hard and inaccessible it is for an underprivileged visually impaired to locomote without anyone’s assistance. 

What happened next was my first adventure into the world of Computer Science and Engineering. I dedicated the next four years to find an affordable solution to a pressing problem. It was called PERIPHIS, a smart wearable that helps alert the visually impaired wearer of impending danger while locomoting.

When I finally presented this device to Aadiya, the smile on her face made me realize how big an impact technology can make in one’s life.

11:00 am… As I head to the Engineering Hall to complete my assignments of COMP SCI 570

Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction, I crossways with my roommate from the Chadbourne Residential College, who is also interested in researching applications of Computer Vision in real life. We fix a time to chat later. 

1:20pm… After a quick bite, I head to Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory. I expand my knowledge on different applications of Computer Science to make human life better than I found. I get fascinated when I see a few students building a child-friendly humanoid robot to teach kids the principles of Coding and AI. I hop in and share insights from my experience of being the President at AiGoLearning and kindling interest in STEM for young children. I explain how crucial the UI is when it comes to technology for the young.

5:00pm… To blow off some steam and socialize, I meet up with my fellow countrymen and artists at the Indian Graduate Students’ Association. We discuss and plan the upcoming Diwali Night Music at Shannon Hall. I feel proud to share my national identity while bringing out my musical self by contributing as a Tabla player at the student organization. 

As I close my day, I reflect and think of the most unique resource at UW. It is not the labs, research facilities, classes, but the people, including the professors and students, all aligned to a single goal: “Solving problems to make society a better place.”

10:00pm… I find my way back to my dorm room and write with red block letters on my pinboard: “Meet with at least 1 Badger every day and gain new insight from them.”

This essay is a stellar example. The day in the life formatting is a common way to spice up your “Why This College?” essay, but the way this writer executes it is nearly flawless.

Opening with the vision board makes the student’s college goals clear from the very start, and this was cleverly done since vision boards are naturally one of the first things you see when you wake up.

The student then takes us to specific courses and labs and shares their thoughts on how they could improve their invention, PERIPHIS. The author seamlessly includes background information on PERIPHIS by including this hypothetical conversation with a professor who speaks their native language.

As we go through the day, we can see that this student will not only be involved academically, but also socially. We learn how important their culture is to them and how they plan to share it with the campus community.

This essay does everything a “Why This College?” essay should: it shares the student’s goals and motivations behind them, how the university can support those goals, and how the student will engage with the campus beyond academics.

There’s not much this essay could improve, besides a few formatting and wording issues. The first line of this essay—“ Essay – # Day 117”—is a great attention-grabber, but the placement of the # symbol is confusing and perhaps should’ve been in front of the number.

There are also a couple spots where wording is a bit awkward, such as these lines:

I crossways with my roommate from the Chadbourne Residential College, who is also interested in researching applications of Computer Vision in real life. We fix a time to chat later. 

It should instead say something like “I run into my roommate” and “We schedule a time”. This is likely due to English not being the student’s native language, but could’ve easily been caught by proofreading from a native speaker.

Essay Example #4: Northwestern

Prompt: While other parts of your application give us a sense of who you are, we are also excited to hear more about how you see yourself engaging with the larger Northwestern community.

In 300 words or less, help us understand how you might engage specific resources, opportunities, and/or communities here. We are curious about what these specifics are, as well as how they may enrich your time at Northwestern and beyond.

For as long as I can remember, I have seen my parents, both farmers, struggling to produce food because of the challenges presented by the environment. Joining Northwestern’s community, and majoring in Environmental Engineering, will allow me to understand what are the reasons behind climate change and learn how to stop them and/or prevent them from happening. 

Having witnessed how plant diseases affect crops, I would like to collaborate in the PLANT-Dx project and in its widespread application. I strongly believe that it will be able to help farmers to improve the quality and quantity of their production, and reduce famine around the world. At some point in my education, I want to take advantage of the study-abroad programs Northwestern has to offer and learn about farming practices in a different part of the world. In addition, I want to conduct research on sustainable alternative farming methods that adapt to the new environmental conditions and that can be practiced in countries with fewer resources.

Apart from having access to outstanding professors, rigorous academics, and cutting-edge research resources, I will be able to be part of a close-knit community genuinely curious about others’ activities, truly passionate about what they do, and not afraid to step out of their comfort zone to make of this world a better place. Being part of Engineers for a Sustainable World at Northwestern will allow me to get to know people that share one of my passions in addition to learning and teaching how to apply sustainable practices in daily life.  

I am already looking forward to marching through the Weber Arch.

This essay is extremely cohesive, as it focuses on the student’s agricultural background and desire to study environmental engineering. The student mentions a couple resources specific to Northwestern, such as the PLANT-Dx project and Engineers for a Sustainable World.

Because of the background information the student provided, their motivations for participating in these opportunities is also clear. We can see that Northwestern would be a school that would help them achieve their goals.

There are two main aspects of the essay that could be improved: the writing and its specificity.

To begin with, the intro paragraph is a bit clunky and vague.  The student should have specified the challenges the environment has presented to their parents’ farming with detailed imagery about droughts or torrential rain. The final sentence about climate change is also much too broad, and the student should’ve stated a goal in a smaller niche of environmentalism.

For example, here’s what a rewritten strong intro paragraph might look like:

The drought this year was bad, and the once-flourishing tomato crops on my family’s farm were afflicted with Southern Blight. As my family and our community struggled to put food on the table for the third year in a year, I resolved to major in Environmental Engineering at Northwestern to learn how to preserve our agriculture in the face of climate change.

Another writing error is the typo in the final paragraph, where they write “to make of this world a better place”. It’s important to proofread your essay and have others help you proofread as well!

Finally, while the essay mentions a couple specific Northwestern resources, the other resources they mention are too vague.  The student could’ve improved by mentioning a specific study abroad program and a current research project on sustainable alternative farming methods. Most colleges let you study abroad and conduct research, so you need to explain why Northwestern is the best place for your goals.

Essay Example #5: NYU

Prompt: We would like to know more about your interest in NYU. What motivated you to apply to NYU? Why have you applied or expressed interest in a particular campus, school, college, program, and or area of study? If you have applied to more than one, please also tell us why you are interested in these additional areas of study or campuses. We want to understand – Why NYU? (400 words)

“A futuristic way of looking at academics,” the student panelist said during a New York University virtual information session. I reflected on a conversation I had with my grandma; she couldn’t understand how her vegetarian granddaughter could build a career in the food industry. However much I tried convincing her that vegetarianism was the future, as it offers substantial benefits to the environment and can offer health benefits to a growing population with the same environmental resources, she insisted that tofu would never provide the same satiation as meat. She was raised in a community where meat consumption was embedded in the culture, and its production is a large part of the country’s economy. In contrast, I had the privilege of living a few steps from San Francisco, with many restaurants and grocery stores dedicated to plant-based meat alternatives. Trying innovative recipes and products eventually allowed me to develop my own recipes. Upon my move to Nicaragua, where my grandmother is from, I found my food options to be limited, expensive and hard to find. So I developed my own small-scale solutions that did not break the bank and satiated grandma.

An institution that implements forward-thinking is what I need to reach my goals of changing the future of plant-based diets and people’s views on vegetarianism. NYU’s Nutrition and Food Studies program offers multiple disciplines of food studies that I will apply to my aspirations as a vegetarian. I plan to study under Adjunct Faculty Kayleen St. John, whose success in the plant-based industry and her teaching of the ‘Foundations of Plant-Based Nutrition’ in The Vegetarian Times excites me. The variety of classes like Introduction to Food History, Food Photography, and Food Systems: Food & Agriculture will give me an overview of what is available in the food industry to be prepared for all fields. Not to be cliche, but NYU’s proximity to the city is essential for the rapidly changing vegetarian industry. The multiculturalism available in NYC and NYU will allow me to understand the food system and diets of various cultures, religions, and areas. I can explore the extremes of the food industry, from fancy restaurants to public school cafeterias. These juxtapositions, much like the one I experienced after my move to Nicaragua, will allow me to broaden my reach and demonstrate that the vegetarian diet is not something reserved for select groups but a diet attainable to all. 

A core strength of this essay is the fact it takes its time to provide the reader with ample background on why this student is interested in nutrition and food studies and how they have grappled with difficult questions and surrounding this topic in the past. It’s okay to not mention anything about NYU for a whole paragraph if you are using that space to bring depth to your interests and tell the reader the crucial backstory behind pursuing your intended degree.

Another positive aspect is the inclusion of New York City for a purposeful reason. NYU admissions officers read thousands of essays that just talk about living in NYC for the sake of NYC—this is not what they want to hear. In contrast, this essay focuses on the vast and lively food scene in New York that the student considers to be an invaluable asset to her NYU education. This is a time where including New York actually plays to the appeal of NYU, rather than making it seem like the student is simply applying for the city.

Finally, this student clearly demonstrates that they are someone who wants to change the world for the better, but through their personal niche. NYU is looking for people who express this desire to be a changemaker, but oftentimes sweeping statements like “I want to change the world” come across as vague and disingenuous. The essay does mention changing diets and looking to the future, but it is focused within the student’s specific area of interest, making the claim to change the world more determined and authentic.

This essay could be made stronger if there was a bit more personal reflection included. The first paragraph provides a lot of details on the student’s vegetarianism and how it conflicts with her grandmother and her heritage. What it doesn’t include very much of is how the student thinks and feels about her diet being at odds with that of her family. 

Does this student feel they are betraying their heritage by being vegetarian? What emotions do they feel when people criticize vegetarianism? Why did they go vegetarian in the first place? Probing questions like these that get to the emotional core behind the story in the first paragraph would really help to build out this student’s backstory. We want to understand what their emotional responses and reasoning processes look like, so finding ways to include those into an already expositive paragraph would further bolster this essay.

Essay Example #6: NYU

My mother never takes off her Cartier necklace that my father gave her 10 years ago on their anniversary. As a child, I didn’t fully understand this attachment. However, on my 15th birthday, my aunt gifted me a ring, which was uniquely designed and made up of three rings linked together. Wearing it every day and making sure I would never lose it, I didn’t treat it like my easily replaceable childhood necklaces; it was my piece of luxury. This sparked my deep curiosity for the luxury world. The niche strives to provide the finest and most memorable experiences, as equally as my Japanese attention to detail and my French appreciation towards aesthetic beauty. In a constantly shifting environment, I learned that luxury chases timeless excellence.

NYU Stern’s BS in business and a co-concentration in management and marketing will fully immerse me in the business side of luxury fashion that I aim to pursue a future career in. The luxury marketing track, offered only by NYU, will enable me to assemble the most suited classes to reflect my interests. Specifically, NYU Stern’s exciting electives such as The Dynamics of the Fashion Industry seminar and Brand Strategy & Planning will encourage me to develop the skills that I was introduced to and grew keen on when running a virtual sustainable fashion auction.

As someone who has moved around from Paris to Tokyo, to Chicago and now Athens, I thrive in meeting and collaborating with others from diverse backgrounds. The school’s strong global outlook, demonstrated through Stern’s International Business Exchange Program, further sets NYU apart for me, as it is crucial to building essential soft skills. This opportunity allows me to experience new cultural approaches to luxury business which I can bring back with me to New York, and therefore push me to become a well-rounded business student. Similarly, I am excited to take part in the array of student clubs offered, such as the Luxury and Retail Association (LARA), which I learned about after connecting with and talking to current students. Seeing past talks from employers of companies like Conde Nast, I am eager to learn outside of the classroom from future speakers. 

Finding myself in new situations constantly, I always seek new challenges and explorations – to me, it is clear that NYU Stern will push me to create the finest and most unique learning experiences of timeless excellence.

This essay has an amazing introduction paragraph. It doesn’t mention anything about NYU or what this student is planning on studying, which is what makes it so intriguing. The reader doesn’t know where this student is headed after making such a seemingly unrelated statement about jewelry, but we want to find out. 

Not only does this essay immediately capture the reader’s attention, it maintains a succinct and direct tone that helps the reader effortlessly flow from one paragraph to the next. The student chose to include three opportunities at NYU that excite them and fully elaborate on them. This serves as an excellent example of more is less. 

We aren’t bombarded with a laundry list of classes, professors, and clubs the student wants to take. Instead, the student took a focused approach and described why they were excited by each offering they highlighted. Going deeper into a smaller number of opportunities at the college still shows this student did their research, but it allows for their backstory and goals to be discussed in far greater detail.

While this student does a good job of elaborating, they also mention a few key aspects of their personality as throw-away lines, when it would have been great to elaborate further on them. For example, they mention running a virtual sustainable fashion auction (cool!), but don’t provide us with any details on what that actually entails, how they got involved with it, what they enjoyed about it, etc. They also mention moving around a lot in the context of developing a diverse perspective, but they don’t include any emotional insight into what that was like.

Although there are only 400 words available, and you don’t want to spend too much time discussing the past, it would be nice to see just a sentence or two that delves into the details of this student’s background. The fashion auction and moving around clearly had an impact on the student, so we want to know what that was. If they are choosing to include these details, they must be important in the student’s decision to pursue business at NYU, so they shouldn’t be afraid to divulge the emotional significance to the reader.

Essay Example #7: Boston University

Prompt: In no more than 250 words, please tell us why BU is a good fit for you and what specifically has led you to apply for admission.

Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) attracts me because of its support of interdisciplinary study among its wide array of majors. In fact, the CAS now offers a course that combines biology, chemistry, and neuroscience. As I hope to conduct medical research into brain disorders, I plan to pursue all three areas of study. These cross-disciplinary connections at BU will prepare me to do so.

CAS’s undergraduate research program would allow me to work with a mentor, such as Dr. Alice Cronin-Golomb or Dr. Robert M.G. Reinhart related to their research on neurological disorders. With them, I can advance the work I have already completed related to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In a summer class at our local university, my partner and I extracted data from fMRI and PET studies and inputted them into a coding program. We then created an indicator map, which we imported into another software program, AFNI, to display significant activity in the brain regions affected by DID. Seeing the representation of our data thrilled me because I knew it could eventually help people who live with DID. I want to experience that feeling again. Successfully analyzing these fMRI and PET studies and learning to code drives me to pursue more research opportunities, and this desire motivates me to study at a university that offers research opportunities to undergraduates. BU’s interdisciplinary approach to psychology and support for independent undergraduate research will optimally prepare me for a career as a neurological researcher.

This student clearly outlines BU-specific resources (the interdisciplinary course and undergrad research program), plus how these resources align with their professional goals (to become a neurological researcher). They do name professors, but since their work clearly relates to the student’s interests, it doesn’t look disingenuous, and shows that the student has done research on their fit with BU. The student also provides background on why they want to pursue research, and shows that they already have experience, which makes their interest in the undergrad research program more concrete.

The only thing missing from this essay is the student’s fit with BU in terms of extracurriculars and social life. “Why This College?” essays should also cover extracurriculars, as colleges are also interested in how you’ll contribute to their community. 

In general, these essays should be academic-leaning (especially if they’re under 250 words), but you should still address some social aspects of the college that appeal to you (we recommend about 70% academics, 30% social, with more or less focus on social aspects depending on the word count). 

Since the student probably already detailed their previous research in their Common App activities section, they could’ve just summarized their research background in one sentence (instead of 78 words, which is 31% of the total word count!), and used that valuable space to talk about a specific social aspect of BU that interests them. 

Essay Example #8: Boston University

Prompt: In no more than 250 words, please tell us why BU is a good fit for you and what specifically has led you to apply for admission. 

I am fascinated by research, though completely uninterested in the disciplines traditionally associated with it, such as STEM fields. I need to find a school that will balance my desire to conduct research with my interest in political science. 

While many schools boast in-depth student research programs for those looking to cure diseases or develop solutions to global warming, few tout their support for humanities research. Additionally, many universities that do allocate funding to social science research typically reserve these monies for graduate students or upperclassmen. BU, with the help of its Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, will allow me to conduct research on the topics that most intrigue me, such as gender disparity in politics, or the relationship between dominant parties in power and the country’s economy and involvement in foreign affairs. Furthermore, I can begin these studies as early as my first year. Not only can I take classes with professors like Sandra McEvoy or Dino Christenson to develop my interests in a classroom setting, but I could also work with one of them to develop new knowledge in the topics that we both enjoy learning about. With this knowledge base and experience conducting studies with top professors in a respected research institution, I will be well-prepared for my future law career. I want to learn in an environment that encourages independent study no matter one’s field of interest or experience, and BU’s support of intellectual curiosity for all of its students makes it a perfect fit for me.

This student knows exactly what they want, and they’re not afraid to state it bluntly. Their intro paragraph is totally honest about their interests (or lack of interest), and we immediately understand one of their main college goals: to conduct political science research.

The student mentions a specific resource, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, as well as an alignment with BU’s value of encouraging independent study in all fields. Showing alignment with a specific value of the university is a great way to take your essay to the next level.

This essay shows us that the student would be a great fit for BU and would take advantage of its research opportunities.

The writer mentions some of their research interests, but doesn’t explain the motivation behind them. We don’t actually learn very much about the student themself, which is a common flaw of “Why This College?” essays. The essay would’ve been stronger if they’d explained why they’re interested in “gender disparity in politics, or the relationship between dominant parties in power and the country’s economy and involvement in foreign affairs.” For example, maybe they feel strongly about abortion rights and are upset about the way men have been legislating women’s rights.

The student also names two professors whose classes they’d like to take and with whom they’d like to do research, but we aren’t told which classes they’re interested in, or which topics they could cover together. You want to avoid “name-dropping” professors without context in your essay. If the student shared the names of specific classes or research topics and why they’re interested in them, that would’ve strengthened their essay.

Essay Example #9: Tufts

Prompt: Why Tufts? (100 words) 

When Deanne, Tufts’ admissions counselor, visited my school, she immediately caught my attention by emphasizing Tufts’ diverse yet unified campus. Tufts’ inclusive definition of diversity goes beyond merely recruiting students from a variety of backgrounds. Tufts seeks to integrate these categories of diversity and pushes its students to learn from one another. One such intersectional program that attracts me is CAFE (Conversation, Action, Faith, and Education). By joining CAFE, a community that promotes interfaith education, I will learn from my peers, become more understanding of other religious backgrounds, and apply this broader understanding to my academic work at Tufts.

It’s hard to write a “Why This College?” essay in 100 words. This essay does a good job sticking to one unique element of Tufts—its intersectionality. Since Tufts also cares about demonstrated interest, it’s great that the student also mentioned speaking with an admissions counselor. 

We unfortunately don’t learn very much about the student from this essay. Why do they care about diversity and interfaith programs? How does this relate to their academic and career goals? While the word count is super short, they could’ve cut these lines and jumped right into the specific resource they’re interested in: Tufts’ inclusive definition of diversity goes beyond merely recruiting students from a variety of backgrounds. Tufts seeks to integrate these categories of diversity and pushes its students to learn from one another.

Here’s an example of a stronger version of this essay:

When a Tufts admissions counselor visited my school, she immediately caught my attention by emphasizing Tufts’ diverse yet unified campus. As a Muslim hoping to go into International Relations, I want to attend a school that not only recruits diverse students, but pushes them to learn from one another. I hope to join intersectional programs such as CAFE (Conversation, Action, Faith, and Education). By joining this community that promotes interfaith education, I will gain the necessary perspective and compassion to become a human rights lawyer in countries with religious conflict, such as my homeland Azerbaijan.

Essay Example #10: Tufts

Prompt: Why Tufts? (100 words)

Someday I hope to conduct medical research in developing countries; Tufts attracts me because of its wide array of majors it offers and support for undergraduate research. To understand the human brain, I hope to study biology, neuroscience, and psychology. In addition to outstanding faculty in each of these areas, Tufts also organizes initiatives including the International Research Program. Through this program, I would work with other students and faculty members on an international project related to brain diseases. This opportunity will give me a taste of my future career and help me narrow the scope of my later studies.

This essay does a better job of sharing the student’s goals with us compared to the previous Tufts essay. We learn that the applicant is interested in medical research in developing countries on brain diseases, and that Tufts has a program to support international research.

The essay still mentions some resources that could apply to many schools, which is not an effective use of the tiny word count. For example, they say: “Tufts attracts me because of its wide array of majors it offers and support for undergraduate research” and they mention the “outstanding faculty” in the fields they plan to study.

They also don’t tell us their motivation behind studying brain diseases abroad, and it feels like there’s a significant story there. Giving some background would’ve further strengthened their essay.

Finally, they mention that they still need to narrow the scope of their studies; while it’s fine to be undecided on your career and majors, you don’t need to spend your precious word count saying that in your essay. They could’ve instead shared a couple potential avenues they’re considering.

Here’s what the student could’ve written instead:

Outcomes for schizophrenia patients are better in developing countries than in developed ones. I hope to research the reasons behind this and improve the treatment options in the US for the cousin I grew up with. In college, I want to study biology, neuroscience, and psychology. Tufts attracts me because of its unique interdisciplinary BS in Cognitive and Brain Science and its International Research Program. Through this program, I could do the research I’ve dreamt of doing with a faculty member and other students, preparing me for my future career as either a researcher or clinician.

Essay Example #11: Georgia Tech

Prompt: Why do you want to study your chosen major specifically at Georgia Tech? (300 words)

Climate change is a human rights issue.  

There the headline was, screaming on my phone screen. I think about those suffering from a lack of clean water. I think about those suffering from a lack of clean air. 

I often think back to that headline – it’s what drives my passion for environmental engineering. As an environmental engineer, I can mitigate air pollution and design water treatment systems that address the water injustices that people face. However, it’s not just about creating a technology that cleans water; it’s about changing people’s lives. New technologies can make a lasting difference in humanitarian issues worldwide; Georgia Tech’s research on creating a toilet that turns human waste into clean water for those in need of improved sanitation aligns perfectly with my interests.   

At Georgia Tech, through the student-led organization, Engineers for a Sustainable World and the InVenture Prize, I can translate the knowledge gained from my classes into a concrete vision. I can design and implement hands-on sustainability projects around Atlanta and invent a water sanitation system for the on-site acquisition of clean water. 

Georgia Tech can also provide me with ample research opportunities, such as the broad area of Healthy Communities in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. I can further pursue my interest in developing solutions to deliver clean water while welcoming new areas of inquiry. An area I would like to explore would be the controlling of dangerous matter in the air to reduce health hazards; reducing the impact of climate change is of utmost importance to me. 

Studying environmental engineering at Georgia Tech would well prepare me to develop solutions to climate-related issues. With the countless opportunities that Georgia Tech has to offer, I know there is nowhere else where I can receive a better environmental engineering education.

What the Essay Did Well l

This essay begins with an attention-grabbing statement that leaves the reader wondering how this will relate to the student’s interest in Georgia Tech. They then transition seamlessly into how climate change and human rights motivate their desire to become an environmental engineer.

The student mentions several resources specific to Georgia Tech that would help them achieve their goals, such as the research on the toilet turning waste into water, Engineers for a Sustainable World, InVenture Prize, and Healthy Communities research. It’s clear that they did their research and have reflected on their fit with the campus community.

They end the essay explicitly stating that Georgia Tech is the best place for them to grow, and the reader is certainly convinced of this by the end.

This essay is quite strong, so there’s not much that the student could’ve improved. That said, there is one sentence that is a bit awkwardly worded: New technologies can make a lasting difference in humanitarian issues worldwide; Georgia Tech’s research on creating a toilet that turns human waste into clean water for those in need of improved sanitation aligns perfectly with my interests.

Instead, the student could’ve written:

New technologies can make a lasting difference in humanitarian issues worldwide; Georgia Tech aligns with this value of mine and is even developing a toilet that turns human waste into clean water for those who need improved sanitation.

Essay Example #12: Georgia Tech

From my first Java project, a somewhat primitive graphing calculator, I realized that CS unlocks a different way of thinking. My brain races at speeds it seldom touches with other subjects. Every part of CS, from conceptualizing a plan to executing a solution, is another piece of a puzzle I’m eager to solve and affords the most opportunities for creative problem-solving and application. 

“Progress and Service,” Georgia Tech’s motto, tells me there’s no better place to explore my curiosity and deepen my CS skills while simultaneously helping make the world a better place, my ultimate goal for a college education. 

In the classroom, I look forward to GT’s threads program, where I can tailor the curriculum to suit my career choice after exposing myself to all technical aspects of CS.

I’ll apply my specialized learning with Tech’s fascinating research opportunities. Professor Pandarinth’s brain-machine interfacing software means a lot to me. My uncle passed away from a freak accident after extensive paralysis because potential treatments were unaffordable. Exploring this revolutionary brain decoding software wouldn’t just involve me in cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology research, I’d be personally driven to ensure its success and accessibility. 

I’m at my best building towards tangible results. I learned this on my robotics team using design skills to create a technically complex robot that tackles anything from shooting balls to hanging on a balance beam. I’m excited to expand my skills on the RoboJackets team, applying my career interests to build ferocious BattleBots and autonomous race robots that compete on the Indy Speedway, two events that sound ridiculously fun. 

Of course, I can’t skip hackathons. These competitions molded my interest in coding so I want to give back to Georgia Tech’s Hack-Community by planning HackGT and the Catalyst Mentorship program as a member of the Hexlabs team. 

The student’s passion for CS shines through this essay. They explain what they love about the subject (the problem-solving aspect) and they share that they hope to make a difference through CS, demonstrating alignment with Tech’s motto of  “progress and service”.

It’s clear that this student has done their research, mentioning specific academic programs, research, and clubs. We can see that they’d be greatly engaged with the campus community.

Finally, this essay is also down-to-earth. The student doesn’t try to use impressive vocabulary or formal language. In fact, they even describe some extracurriculars as “ridiculously fun.” While you shouldn’t get too informal in your essays, this student’s casual tone in this context makes them feel more approachable and more excited about the prospect of going to Georgia Tech.

This essay has a couple sentences that are confusing to read:

Every part of CS, from conceptualizing a plan to executing a solution, is another piece of a puzzle I’m eager to solve and affords the most opportunities for creative problem-solving and application.

This sentence could’ve been broken up and rewritten as:

Every part of CS, from conceptualizing a plan to executing a solution, is another piece of a puzzle I’m eager to solve. For me, the field affords the most opportunities for creative problem-solving and application.

This sentence also uses incorrect grammar—the comma should be replaced with a semicolon:

Exploring this revolutionary brain decoding software wouldn’t just involve me in cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology research, I’d be personally driven to ensure its success and accessibility. 

These details would make the essay more readable.

The organization of the essay could also be reworked. The student mentions Tech’s motto of “progress and service,” but doesn’t follow up until later with an example of how they’d use CS for the greater good. Using CS for social good isn’t ultimately the theme of their essay, so this section would’ve been better placed at the end of the paragraph about AI technology research, or at the very end of the essay. The essay actually ends abruptly, so placing the section at the end might’ve tied it up nicely, if the student could’ve placed more emphasis on how they plan to use CS to improve society.

Do you want feedback on your “Why This College” essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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• Published: 13 October 2017

Rethinking higher education and its relationship with social inequalities: past knowledge, present state and future potential

• Theocharis Kromydas 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  3 , Article number:  1 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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The purposes and impact of higher education on the economy and the broader society have been transformed through time in various ways. Higher education institutional and policy dynamics differ across time, but also between countries and political regimes and therefore context cannot be neglected. This article reviews the purpose of higher education and its institutional characteristics juxtaposing two, allegedly rival, conceptual frameworks; the instrumental and the intrinsic one. Various pedagogical traditions are critically reviewed and used as examples, which can potentially inform today’s policy making. Since, higher education cannot be seen as detached from all other lower levels of education appropriate conceptual links are offered throughout this article. Its significance lies on the organic synthesis of literature across social science, suggesting ways of going forward based on the traditions that already exist but seem underutilized so far because of overdependence in market-driven practices. This offers a new insight on how theories can inform policy making, through conceptual “bridging” and reconciliation. The debate on the purpose of higher education is placed under the context of the most recent developments of increasing social inequalities in the western world and its relation to the mass model of higher education and the relevant policy decisions for a continuous increase in participation. This article suggests that the current policy focus on labor market driven policies in higher education have led to an ever growing competition transforming this social institution to an ordinary market-place, where attainment and degrees are seen as a currency that can be converted to a labour market value. Education has become an instrument for economic progress moving away from its original role to provide context for human development. As a result, higher education becomes very expensive and even if policies are directed towards openness, in practice, just a few have the money to afford it. A shift toward a hybrid model, where the intrinsic purpose of higher education is equally acknowledged along with its instrumental purpose should be seen by policy makers as the way forward to create educational systems that are more inclusive and societies that are more knowledgeable and just.

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Introduction.

The mainstream view in the western world, as informed by the human capital theory sees education, as an ordinary investment and the main reason why someone consumes time and money to undertake higher levels of education, is the high returns expected from the corresponding wage premium, when enters the labour market (Becker, 1964 , 1993 ). Nevertheless, things in practice are more complicated and this sequence of events is unlikely to be sustained, especially in recession periods like the one we currently live in. On the contrary, one notion of education, related somewhat to the American liberal arts tradition, is the intrinsic notion, which interprets that the purpose of education is to ‘equip people to make their own free, autonomous choices about the life they will lead’ (Bridges, 1992 : 92). There might be an economic basis underpinning this individual choice, but the intrinsic notion permits more subjective motivations, which are not necessarily affected by economic circumstances.

Robinson and Aronica ( 2009 ) argue that education, have become an impersonal linear process, a type of assembly line, similar to a factory production. They challenge this view and call for a less standardised pedagogy; more personalised to students needs as well as talents. Education is not similar to a manufacturing production-line, since students are highly concerned about the quality of education they receive as opposed to motor cars, which are indifferent to the process by which they are manufactured. Along these lines, Waters ( 2012 ), following Weber’s ( 1947 , 1968 ) rationale on the role of bureaucracy in modern societies, adds that this manufacturing process is achieved through rigid, rationalised and productively efficient but totally impersonal bureaucracy, operated in a way that sees children as raw materials for the creation of adults, which is the final product properly equipped to reproduce “itself” by being a parent to a new born “raw material” and so forth. Durkheim ( 1956 , 2006 ) sees this as a mechanism where adults exercise their influence over the younger in order to maintain the status quo they desire. However, since education entails ontological as well as epistemological implications, primary focus should be given to learning in such a way that educative and social functions could be amalgamated, rather than solely focusing on the delivery of existing knowledge per se, which becomes a reiterated process and an unchallenged absolute truth (Freire, 1970 ; Heidegger, 1988 ; Dall’ Alba and Barnacle, 2007 ).

This article focus on higher education; since it is the last stage before somebody enters the labour market and thus the instrumental view becomes more dominant over the intrinsic view, compared to the lower levels of education. Higher education, is being traditionally offered by universities. The first established university in Europe is the University of Bologna, where the term “academic freedom” was introduced as the kernel of its culture (Newman, 1996 ). Graham ( 2013 ) distinguishes between three different models of higher education. These are: the university college, the research and the technical university. He provides a historical review of the origins of these three models. The university college is the oldest one, where Christian values were the core values. Later on, when scientific knowledge questioned the universal theological truth, another type of university has been established, where research was the ultimate goal of the scholarship. This type of university has subsequently transformed by the introduction of the liberal arts tradition, flourished in the US. The research university model, originated circa 16 th century in Cambridge and established in Berlin by the introduction of the Humboldian University, shared a common aim: the pursuit of knowledge and its dissemination to the greater society. The third model of university is the technical one. It has been established in an industrial revolution context in Scotland and particularly in Glasgow in the premises of what is currently known as the University of Strathclyde. While the introduction of capitalism changed radically the structure and the format of labour relations, the technical model was based on the idea that industrial skills had to be acquired by formal education and somehow verified institutionally in order to be applied to the broader society. This is the first time where the up to then distinct fields of education and industry, started to be conceived as inextricably tight in a rather linear way.

These different models of higher education cultures and traditions still exist, but in reality, Universities worldwide follow a hybrid approach, where all traditions collaborate with each other. However, there are some universities that still carry the reputation and tradition of a specific model and to some extent this tradition differentiates them from all others. It is not the scope of this research to analyse this in detail, as the main aim is to offer an institutional and policy narrative, exploring the purpose of higher education and its relationship with social inequalities, focusing primarily on the western world.

Nowadays, in a rapidly changing word, the major debate is placed under the forms of institutional transformation of higher education. Brennan ( 2004 ), based on Trow ( 1979 , 2000 ), allocates three forms of higher education. The first one is the elite form, which main aim is to prepare and shape the mind-set of students originated from the most dominant class. The second is the mass form of higher education, which transmits the knowledge and skills acquired in higher education into the technical and economic roles students subsequently perform in the labour market. Lastly, the third is the universal form, which main purpose is to adapt students and the general population to the rapid social and technological changes.

This article reviews the contemporary trends in higher education and its widespread diffusion as interacted with the evolutions in western economies and societies, where social inequalities persist and even become wider (Dorling and Dorling, 2015 ). The narrative used in this article is more suitable to conceptualise higher education in a western world context, though we acknowledge that via globalisation, the way education and particularly higher education is delivered in the rest of the world seems to follow similar to the Western worlds paths, despite the apparent differences in culture, social and economic systems as well as writing systems. Footnote 1

An interdisciplinary and critical synthesis of the relevant literature is conducted, presenting two stances that are largely considered as rival: The instrumental one that treats higher education as an ordinary investment with particular financial yields in the labour market and the more intrinsic one which sees higher education as mainly detached from the logic of economic costs and benefits. The theoretical rivalry is apparent since in the former approach higher education is an inevitable property of labour market and thus an indispensable part of the mainstream economic neoliberal regime, whereas the latter sees no logical link between higher education and labour market purposes and therefore the content and substance of learning and knowledge acquisition in education and specifically in higher education should not be market-driven or aligned to the functions of specific economic regimes. However, this article argues that educational systems, and particularly their higher levels, are amalgamated parts of contemporary societies and therefore theories and practices need to move away from rather futile binary rationales.

The remainder of this paper explains why both the intrinsic and instrumental approaches are doomed to fail in practice when used in isolation. In a rapidly diverging and polarised world, where social inequalities rise within as well as between countries, common sense dictates social theories and practices to move towards reconciliation rather than stubborn rivalry. In that spirit, this paper argues that the intrinsic and instrumental approach are in fact complementary to each other. Such view can inform policy making towards building more inclusive educational systems; organically tight with the broader society. The narrative this article uses departs and expands on the rationale of eminent critical pedagogists such as Freire, Bronfenbrenner, Bourdieu and Kozol in order to challenge the current instrumental world-view of education, at least as this is apparent in the western world. Then the article moves into offering a reasoning for an organic synthesis of existing knowledge in order the two rival theories to be actualised in practice as a unified and reconciled pedagogical strategy. This reasoning builds on the research conducted by Durst’s ( 1999 ), Payne ( 1999 ) and Lu and Horner ( 2009 ). Durst ( 1999 ) suggests a “reflective instrumentalism”, where student’s pragmatic view that education is just a way of finding a well-paid job, operated in tandem with critical pedagogical canons, is indeed possible. Payne ( 1999 ) proposes a similar approach, where students are equipped with the necessary tools to find a job in the labour market; however educators should engage students with this knowledge in a critical way in order to be able to produce something new. Likewise Lu and Horner ( 2009 ) note that educators and students need to work together in such a way that perceptions of both are amenable to change and career choices are critically discussed in a constantly changing social context.

The purpose of higher education in western societies

Mokyr ( 2002 ) suggests that education should be integrated by both inculcation and emancipation in order to serve individual intellectual development as well as social progression. Shapiro ( 2005 ) emphasizes the need for the higher education institutions to serve a public purpose moving beyond narrow self-serving concerns, as well as to enforce social change in order to reflect the nature of a society that its members desire. More recently, in philosophical terms Barnett ( 2017 , p 10) calls for a wider conceptual landscape in higher education where “The task of an adequate philosophy of higher education…is not merely to understand the university or even to defend it but to change it”. )

The purpose of education and its meaning in the contemporary western societies has been also criticised by Bo ( 2009 ), suggesting that education has become a contradictory notion that leaves no space for emancipation since it gives no opportunity for improvisation to students. Thus, the students feel encaged within the system instead of being liberated. Bo agrees with Mokyr, who highlighted the need for recalling the basic notions of education from ancient philosophies: that education should be integrated by both inculcation and emancipation in order to serve individual intellectual development as well as social progression (Mokyr, 2002 ; Bo, 2009 ).

Not all individuals and societies agree on the purposes and roles of higher education in the modern world. However, in any case, it is a place where teaching and research can be accommodated in an organised fashion for the promotion of various types of knowledge, applied and non-applied. It is a place where money and moral values compete and collaborate simultaneously, where the development of labour market skills and competences coexist with the identification and utilisations of people’s skills and talents as well as the pursuit of employment, morality and citizenship.

The post-WWII era has been characterised by the mass model of higher education. Before this, higher education was for those belonging to higher social classes (Brennan, 2004 ). This model became the kernel of educational policies in Europe and generally, in the western world (Shapiro, 2005 ). Such policies have been boosted by the advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which enhance commercial and non-commercial bonds between countries and higher education institutions, transforming the role of higher education even further, making it rather universal (Jongbloed et al., 2008 ). Higher education’s boundaries have become vague and the predefined “social contract” between its institutions and those participated in them, is more complicated to be defined in absolute terms. Higher education institutions are now characterised by economic competition in a strict global market environment, where governments are not the key players anymore (Brennan, 2004 ).

Moreover, student demographics in higher education are constantly changing. Higher education is now an industry operating in a global market. Competition to attract talents from around the world is growing rapidly as an increasing number of countries offer additional graduate and post graduate positions to non-nationals, usually at a higher cost compared to nationals (Barber et al., 2013 ). Countries such as China or Singapore that are growing economically very rapidly are investing huge amounts of money to develop their higher education system and make it more friendly to talented people from around the world. The advent of new technologies have changed the traditional model of higher education, where physical presence is not a necessary requirement anymore (Yuan et al., 2013 ). Studying while working is much easier and therefore more mature students have now the opportunity to study towards a graduate or post-graduate degree. All these developments have increased the potential for profit; however it also requires huge amount of money to be invested in new technologies and all kinds of infrastructures and resources. The need for diversification in funding sources is simply essential and therefore all other industries become inevitably more engaged (Kaiser et al., 2014 ). On top of all these, climate change, the rise of terrorism, the prolonged economic uncertainty and the automazation of labour will likely increase cross-national and intraoccupational mobility and therefore the demand for higher education, especially in the recipient countries of the economically developed western world will inevitably rise. Summing up, higher education institutions operate under a very fluid and unpredictable environment and therefore approaches that are informed by adaptability and flexibility are absolutely crucial. The hybrid approach we propose where instrumental and intrinsic values are reconciled is along these lines.

Modern views of higher education place its function under a digital knowledge-based society, where economy dominates. Labour markets demand for skills such as technological competence and complex problem-solving by critical thinking and multitasking, which increases competition and in turn, accelerates the pace of the working day (Westerheijden et al., 2007 ). Haigh and Clifford ( 2011 ) argue that high competency, in both hard and soft skills, is not enough, as higher education needs to go deeper into changing attitudes and behaviours becoming the core of a globalised knowledge-based-economy. However, the trends of transferring knowledge and skills by universities, which “increasingly instrumentalize, professionalize, vocationalize, corporatize, and ultimately technologize education” (Thomson, 2001 : 244), have been extensively criticised in epistemological as well as in ontological terms (Bourdieu, 1998 ; Dall’ Alba and Barnacle, 2007 ). Livingstone ( 2009 ) argues that education and labour market have different philosophical departures and institutional principles to fulfill and therefore conceptualising them as concomitant economic events, with strong causal conjunctions, leads to logical fallacies. Livingstone sees the intrinsic purposes of education and contemporary labour market as rather contradictory than complimentary and any attempt to see them as the latter, leads to arbitrary and ambiguous outcomes, which in turn mislead rather than inform policy making. The current article, building on the arguments of Durst’s ( 1999 ), Payne ( 1999 ) and Lu and Horner ( 2009 ) challenges this view introducing a “bridging” rationale between the two theories, which can be also actualized in practice and inform policy making.

When education, and especially higher education, is considered as a public social right that everyone should have access to, human capital, as solely informed by the investment approach, cannot be seen as the most appropriate tool to explain the benefits an individual and society can gain from education. Citizenship can be regarded as one of these tools and perhaps concepts, such as the social and c ultural capital or habitus , which contrary to human capital acknowledge that students are not engaged with education just to succeed high returns in the labour market but apart from the economic capital, should be of equal importance when we try to offer a better explanation of the individuals’ drivers to undertake higher education. (Bourdieu, 1986 ; Coleman, 1988 ). Footnote 2 For example, Bourdieu ( 1984 ) thinks that certificates and diplomas are neither indications of academic or applied to the labour market knowledge, nor signals of competences but rather take the form of tacit criteria set by the ruling class to identify people from a particular social origin. Yet, Bourdieu does not disregard the human capital theory as invalid; however he remains very sceptical on its narrow social meaning as it becomes a property of ruling class and used as a mechanism to maintain their power and tacitly reproduce social inequalities.

Higher education attainment cannot be examined irrespectively of someone’s capabilities, as its conceptual framework presupposes a social construction of interacting and competing individuals, fulfilling a certain and, sometimes common to all, task each time. Capabilities, certainly, exist in and out of this context, as it includes both innate traits and acquired skills in a dynamic social environment. Sen ( 1993 : 30) defines capability as “a person’s ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being; [it] represents the alternative combinations of things a person is able to do or be”. Moreover, Sen argues that capabilities should not be seen only as a means for succeeding a certain goal, but rather as an end itself (Sen, 1985 ; Saito, 2003 ; Walker and Unterhalter, 2007 ).

Capabilities are a prerequisite of well-being and therefore, social institutions should direct people into fulfilling this aim in order to feel satisfied with their lives. However, since satisfaction is commonly understood as a subjective concept, it cannot be implied that equal levels of life satisfaction, as these perceived by people of different demographic and socio-economic characteristics, mean social and economic equality. Usually, the sense of life satisfaction is relative to future expectations, aspirations and past empirical experiences, informed by the socio-economic circumstances people live in (Saito, 2003 ).

According to the capability approach, assessing the educational attainment of individuals or the quality of teachers and curriculum are not such useful tasks, if not complemented by the capacity of a learner to convert resources into capabilities. Sen’s ( 1985 , 1993 ) capability approach, challenges the human capital theory, which sees education as an ordinary investment undertaken by individuals. It also remains sceptical towards structuralist and post-structruralist approaches, which support the dominance of institutional settings and power over the individual acts. According to Sen ( 1985 , 1993 ), educational outcomes, as these are measured by student enrolments, their performance on tests or their expected future income, are very poor indicators for evaluating the overall purpose of education, related to human well-being. Moreover, the capability approach does not imply that education can only enhance peoples’ capabilities. It also implies that education, can be detrimental, imposing severe life-long disadvantages to individuals and societies, if delivered poorly (Unterhalter, 2003 , 2005 ).

From Sen’s writings, it is not clear whether the capability approach imply a distinction between instrumental and intrinsic values. Even if someone attempts an interpretation of the capability approach by arguing that it is only means that have an instrumental value, whereas ends only an intrinsic one, it is still unclear how can we draw a line between means and ends in a rather objective way. Escaping from this rather dualistic interpretation, a common-sense argument seems apparent: Capabilities have both intrinsic and instrumental value. Material resources can be obtained through people’s innate talents and acquired skills; however through the same resources transformed into capabilities a person who does not see this as an end but rather as a means, can also become a trusted member of the community and a good citizen, given that some kind of freedom of choice exists. Thus, resources apart from their instrumental value can also have an intrinsic one, with the caveat that the person chooses to conceive them as means towards a socially responsible end.

The American tradition in student development goes back to the liberal arts tradition, which main aim is to build a free person as an active member of a civic society. The essence of this tradition can be found in Nussbaum ( 1998 : 8)

“When we ask about the relationship of a liberal education to citizenship, we are asking a question with a long history in the Western philosophical tradition. We are drawing on Socrates’ concept of ‘the examined life,’ on Aristotle’s notions of reflective citizenship, and above all on Greek and Roman Stoic notions of an education that is ‘liberal’ in that it liberates the mind from bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world.”

Nowadays, liberal arts tradition is regarded as the delivery of interdisciplinary education across the social sciences but also beyond that, aiming to prepare students for the challenges they are facing both as professionals and as members of civic society. However, as Kozol notes in reality things are quite different (Kozol, 2005 , 2012 ). Kozol devoted much of his work examining the social context of schools in the US by focusing on the interrelationships that exist, maintained or transformed between students, teachers and parents. He points out that segregation and local disparities in the US schools are continuously increasing. The US schools and especially urban schools are seen as distinctive examples of institutions where social discrimination propagates while the US educational system currently functions as a mechanism of reproducing social inequality. Kozol is very critical on the instrumental purpose of market-driven education as this places businesses and commerce as the “key players”, since they shape the purpose, content and curriculum of education. At the same time, students, their parents as well as teachers, whose roles should have been essential, are displaced into some kind of token participants.

Hess ( 2004 ) might agree that US schools have become vehicles of increasing social inequalities but he suggest a very different to Kozol’s approach. Since schools are social institutions that operate and constantly interact with the rest of economy they have to become accountable in the way that ordinary business are, at least when it comes to basic knowledge delivery. Hess insists that all schools across the US should be able to deliver high quality basic knowledge and literacy. Such knowledge can be easily standardised and a national curriculum, equal and identical to all US school can be designed. By this, all schools are able to deliver high quality basic knowledge and all pupils, irrespective of their social background, would be able to receive it. Then, each school, teacher and pupil are held accountable for their performance and failure to meet the national standards should result in schools closed down, teachers laid off and pupils change school environment or even lose their chance to graduate. Hess distinguishes between two types of reformers; the status quo reformers who do not challenge the state control education and the common-sense reformers who are in favour of a non-bureaucratic educational system, governed by market competition, subjected to accountability measures similar to those used in the ordinary business world.

While Hess presents evidence that the problem in higher education is not underfunding but efficiency in spending, the argument he makes that schools can only reformed and flourish through the laws of market competition is not adequately backed up as there are plenty of examples in many industrial sectors, where the actual implementation of market competition instead of opening up opportunities for the more disadvantaged, has finally generated huge multinationals corporations, which operate in a rather monopolistic or at best oligopolistic environment, satisfying their own interests on the expense of the most deprived and disadvantaged members of the society. The ever growing increasing competition in the financial, pharmaceutical or IT software and hardware (Apple Microsoft, IOS and Android software etc.) sectors have not really helped the disadvantaged or the sector itself but rather created powerful “too big to fail” corporations that dominate the market if not own it.

Hess indeed believes that the US educational system apart from preparing students for the labour market has a social role to fulfil. When the purpose of higher education is solely labour market-oriented teaching and learning become inadequate to respond to the social needs of a well-functioned civic democracy, which requires active learners and critical thinkers who, apart from having a job and a profession, are able “ to frame and express their thoughts and participate in their local and national communities”(p. 4) . Creating rigorous standards for basic knowledge in all US schools is a goal that is sound and rather achievable. However, when such goals are based on a Darwinian like competition and coercion where only the fittest can survive they become rather inapplicable for satisfying the needs of human development, equity and sustainable social progress.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory ( 1979 , 2005 , 2009 ) (subsequently named from Bronfenbrenner himself as bioecological systems theory) is also an example of schools as organic ingredients of a single concentric system that includes four sub systems; the micro, the meso, the exo and the macro as well as the chronosystem that refers to the change of the other four through time. The Micro system involves activities and roles that are experienced through interpersonal relationships such as the family, schools, religious or social institutions or any interactions with peers. The meso system includes the relationships developed between the various microsystem components, such as the relationship between school and workplace or family and schools. The exosystem comprises various interactions between systems that the person who is in the process of development does not directly participates but influence the way microsystems function and impact on the person. Some examples of exosystems are the relationships between family and peers of the developing person, family and schools, etc. The macrosystem incorporates all these things that can be considered as cultural environment and social context in which the developing person lives. Finally, the chronosystem introduces a time dimension, which encompasses all other sub-systems, subjecting them to the changes occurred through time. All these systems constantly interact, shaping a dynamic, complex but also natural ecological environment, in which a person develops its understanding of the world. In practical terms, this theory has found application in Finland, gradually transforming the Finish educational system to such a degree that is now considered the best all over the world (Määttä and Uusiautti, 2014 ; Takala et al., 2015 ). Finally, Bronfenbrenner is also an advocate that poverty and social inequalities are developed not because of differences in individual characteristics and capabilities but because of institutional constraints that are insurmountable to those from a lower socio-economic background.

Freire ( 1970 , 2009 ) criticizes the way schooling is delivered in contemporary societies. The term he uses to describe the current state of education is “banking education”, where teachers and students have very discrete roles with the former to be perceived as depositors of knowledge and the latter as depositories. This approach sees the knowledge acquired within the institutional premises of formal education as an absolute truth, where reality is perceived as something static aiming to preserve the status quo in education and in turn in society and satisfy the interests of the elite. This actual power play means that those who hold knowledge and accept its acquiring procedure as static, become the oppressors whereas those who either lack knowledge or even hold it but challenge it in order to transform it, the oppressed. From the one side the oppressors achieve to maintain their dominance over the oppressed and on the other side the oppressed accept their inferior role as an unchallenged normality where their destiny is predetermined and can never be transformed. Therefore, through this distinction of social roles, social inequalities are maintained and even intensified through time. Freire sees the “banking education” approach as a historical hubris since social reality is a process of constant transformation and hence, it is by definition dynamic and non-static. What we actually know today cannot determine our future social roles, neither can prohibit individuals from challenging and transforming it into something new (Freire, 1970 ; Giroux, 1983 ; Darder, 2003 ).

The banking education approach resembles very much the ethos of the human capital theory, where individuals utilise educational attainment as an investment instrument for succeeding higher wages in the future and also climb the levels of social hierarchy. The assumption of linearity between past individual actions and future economic and social outcomes is at the core of banking education and thus human capital theory. However, this assumption introduces a serious logical fallacy that surprisingly policy makers seem to value very little nowadays, at least in the Western societies. Freire ( 2009 ) apart from criticizing the current state of education argues that a pedagogical approach that “demythologize” and unveils reality by promoting dialogue between teachers and students create critical thinkers, who are engaged in inquiry in order to create social reality by constantly transforming it. This is the process of problem-posing education , which aligns its meaning with the intrinsic view of education that regards human development as mainly detached from the acquisition of material objects and accumulation of wealth through increased levels of educational attainment.

Originated in Germany, the term Bildung —at least as this was interpreted from 18 th century onwards, after Middle Ages era where everything was explained in the prism of a strict and theocratic society- shaped the philosophy by which the German educational system has been functioning even until nowadays (Waters, 2016 ). Bildung aims to provide the individual education with the appropriate context, through which can reach high levels of professional development as well as citizenship. It is a term strongly associated with the liberation of mind from superstition and social stereotypes. Education is assumed to have philosophical underpinnings but it needs, as philosophy itself as a whole does too, to be of some practical use and therefore some context needs to be provided Footnote 3 (Herder, 2002 ).

For Goethe ( 2006 ) Bildung , is a self-realisation process that the individual undertakes under a specific context, which aims to inculcate altruism where individual actions are consider benevolent only if they are able to serve the general society. Although Bildung tradition, from the one hand, assumes that educational process should be contextualised, it approach context as something fluid that is constantly changing. Therefore, it sees education as an interactive and dynamic process, where roles are predetermined; however at the same time they are also amenable to constant transformation (Hegel, 1977 ). Consequently, this means that Bildung tradition is more closely to what Freire calls problem-posing education and therefore to the intrinsic notion of education. Weber ( 1968 ), looked on the Bildung tradition as a means to educate scientists to be involved in policy making and overcome the problems of ineffective bureaucracy. Waters ( 2016 ) based on his experiences with teaching in German higher education argue that the Bildung tradition is still apparent today in the educational system in Germany.

However, higher education, as an institution, involves students, teachers, administrators, policy makers, workers, businessmen, marketers and generally, individuals with various social roles, different demographic characteristics and even different socio-economic backgrounds. It comes natural that their interests can be conflicting and thus, they perceive the purpose of higher education differently.

Higher education expansion and social inequalities: contemporary trends

Higher education enrolment rates have been continuously rising for the last 30 years. In Europe, and especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, policies are directed towards widening the access to higher education to a broader population (Bowl, 2012 ). However, it is very difficult for policy-makers to design a framework towards openness in higher education, mainly due to the heterogeneity of the population the policies are targeted upon. Such population includes individuals from various socio-economic, demographic, ethnic, innate ability, talent orientation or disability groups, as well as people with very different social commitments and therefore the vested interests of each group contradict each other, rendering policy-making an extremely complicated task (CFE and Edge Hill University, 2013 ).

A collection of essays, edited by Giroux and Myrsiades ( 2001 ), provided valuable insights to the humanities and social sciences literature regarding the notion of corporate university and its implications to society’s structure. As Williams ( 2001 : 18) notes in one of this essays:

“Universities are now being conscripted directly as training grounds for the corporate workforce…university work has been more directly construed to serve not only corporate-profit agendas via its grant-supplicant status, but universities have become franchises in their own right, reconfigured to corporate management, labor, and consumer models and delivering a name-brand product”.

Chang et al. ( 2013 ) argues that institutional purposes do not always coincide with the expectations students have from their studies. In most cases, students hold a more pragmatic and instrumental understanding towards the purpose of higher education, primarily aiming for a better-paid and high quality jobs.

Arum and Roksa ( 2011 ) claim that students during their studies in higher education make no real progress in critical thinking and complex problem-solving. Nonetheless, it is notable that those who state that they seek some “deeper meaning” in higher education, looking at a broader picture of things, tend to perform better than those who see university through instrumental lenses (Entwistle and Peterson, 2004 ). These findings question the validity of the instrumental view in higher education as it seems that those that are intrinsically motivated to attend higher education, end up performing much better in higher education and also later on in the labour market. Therefore, in practice, the theoretical rivalry between the intrinsic and instrumental approach operate in a rather dialectic manner, where interactions between social actors move towards a convergence, despite the focus given by policy makers on the instrumental view.

Bourdieu ( 1984 , 1986 , 1998 , 2000 ) based on his radical democratic politics, argued that education inequalities are just a transformation of social inequalities and a way of reproduction of social status quo. Aronowitz ( 2004 ) acknowledged that the main function of public education in the US is to prepare students to meet the changes, occurred in contemporary workplaces. Even if this instrumental model involves the broad expansion of educational attainment, it also fails to alleviate class-based inequalities. He is in line with Bourdieu’s argument that social class relations are reproduced through schooling, as schools reinforce, rather than reduce, class-based inequalities. More recently, similar findings from various countries are very common in the literature (Chapman et al., 2011 ; Stephens et al., 2015 )

Apple ( 2001 ) argues that despite neoliberalism’s claims that privatisation, marketization, harmonisation and generally the globalisation of educational systems increase the quality of education, there are considerable findings in numerous studies that show that the expansion of higher education happens in tandem with the increase of income inequality and the aggravation of racial, gender and class differences. Gouthro ( 2002 ) argues that there has been a misrepresentation of the basic notions that characterise the purpose of education, such as critical thinking, justice and equity. Ganding and Apple ( 2002 ) went one step further by suggesting an alternative solution, which lies on the decentralisation of educational systems, using the “Citizen School” as an example of an educational institution, which prioritises quality in education and its provision to impoverished people. Finally, they call for a radical structural reform on educational systems worldwide, where the relationship between various social communities and the state is based on social justice and not on power.

Brown and Lauder ( 2006 ) investigated the impact of the fundamental changes on education, as related to the influence that various socio-economic and cultural factors have on policy making. Remaining sceptical against the empirical validity of human capital theory, they conclude that it cannot be guaranteed that graduates will secure employment and higher wages. Contrary to Card and Lemieux’s ( 2001 ) findings, the authors argue that when the wage-premium is not measured by averages, but is split in deciles within graduates, it is only the high-earning graduates that have experienced an increasing wage-gap during this period. Increasing incidences of over-education, due to an ever-increasing supply of graduates compared to the relatively modest growth rates of high-skilled jobs, have also been observed. Any differences in pay, between graduates and non-graduates, can be ascribed more to the stagnation of non-graduates' pay, rather than to graduates’ additional pay, because of their higher educational attainment. More recently, Mettler ( 2014 ) argues that the focus on corporate interests in policy making in the US has transformed higher education into a caste system that reproduces and also intensifies social inequalities.

There are evidence, which illustrate that families play a distinctive role in encouraging children’s abilities and traits through a warm and friendly family environment. As higher education requires a significant amount of money to be invested, families with high-income have more chances and means to promote their children’s abilities and traits as well as their career prospects, when compared with the low-income ones. Certainly, there are other factors, which can affect children’s prospects, but the advantage in favour of high-income families is relatively apparent in the empirical literature (Solon, 1999 ).

Livingstone and Stowe ( 2007 ), based on the General Social Survey (GSS), conducted an empirical study on the school completion rates partitioning individuals into family and class origin, residential area as well as race and gender. They focused on the relatively low completion rates of low-class individuals, from the inner city and rural areas of the US. Their findings reveal that working-class children are being discriminated on their school completion rates, compared with the mid- and high-class children. Race and gender discrimination has been detected in rural areas but not in inner cities and suburb areas, where the completion rates are more balanced.

Stone ( 2013 ), finally sees things from a very different perspective, where inequalities exist mainly because of simply bad luck. He argues in favour of lots, when a university has to decide whether to accept an applicant or not. Even if, an argument like this seems highly controversial, it consists of something that has been implemented in many countries, several times in the past (Hyland, 2011 ). The argument that an individual deserves a place in university just because he/she scored higher marks in a standardised sorting examination test does not prove that he/she will perform better in his/her subsequent academic tasks. Likewise, if an individual, who failed to secure a place in university due to low marks, was given a chance to enter university through a different procedure, he/she might have performed exceptionally well. Yet, human society cannot solely depend on lotteries and computer random algorithms, but sometimes, up to a certain point and in the name of fairness and transparency, there is a strong case for also looking on the merits for using one (Stone, 2013 ).

Furthermore, Lowe ( 2000 ) argued that the widening of higher education participation can create a hyper-inflation of credentials, causing their serious devaluation in the labour market. This relates to the concept of diploma disease, where labour markets create a false impression that a higher degree is a prerequisite for a job and therefore, induce individuals to undertake them only for the sake of getting a job (Dore, 1976 ; Collins, 1979 ). This situation can create a highly competitive credential market, and even if there are indications of higher education expansion, individuals from lower social class do not have equal opportunities to get a degree, which can lead them to a more prestigious occupational category. This is, in turn, very similar to the Weberian theory of educational credentialism, where credentials determine social stratum (Brown, 2003 ; Karabel, 2006 ; Douthat, 2005 ; Waters, 2012 ).

The concept of credential inflation has been extensively debated from many scholars, who question the role of formal education and the usefulness of the acquisition of skills within universities (Dore 1997 ; Collins, 1979 ; Walters, 2004 ; Hayes and Wynard, 2006 ). Evans et al. ( 2004 ) focuses on the tacit skills, which cannot be acquired by formal learning, mainly obtained by work and life experience as well as informal learning. These skills are competences related to the way a complex situation could be best approached or resemble to personal traits, which can be used for handling unforeseen situations.

Policy implications

Higher educational attainment that leads to a specific academic degree is a dynamic procedure, but with a pre-defined end. This renders the knowledge acquired there, as obsolete. Policies, such as Bologna Declaration supports an agenda, where graduates should be further encouraged to engage with on-the-job training and life-long education programmes (Coffield, 1999 ). Other scholars argue that institutions should have a broader role, acknowledging the benefits that higher educational attainment bring to societies as a whole by the simultaneous promotion of productivity, innovation and democratisation as well as the mitigation of social inequalities (Harvey, 2000 ; Hayward and James, 2004 ). Boosting employability for graduates is crucial and many international organisations are working towards the establishment of a framework, which can ensure that higher education satisfies this aim (Diamond et al., 2011 ). Yet, this can have negative side-effects making the employability gap between high- and low-skilled even wider, since there is no any policy framework specifically designed for low-skilled non-graduates on a similar to Bologna Declaration, supranational context. Heinze and Knill ( 2008 ) argue that convergence in higher education policy-making, as a result of the Bologna Process, depends on a combination of cultural, institutional and socio-economic national characteristics. Even if, it can be assumed that more equal countries, in terms of these characteristics, can converge much easier, it is still questionable if and how much national policy developments have been affected by the Bologna Declaration.

However, the political narrative of equal opportunities in terms of higher education participation rates does not seem very convincing (Brown and Hesketh, 2004 ; The Milburn Commission, 2009 ). It appears that a consensus has been reached in the relevant literature that there is a bias towards graduates from the higher social classes, but it has been gradually decreasing since 1960 (Bekhradnia, 2003 ; Tight, 2012 ). Nonetheless, despite the fact that, during the last few decades, there has been an improvement in the participation rates for the most vulnerable groups, such as women and ethnic minorities, the inequality is still obvious in some occasions (Greenbank and Hepworth, 2008 ). Machin and Van Reenen ( 1998 ) trace the causes of the under-participation in an intergenerational context, arguing that the positive relationship between parental income and participation rates is apparent even from the secondary school. Likewise, Gorard ( 2008 ) identifies underrepresentation on the previous poor school performance, which leads to early drop-outs in the secondary education, or into poor grades, which do not allow for a place in higher education. Other researchers argue that paradoxically, educational inequality persists even nowadays, albeit the policy orientation worldwide towards the widening of higher education participation across all social classes (Burke, 2012 ; Bathmaker et al., 2013 ).

There are different aspects on the purpose of higher education, which particularly, under the context of the ongoing economic uncertainty, gain some recognition and greater respect from academics and policy-makers. Lorenz ( 2006 ) notes that the employability agenda, which is constantly promoted within higher education institutions lately, cannot stand as a sustainable rationale in a diverse global environment. This harmonisation and standardisation of higher education creates permanent winners and losers, centralising all the gains, monetary and non-monetary, towards the most dominant countries, particularly towards Anglo-phone countries and specific industries and therefore social inequalities increase between as well as within countries. Some scholars call this phenomenon as Englishization (Coleman, 2006 ; Phillipson, 2009 ).

Tomusk ( 2002 , 2004 ) positioned education within the general framework of the recent institutional changes and the rapid rise of the short-term profits of the financial global capital. Specifically, the author sees World Bank as a transnational organisation. Given this, any loan agreement planned from the World Bank regarding higher education reforms in developing countries, has the same ultimate, but tacit, goal, which is the continuous rise of the national debt and in turn, the vitiation of national fiscal and monetary policies, in order the human resources of the so called “recipient countries”, to be redistributed in favour of a transnational dominant class.

Hunter ( 2013 ) places the debate under a broader political framework, juxtaposing neo-liberalism with the trends formulated by the OECD. She concludes that OECD is a very complex and multi-vocal organisation and when it comes to higher education policy suggestions, there is not any clear trend, especially towards neo-liberalism. This does not mean that economic thinking is not dominant within the OECD. This is, in fact, OECD’s main concern and it is clear to all. Hunter ( 2013 : 15–16) accordingly states that:

“Some may feel offended by the vocational and economic foci in OECD discourse. Many would like to see HE held up for “higher” ideals. However, it is fair for OECD to be concerned with economics. They do not deny that they are primarily an organization concerned with economics. It is up to us, the readers, politicians, scholars, voters, teachers, administrators, and policy makers, to be aware that this is an economic organization and be careful of from whom we get our assumptions”.

Hyslop-Margison ( 2000 ) investigated how the market economy affects higher education in Canada, when international organisations and Canadian business interfere in higher education policy making, under the support of government agencies. He argues that such economy-oriented policies deteriorate curriculum theory and development.

Letizia ( 2013 ) criticises market-oriented reforms, enacted by The Virginia Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2011, placing them within the context of market-driven policies informed by neoliberalism, where social institutions, such as higher education, should be governed by the law of free market. According to Letizia, this will have very negative implications to the humanistic character of education, affecting people’s intellectual and critical thinking, while perpetuating social inequalities.

The term Mcdonaldisation has been also used recently to capture functional similarities and trends in common, between higher education and ordinary commercial businesses. Thus, efficiency, calculability, predictability and maximisation are high priorities in the American and British educational systems and because of their global influence, these characteristics are being expanding worldwide (Hayes and Wynard, 2006 ; Garland, 2008 ; Ritzer, 2010 ).

The notion of Mcdonaldisation is very well explained by Garland ( 2008 , no pagination):

“Mcdonaldisation can be seen as the tendency toward hyper-rationalisation of these same processes, in which each and every task is broken down into its most finite part, and over which the individual performing it has little or no control becoming all by interchangeable. It may be argued that the labour processes involved in advanced technological capitalism increasingly depend on either the handling and processing of information, or provision of services requiring instrumentalised forms of communication and interaction, just as the same “professional” roles frequently consist of largely mechanized, functional tasks requiring a minimum of individual input or initiative, let alone creative or critical thought, a process illustrated in blackly comic by the 1999 film Office Space”.

Realistically, higher education cannot be solely conceptualised by the human capital approach and similar quantitative interpretations, as it has cultural, psychological, idiosyncratic and social implications. Additionally, Hoxby ( 1996 ) argued that policy environment and systems of governance in higher education play a significant role to an individuals’ decision-making process to obtain further education and unfortunately, policy makers regard this aspect as static that can never be transformed.

Lepori and Bonaccorsi ( 2013 ), following Latour and Woolgar’s ( 1979 ) rationale of the high importance of vested interest in scientific endeavours, argue that higher education trends are too complex to be reduced and captured adequately, by the use of economic indicators as related to the labour market. However, the market and money value of higher education should not be neglected, especially in developing countries, as there is evidence that it can help people escape the vicious cycle of poverty and therefore it has a practical and more pragmatic purpose to fulfil (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004 ). According to World Bank ( 2013 ), education can contribute to a significant decrease of the number of poor people globally and increase social mobility when it manages to provides greater opportunities for children coming from poor families. There are also other studies that do not only focus to strict economic factors, but also to the contribution of educational attainment to fertility and mortality rates as well as to the level of health and the creation of more responsible and participative citizens, bolstering democracy and social justice (Council of Europe, 2004 ; Osler and Starkey, 2006 ; Cogan and Derricott, 2014 ).

Mountford-Zimdars and Sabbagh ( 2013 ), analysing the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, offer a plausible explanation on why the widening of participation in higher education is not that easy to be implemented politically, in the contemporary western democracies. The majority of the people, who have benefited from higher educational attainment in monetary and non-monetary terms, are reluctant to support the openness of higher education to a broader population. On the contrary, those that did not succeed or never tried to secure a place in a higher education institute, are very supportive of this idea. This clash of interests creates a political perplexity, making the process of policy-making rather dubious. Therefore, the apparent paradox of the increase in higher educational attainment, along with a stable rate in educational inequalities, does not seem that strange when vested interests of certain groups are taken into account.

Moreover, the decision for someone to undertake higher education is not solely influenced by its added value in the labour market. Since an individual is exposed to different experiences and influences, strategic decisions can easily change, especially when these are taken from adolescents or individuals in their early stages of their adulthood. Given this, perceptions and preferences do change with ageing and this is why there are some individuals who drop out from university, others who choose radical shifts in their career or others who return to education after having worked in the labour market for many years and in different types of jobs.

Higher education has expanded rapidly after WWII. The advent of new technologies dictates the enhancement of people’s talents and skills and the creation of a knowledge-based-economy, which in turn, demands for even more high-skilled workers. Policy aims for higher education in the western world is undoubtedly focusing on its diffusion to a broader population. This expansion is seen as a policy instrument to alleviate social and income inequalities. However, the implementation of such policies has been proved extremely difficult in practise, mainly because of existent conflicted interests between groups of people, but also because of its institutional incapacity to target the most vulnerable. Nonetheless, it has been observed a constant marketization process in higher education, making it less accessible to people from poor economic background. Concerns on the persistence of policy-makers to focus primarily on the economic values of higher education have been increasingly expressed, as strict economic reasoning in higher education contradicts with political claims for its continuing expansion.

On the other hand, there are studies arguing that the instrumental model can make the transition of graduates into the labour market smoother. Such studies are placed under the mainstream economics framework and are also informed by policy decisions implemented by the Bologna Process, where competitiveness, harmonisation and employability are the main policy axes. The Bologna Process and various other institutions (e.g., the EU, World Bank, OECD) have provided a framework under which higher education can be seen as inextricably linked with labour market dynamics; however, the intrinsic notion of higher education is treated more as a nuisance and less as a vital component on this framework. Nevertheless, this makes the job competition between graduates much more intense and also creates very negative implications for those that remain with low qualifications as they effectively become socially and economically marginalised.

The purpose of higher education and its role in modern societies remains a heated philosophical debate, with strong practical and policy implications. This article sheds more light to this debate by presenting a synthetic narrative of the relevant literature, which can be used as a basis for future theoretical and empirical research in understanding contemporary trends in higher education as interwoven with the evolutions in the broader socio-economic sphere. Specifically, two conflicting theoretical stances have been discussed. The mainstream view primarily aims to assist individuals to increase their income and their relative position in the labour market. On the other hand, the intrinsic notion focus on understanding its purpose under ontological and epistemological considerations. Under this conceptual framework, the enhancement of individual creativity and emancipation are in conflict with the contemporary institutional settings related to power, dominance and economic reasoning. This conflict can influence people’s perceptions on the purpose of higher education, which can in turn perpetuate or otherwise revolutionise social relations and roles.

However, even if the two theoretical stances presented are regarded as contradictory, this article argues that, in practical terms, they can be better seen as complementing each other. From one hand, using an instrumental perspective, an increase in higher education participation, focusing particularly on the most vulnerable and deprived members of society, can alleviate problems of income and social inequalities. The instrumental view of education has a very important role to play if focused on lower-income social classes, as it can become the mechanism towards the alleviation of income inequalities. On the other hand, apart from the pecuniary, there are also other non-pecuniary benefits associated with this, such as the improvement in the fertility and mortality and general health level rates or the boost of active democracy and citizenship even within workplaces and therefore a shift of higher education towards its intrinsic purposes is also needed. (Bowles and Gintis, 2002 ; Council of Europe, 2004 ; Brennan, 2004 ; Brown and Lauder, 2006 ; Wolff and Barsamian, 2012 ).

Summing up, education is not a simply just another market process. It is not just an institution that supply graduates as products that have some predetermined value in the labour market. Consequently, acquired knowledge in education verified by college degrees is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the labour market to create appropriate jobs, where graduates utilise and expand this knowledge. In fact, the increasing costs of higher education, mostly due to its internationalisation, and the rising levels of job mismatch create a rather gloomy picture of the current economic environment, which seems to preserve the well-paid jobs mostly to those from a certain socio-economic class background. At the same time, poor students are vastly disadvantaged to more wealthy ones, considering the huge differences in terms of higher as well as their past education, their parent’s education and also certain elitist traditions that work towards perpetuating power relations in favour of the dominant class.

As Castoriadis ( 1997 ) notes, it is impossible to separate education from its social context. We, as human beings, acquire knowledge, in the sense of what Castoriadis calls paideia , from the day we born until the day we die. We are being constantly developed and transformed along with the social transformations that happen around us. The transformation on the individual is in constant interaction with social transformations, where no cause and effect exists. Formal schooling has become nowadays an apathetic task where no real engagement with learning happens, while its major components such as educators, families and students are largely disconnected with each other. Educators, cynically execute the teaching task that a curriculum dictates each time, families’ main concern is to attach a market value to their children educational attainment, “labelling” them with a credential that the labour market allegedly desires, while students pay attention to anything else apart from the knowledge they get per se and therefore they care too little for its quality and also its practical use.

To tackle the ever-growing social inequalities due to the narrow economic policy making in education, we need a radical shift towards policies that are informed from Freire’s problem-posing education and Sen’s capabilities approach, get insights in terms of structure from Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory, while giving context according to the Bildung tradition also acknowledging that education, apart from instrument, is a vehicle towards liberation, cultural realisation as well as social transformation. In practical terms, real-world examples from Finland or Germany can be used, which policy makers from around the world should start paying more attention to, moving away from narrow and sterile instrumentalism that has spectacularly failed to tackle social inequalities.

In the context of a modern world where monetary costs and benefits are the basis of policy arguments, a massification and broader diffusion of higher education to a much broader population implies marketisation and commercialisation of its purpose and in turn its inclusion on an economy-oriented model where knowledge, skills, curriculum and academic credentials inevitably presuppose a money-value and have a financial purpose to fulfil. The policy trends towards an economy-based-knowledge, through a strict instrumental reasoning, rather than the alleged knowledge-based-economy seems to persist and prevail, albeit its poor performance on alleviating income and social inequalities. Yet, in a global context of a prolonged economic stagnation and a continuous deterioration of society’s democratic reflexes, a shift towards a model, where knowledge is not subdued to economic reasoning, can inform a new societal paradigm of a genuine knowledge-based-economy, where economy would become a means rather than an ultimate goal for human development and social progress.

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For example, Confucian tradition is very rich, when it comes to education and human development. It is indeed very interesting to see how the basic principles of Confucian education, such as humanism, harmony and hierarchy, has been transformed through time and especially after the change in China’s economic model by Den Xiaoping’s reforms towards a more open economic system and along this a more business-oriented and globalised educational system. Perhaps the Chinese tradition in education, which mainly regards education as a route to social status and material success based on merit and constant examination can explain why the human capital theory is more applicable. On the other hand, additional notions in the Confucian tradition that education should be open to all, irrespective of the social class each person belongs to (apart perhaps from women and servants that were rather considered as human beings with limited social rights), its focus on ethics and its purpose to prepare efficient and loyal practitioners for the government introduces an apparent paradox with human capital theory but not necessarily with the instrumental view of education. This contradiction deserves to be appropriately and thoroughly examined in a separate analysis before it is contrasted to the Western tradition. For this reason the current research focuses only on the Western world leaving the comparison analysis with educational traditions found around the world, among them the Confucian tradition, as a task that will be conducted in the near future.

The use of capital in Bourdieu is criticised by a stream of social science scholars as rather promiscuous and unfortunate (Goldthorpe, 2007 ). They argue that a paradox here is apparent as in English linguistic etymological terms, the word capital implies, if not presupposes market activity. The same time Bourdieu criticises Becker’s human capital tradition as solely market-driven and a tacit way where the ruling class maintain their power through universities and other institutions. Waters ( 2012 ) argue that the use of the term “capital” in both Becker’s and Bourdieu’s writings is unfortunate, while both use the term to mean different things. Bourdieu’s understanding on the nature of “habitus” is a much more applicable term to explain the social role of education systems. Habitus is not capital, even if there is constant interaction between the two. Becker on the other hand, seem to neglect social and cultural capital as well as Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, which in turn is about the reproduction of society and power relations by universities and other institutions.

Some might have valid ontological objections on this, in terms of the purpose of philosophy as a whole; however the concept of Bildung has given education a role within society that moves away from individualism and the constant pursuit of material objects as ultimate means of well-being.

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Kromydas, T. Rethinking higher education and its relationship with social inequalities: past knowledge, present state and future potential. Palgrave Commun 3 , 1 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-017-0001-8

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Why Higher Education Matters

Our success depends on increasing access, fostering openness and serving society..

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By Marc Tessier-Lavigne

A merican colleges and universities serve society and are reliable engines of personal and national prosperity. They include 43 of the top 100 worldwide. Yet public trust in the value of higher education has been shaken. Families are frustrated about the costs of college. Some express concern about growing endowments. Others perceive our institutions as elitist or ideologically one-sided. Now is the time to tackle these concerns.

The stakes are high. Recently passed federal tax-reform legislation may reduce charitable contributions and stress some state education budgets. A new excise tax on endowments affects about 35 colleges and universities, including ours. Moody’s revised the 2018 outlook for higher education from “stable” to “negative.” Standard & Poor’s called it “bleak.”

What can we do to strengthen our contribution and better convey our value to society? Let’s take stock of both our strengths and what needs improvement.

Our value to society lies first in our ability to educate the next generation of citizens, critical thinkers and innovators. Affordability and access are key. From 2006 to 2016, Stanford provided $1.5 billion in scholarships and grants to our undergraduates; federal and state governments provided them $111 million. Tuition is now free for most families earning less than $125,000; one in seven Stanford undergraduates is now a first-generation college student; and 82 percent of undergraduates leave with zero debt. Despite gains, we remain focused on improving access for students from low- and middle-income families.

Fostering curiosity and free expression is also key. To be prepared for life, our students must learn how to think independently and to engage productively with diverse points of view. To help with this, the provost and I recently supported leaders at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies to team with student leaders across the political spectrum in creating a new series of moderated discussions, Cardinal Conversations, that pairs major public intellectuals who have contrasting views. In January, Reid Hoffman, ’89, and Peter Thiel, ’89, JD ’92, discussed technology and politics. Other speaker pairs will tackle a range of timely issues. We will continue identifying ways to help our students engage with a broad range of perspectives both inside and outside the classroom.

As a research university, our value also lies in advancing knowledge and in applying it to solve major societal problems. From 2012 to 2015, U.S. academic institutions were featured in 40 percent of worldwide patent citations. Stanford innovations range from a search engine to medical cures to digital music; Stanford entrepreneurs have created more than 5 million jobs since the 1930s. But the application of knowledge is not always efficient. In biomedicine, the journey from laboratory discovery to successful therapy is called the Valley of Death. We need to create new infrastructure and systems to speed up application—not just in biomedicine, but also in other disciplines.

Finally, our financial aid and academic programs are made possible by our endowment. We must be financially sound in 50 years, 100 years and beyond. Fifty years ago, Stanford cardiologists performed the first adult heart transplant in U.S. history. Recently, Stanford biologists discovered why some babies are born with heart disease. Whose heart might need healing 50 years from now? The endowment ensures our long-term capacity to support high-risk research that leads to transformative breakthroughs.

Our Long-Range Planning process has given us fresh ideas for how to advance affordability, access, free expression, and the discovery and application of knowledge. While we continually strive to improve, we must also find common ground and spread the word about the value of Stanford and all research universities.

Marc Tessier-Lavigne is the president of Stanford University.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, how can i effectively express my motivation for higher education in my college essay.

I need to start working on my college essay and I'm seriously pondering over how to convey my true motivation for wanting a college education. It’s more than just getting a degree for me. How do I put this passion into words without sounding cliché?

I completely understand your desire to express your genuine passion for higher education in a way that stands out. It's important to show the admissions committee what drives you, and how your experiences have shaped your decision to pursue college education. To avoid clichés, focus on specific experiences or moments in your life that ignited your enthusiasm for learning. For example, you could write about a project or subject that you explored on your own time and how that deepened your interest in a certain field.

Additionally, you could talk about mentors or role models who have influenced your academic journey, or how particular challenges have strengthened your commitment to further education. Remember to be reflective and introspective; focus on your personal growth and development. It's not about grand statements, but about showing how your unique story connects to your educational aspirations. Tie these experiences back to your motivation for seeking a higher education, highlighting how college is a necessary and meaningful next step for you. By doing so, you'll be able to craft an essay that is both compelling and personal, clearly demonstrating your passion to the admissions committee.

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

The Value of Higher Education Essay

Malcolm Forbes once said, “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one”

Education is undoubtedly the one factor that eventually decides the level of progress attained by a nation or a people; it is what separates the third world from the developed world and the poor from the rich. Although the process of formal education starts at the kindergarten level and goes on till a student graduates from high school, in today’s competitive world, this is not enough.

Basic education is a necessity and must be pursued by one and all, but it only suffices the basic needs of life. In order to meet the growing demands of the global job market and to be recognized professionally, higher education is not only a need but a necessity. Higher education acts as a stepping stone between college and the world of employment, it helps one to obtain a better salary by becoming a more attractive alternative for employers and also broadens one’s horizons in terms of knowledge and experience by allowing a person to specialize and excel in a particular field.

Although pursuing higher education is an expensive affair in most developed countries like the USA or UK, but the benefits are immense. On the last count, there were more than 53000 courses at 329 higher education institutions within the UCAS scheme in the UK. The benefits that graduates enjoyed included an approximate 17% higher earnings than those with just school leaving certificates, and the figure rises to approximately 25% for those who pursued courses in

engineering, law or medicine. In addition to this, only about 6% of the graduates remain unemployed six months after graduation.

Thus, to summarize, not only does higher education offer life benefits such as the experience of greater perspectives, increased confidence in one’s field of choice, and in-depth knowledge of how to deal with situations that may arise in your career but also increases one’s employability and assures a greater starting salary. The benefits of obtaining a higher education far outweigh its risks and make it a valuable asset in a person’s life and career.

• Malcolm Forbes. The Malcolm Forbes Quotations page.
• Vikki Pickering. The meaning of employability and its relationship with future earnings. The Value Of Higher Education. p4.
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IvyPanda. (2021, September 19). The Value of Higher Education. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-value-of-higher-education/

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Student-centric advice and objective recommendations

Higher education has never been more confusing or expensive. Our goal is to help you navigate the very big decisions related to higher ed with objective information and expert advice. Each piece of content on the site is original, based on extensive research, and reviewed by multiple editors, including a subject matter expert. This ensures that all of our content is up-to-date, useful, accurate, and thorough.

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How to Write the “Why This College” Essay (With an Example!)

Varonika Ware is a content writer at Scholarships360. Varonika earned her undergraduate degree in Mass Communications at Louisiana State University. During her time at LSU, she worked with the Center of Academic Success to create the weekly Success Sunday newsletter. Varonika also interned at the Louisiana Department of Insurance in the Public Affairs office with some of her graphics appearing in local news articles.

Learn about our editorial policies

Bill Jack has over a decade of experience in college admissions and financial aid. Since 2008, he has worked at Colby College, Wesleyan University, University of Maine at Farmington, and Bates College.

Maria Geiger is Director of Content at Scholarships360. She is a former online educational technology instructor and adjunct writing instructor. In addition to education reform, Maria’s interests include viewpoint diversity, blended/flipped learning, digital communication, and integrating media/web tools into the curriculum to better facilitate student engagement. Maria earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature from Monmouth University, an M. Ed. in Education from Monmouth University, and a Virtual Online Teaching Certificate (VOLT) from the University of Pennsylvania.

Applying to college is a big decision that brings a lot of excitement and stress. This is especially true when it comes to answering the “why this college” prompt asked by so many colleges. However daunting these prompts might seem, you got this. Keep reading to learn tips and tricks to write your “why this college” essay, and take a look at an example essay!

“Why this college?” essay prompts 

The “Why this college?” essay is probably one of the most common essays you’ll come across during your application process. This is partially because admissions committees want students that’re as interested and passionate about their institution. Some popular colleges that offer “why this college?” prompts include:

• Columbia University : “Why are you interested in attending Columbia University? We encourage you to consider the aspect(s) that you find unique and compelling about Columbia. (150 words or fewer)
• Duke University : “What is your sense of Duke as a university and a community, and why do you consider it a good match for you? If there is something in particular about our offerings that attracts you, feel free to share that as well. (max. 250 words)”
• University of Michigan : “Describe the unique qualities that attract you to the specific undergraduate College or School to which you are applying at the University of Michigan. How would that curriculum support your interests?” (Minimum: 100 words/Maximum: 550 words)

As you can see, all three of the prompts are a variation of the basic “why this college” question. Let’s take a look at a sample response essay written for Columbia University. 

“Why this college?” sample essay

Dear Columbia University, 

This is probably the hundredth essay you’ve read in the sea of applicants, and as you’re likely expecting, I could tell you that I’m different from them all. Though in some ways, I’m the same. Like them, I want to stand on the corner of Broadway and 116th St. and know I chose the perfect school to study literary arts with a focus on fiction writing. 

Even more so, I strive to be one of the Columbia Greats that inspired me to pick up a pen. Though, you shouldn’t want me because I might be the next Allen Ginsberg, but because I plan on being a writer that captures the virtue found in the rye of J.D. Salinger, the watchful gaze of Zora Neale Hurston, and the freshness of my own style. Amongst your walls and tutelage, these literary greats blossomed, as I hope to.

Applicant Name

Why this essay works:

• Starts with a compelling statement to interest the audience
• Answers the “why this college?” question by discussing notable alumni and the arts program
• Uses a unique approach to the prompt question that reflects interest in the major of choice
• Explains why the admissions committee should choose this applicant
• Stays within the word count limit

Also see: How to respond to this year’s Common App essay prompts

Mistakes to avoid when writing a “why this college” essay

Generalizing.

When writing any essay, generalizing usually isn’t the way to go. Readers want to get invested in the story or argument you’re presenting, and the admissions office is no different. Details are a key component of making your essay stand out. 

The admissions committee wants to get to know you and assess how you’ll fit into their institution. No two applicants are the same, and you should strive to prove that through your unique essay. 

Placating the admissions office

It can be easy to fall back on simply telling your college’s admissions committee what they want to hear. However, you shouldn’t just pull facts and figures from the website or quote the college’s brochure. Individualize your essay not only to capture the attention of your reader, but to display interest in your college of choice.

Anyone can put general information in their application, but it takes effort to explain why you want to attend a particular school, how admission would affect your life, and what the school has to gain from your attendance. Think of it as a persuasive essay where you have to back up your argument with details. 

Also see: An insider’s perspective into what goes on in college admissions offices

Tips for writing your essay

Find a connection.

Even before you start writing your essay, figure out the connection between you and your college of choice. 

Is there a particular professor you want to study under? Are you a legacy applicant? Is it the campus of your dreams? Are you excited for a particular program? 

Asking yourself questions like this can help pinpoint what’s motivating you to apply to a university and why they should admit you. Explaining your connection to your school of choice can show the admissions committee that you belong on their campus. 

It will strengthen your application and help you individualize your application. Create an interesting or anecdotal story out of your connection in order to set yourself apart.

Also see: How to write an essay about yourself

Outline and edit

College essays usually range from around 200 – 500 words, which can go by much quicker than you might think. This is why it’s ideal to outline your essay once you’ve decided what to write about. It can be easy to get distracted by the little details, but emphasize the main points that are essential to the story you’re trying to tell the admissions office. 

It’s also a good idea to thoroughly read and edit your essay multiple times. You’ll want to submit the complete and final version of your essay, not something that reads like a rough draft. 

Remember, your parents, advisors, teachers, and peers can be helpful resources during revision. Feedback is an important aspect of the editing process.

Additional resources

Congratulations on starting your applications to college and working so diligently on them! Fortunately, Scholarships360 has even more resources to offer that can help propel your college journey in the right direction. 

• Start choosing your major
• Find the supplemental essay guide for your college
• Learn what “demonstrated interest” means for your application

Frequently asked questions about writing a “why this college” essay

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What you need to know about higher education

UNESCO, as the only United Nations agency with a mandate in higher education, works with countries to ensure all students have equal opportunities to access and complete good quality higher education with internationally recognized qualifications. It places special focus on developing countries, notably Africa. 

Why does higher education matter?  

Higher education is a rich cultural and scientific asset which enables personal development and promotes economic, technological and social change. It promotes the exchange of knowledge, research and innovation and equips students with the skills needed to meet ever changing labour markets. For students in vulnerable circumstances, it is a passport to economic security and a stable future. 

What is the current situation? 

Higher education has changed dramatically over the past decades with increasing enrolment, student mobility, diversity of provision, research dynamics and technology. Some 254 million students are enrolled in universities around the world – a number that has more than doubled in the last 20 years and is set to expand. Yet despite the boom in demand, the overall enrolment ratio is 42% with large differences between countries and regions. More than 6.4 million students are pursuing their further education abroad. And among the world’s more than 82 million refugees, only 7% of eligible youth are enrolled in higher education, whereas comparative figures for primary and secondary education are 68% and 34%, respectively ( UNHCR) . The COVID-19 pandemic further disrupted the way higher education was provided.

What does UNESCO do to ensure access for everyone to higher education? 

UNESCO's work is aligned with Target 4.3 of SDG 4 which aims, by 2030, “to ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university”. To achieve this, UNESCO supports countries by providing knowledge, evidence-based information and technical assistance in the development of higher education systems and policies based on the equal distribution of opportunities for all students. 

UNESCO supports countries to enhance recognition, mobility and inter-university cooperation through the ratification and implementation of the Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education and regional recognition conventions . To tackle the low rate of refugee youth in higher education UNESCO has developed the UNESCO Qualifications Passport for Refugees and Vulnerable Migrants , a tool which makes it easier for those groups with qualifications to move between countries. The passport brings together information on educational and other qualifications, language, work history. UNESCO places a special focus on Africa with projects such as the Higher Technical Education in Africa for a technical and innovative workforce supported by China Funds-in-Trust.  

​​​​​​​How does UNESCO ensure the quality of higher education? 

The explosion in demand for higher education and increasing internationalization means UNESCO is expanding its work on quality assurance, helping Member States countries to establish their own agencies and mechanisms to enhance quality and develop policies particularly in developing countries and based on the Conventions. Such bodies are absent in many countries, making learners more vulnerable to exploitative providers.  

It also facilitates the sharing of good practices and innovative approaches to widen inclusion in higher education. As part of this work, it collaborates with the International Association of Universities to produce the World Higher Education Database which provides information on higher education systems, credentials and institutions worldwide. 

​​​​​​​How does UNESCO keep pace with digital change?  

The expansion of connectivity worldwide has boosted the growth of online and blended learning, and revealed the importance of digital services, such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Higher Education Management Information Systems in helping higher education institutions utilize data for better planning, financing and quality. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this transformation and increased the number of providers and the range of degree offerings from cross-border to offshore education.  The Organization provides technical support and policy advice on innovative approaches to widening access and inclusion including through the use of ICTs and by developing new types of learning opportunities both on-campus and online. 

How does UNESCO address the needs of a changing job market?

Labour markets are experiencing rapid changes, with increased digitization and greening of economies, but also the rising internationalization of higher education. UNESCO places a strong emphasis on developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, indispensable to sustainable development and innovation. It aims to strengthen skills development for youth and adults, particularly literacy, TVET, STEM and higher education to meet individual, labour market and societal demands.  

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Should Higher Education Be Free?

• Vijay Govindarajan
• Jatin Desai

Disruptive new models offer an alternative to expensive tuition.

In the United States, our higher education system is broken. Since 1980, we’ve seen a 400% increase in the cost of higher education, after adjustment for inflation — a higher cost escalation than any other industry, even health care. We have recently passed the trillion dollar mark in student loan debt in the United States.

• Vijay Govindarajan is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, an executive fellow at Harvard Business School, and faculty partner at the Silicon Valley incubator Mach 49. He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. His latest book is Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future . His Harvard Business Review articles “ Engineering Reverse Innovations ” and “ Stop the Innovation Wars ” won McKinsey Awards for best article published in HBR. His HBR articles “ How GE Is Disrupting Itself ” and “ The CEO’s Role in Business Model Reinvention ” are HBR all-time top-50 bestsellers. Follow him on LinkedIn . vgovindarajan
• JD Jatin Desai is co-founder and chief executive officer of The Desai Group and the author of  Innovation Engine: Driving Execution for Breakthrough Results .

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The Importance of Higher Education

Nayreth garcia.

• Career Planning , Non-Traditional Students

Content Writer At Gradehacker

• Updated on June, 2023

Higher education’s importance is huge since education is a lifelong pursuit that can significantly impact your present and future.

After all, investing in your level of education can change your life and provide better opportunities .

Here at Gradehacker, as the non-traditional student #1 resource, we’re happy to say that we have been an extra hand for many in their professional degree path and helped them to be aware of the importance of higher education.

Whether you seek economic stability through a well-paying job, personal growth, or better education status, higher education offers multiple positive effects that we look forward to sharing with you in this blog!

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Why Is Higher Education Important?

When mentioning higher education’s importance,  let’s first set clear that it is more than just an academic degree. 

You gain skills in:

• Critical thinking
• Communication
• Time management

The college experience teaches you how to adapt quickly to an ever-changing world by learning how to manage time and communicate effectively. 

Those with years spent in formal education become exposed to new ideas, learning the critical thinking skills and abilities they need to succeed and get job satisfaction.

College is the stepping stone to achieving a more diverse career. You learn how to create professional work and become more productive since, as a college student, you need to master time management within your schedule to meet deadlines.

You learn how to work in a team and communicate with others effectively. You also learn college-level writing skills to write better essays, articles, and other pieces while gaining new techniques to improve your basic skills, such as using APA or MLA format.

All educational institutions are also great places to improve your social skills and make connections with people around you.

By exchanging your beliefs with others, you can develop new ideas that might create a new project involving people with the same set of values.

The benefit of pursuing an academic degree is to become a great professional since your future depends on what you do with your life.

What's The Real Value of a Degree?

Before we start, let’s ensure you understand the value of a degree. This is something most college students take for granted but should if they want to achieve any educational attainment.

A college degree (like a four-year degree) is not a right. 

It is something that is given to you through higher education. You can’t earn a college degree by showing up to classes and not turning in the work, you have to take classes, do assignments, and complete them to see consistent effects. 

If you don’t put your part, then you won’t graduate. There are no shortcuts to getting a college degree.

College can be interpreted as a business, which means you have to put in the work one way or another.

If you work hard in college for your professional degree, you can do better on the job market after graduation, make more money, and make positive for a better quality of life than someone with a high school diploma. 

According to the National Center for Education Statistics , these are the average salaries of professionals with different degrees:

• Less than high school: $29,800
• High-school diploma: $36,600
• Associate degree: $44,100
• Bachelor’s degree: $59,600
• Master’s degree: $69,700

That is the true value of a college education degree.

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What Are The Benefits of Higher Education?

Education is often a major stepping stone to achieving any dream. Yes, it can help you find a career and create positive income effects by boosting it, but higher education can also teach you valuable life lessons and better insight into life.

Here are some of the most important advantages of going after a four-year degree:

• Learn more about yourself and your learning style
• Test your knowledge and find out what your strengths are
• Gain more knowledge on the specific fields that interest you

With a college education, you can become a more disciplined person as it impacts your behavior.

It’s beneficial for any future college graduate to earn more self-esteem and self-confidence or even improve their communication skills . During college, you’ll have to work in groups, participate in group discussions, and present projects in front of other students.

During those moments, confidence is key!

If you come from a low-income family and are the first to get a degree, you will not only feel successful and proud of your hard work, but you will also see it as a possibility to improve your loved ones’ life .

Pursuing postsecondary education can also be reflected in society.

If there’s an increase in individuals with a high level of education, it can often relate to the economic growth of a country. This will create the presence of people with defined specialized skills that can be helpful to different industries.

According to the OECD Organization , adults with a tertiary degree earn, on average, 54% more than adults with upper secondary education , creating positive economic effects and a more equitable society.  

They also mention that people with higher levels of education are more likely to find employment, remain employed, learn new skills on the job, and earn more over their working life relative to those with lower levels of education.

Benefits of a College Degree

If you come from a low-income family and you are the first one in the family to get a degree, you will not only feel successful and proud of your hard work, but you will also see it as a possibility to make your loved ones’ life better.

The benefits of pursuing higher education can also be reflected in society. If there’s an increase of individuals with a high level of education, it can often relate to the economic growth of a country. This will create the presence of people with defined specialized skills that can be helpful to different industries.

What Can You Do with a College Degree?

As we showed you above, there is a clear difference between a person’s income without higher education and college graduates. And, while shorter, the same happens within different college majors.

For example, according to Glassdoor, a graduate in History major can earn between $35,000 and $81,000 per year, depending on the position. That’s quite a gap!

Whether you want to prioritize pursuing your dream career or earning more money is entirely up to you. So, don’t focus on the job you want but instead choose a college major that will make you a better fit for that job you are looking for.

Still, you can pursue further knowledge in a particular area and increase your chances of earning more money than the average with a degree.

For example, if you finished your Bachelor of Science in Nursing but want to take a step into an administrative and managing position, you can pursue a Master of Science in Nursing and open a door with many job opportunities .

According to a report made by The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), those with higher education degrees are:

• Half as likely to be unemployed
• Make 84% higher on average
• Make $1.2 million more over their lifetime

This is compared to those who only have a high school degree, and we can see that there are clearly noticeable differences favoring those with a degree.

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How to Prepare for Your Future

If you have set your mind on becoming successful and achieving your dreams, then there are two things you need to do right now:

First, you need to spend as much time planning what career path you want to follow.

Knowing what field and major you’ll pursue can help you create a solid and well-organized plan for your upcoming college years. If you are not sure how to choose your major , here are a few tips to help you!

After you are clear on your choice, you can start selecting the college you want to attend and prepare the requirements . Here you can read our list of common requirements that colleges look for in students!

You can also find many different courses on the internet , which will help you develop your career and keep up with what’s happening.

But the most important thing is to keep in mind that college, or higher education, is important. It’s one of the most prominent pillars of modern society, as it makes you independent.

After all, your path to getting a proper job can become more challenging without it.

Don't Stop Pursuing Your Dreams of a Better Education

Higher education provides an avenue for future college graduates . These students can apply their knowledge in a real-world setting with professors and advisors.

The benefits of higher education are undeniable. The world of tomorrow will be vastly different from the one we know today, and it is becoming more and more imperative for everyone to get an education.

We hope this article will teach you why college is so important and how crucial it is to get a degree in something you truly like.

If you want to earn your degree faster or feel that your college experience is keeping you away from the things that are really important in your life, here at Gradehacker we can help you! From your entire college classes to your degree program , book a call with our team and see how we can walk this path with you!

And If you want to continue learning related topics, here are a few articles that may interest you:

7 Best Websites to Find Free College Textbooks in 2023

Best iPads For College Students

Degrees That Will Help You Get Remote Jobs

What You Need to Know Before Taking Classes Online

The 10 Best Colleges for Non-Traditional Students

Top 20 Online Degree Colleges

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Importance of Higher Education Essay for Students [500 Words]

January 4, 2021 by Sandeep

Essay on Importance of Higher Education: A person chooses higher education when he wishes to specialize in his study stream. A prosperous career, financial security and higher growth opportunities are some of the benefits of higher education. With higher education, a person becomes more employable with specialised skills and is likely to live a happier and stress-free life. Highly educated citizens tend to be more involved in community building activities and have a greater sense of discipline and accomplishment.

Essay on Importance of Higher Education

Below we have provided Importance of Higher Education Essay, suitable for class 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10.

Higher education provides a gateway to a number of opportunities in the future. It is like a door opening to miscellaneous pathways, and one can always raise his or her living standards by studying higher and higher in life. Higher education equips a man with the specialised skills required to earn higher efficiency levels at the workplace, gives an equal space in this competing world, improves skills and provides scope for better serving our community and working towards its development.

Purpose of Higher Education

The main goal of education is to provide a direction and purpose to one’s life. If you aim to go far in that chosen direction, you need to set the stage for achieving higher education for yourself. We can draw a simple analogy here. A person who knows to drive a motorcycle hits the road with ease, but only in his motorcycle.

Now if he is asked to drive a car that he doesn’t know to drive, he is sure to struggle on the road. Both vehicles ply on the road, but to drive a car it needs extra efforts by the same person, extra skills to manoeuvre the car, etc. So it’s like achieving the next level of learning. Similarly, let us now explore why higher education is important in one’s life:

1. Jumpstart Your Career

If you joined your organisation at the most basic level and you are ambitious to grow up the ladder, you need supportive skills. These extra skills are gained by putting in your time and energy in a course that gives you extra edge to soar higher in your career ladder.

2. Higher Skill Gain

To have confidence in emerging out from one’s familiar shell and taste unexplored waters, it needs lot of courage doubled with knowledge. We can get this only from higher education. All the skills and specializations derived from higher education help a person to explore unexplored territories and achieve higher excellence in life.

3. Intellectual Development

The more you study, the more you broaden your horizon and hence your perspective undergoes a serious transformation. A person who has completed higher education certainly has a better perspective and ideas to help in community and societal development and has the capability to build a citizen friendly nation. Ideas and innovations that are garnered from people who have sought higher education provide a global competing space for the nation as a whole.

4. Follow Your Passion

If we like to prepare a strawberry cake, we try to find out the recipe and try it at our kitchen. Probably, the next time we may try to add some more ingredients to make it more delicious. Another time, we may add a touch of experimentation to give it a better look. So, every time the cake gets a higher level of transformation than the previous one. In a similar way, a person pursues higher education out of passion too! If he loves to specialize in a subject, he would love to study more and gather more knowledge out of his previous degrees. That gives him a better edge than the rest pursuing similar interests.

Issues in Higher Education

Higher education is not all that easy as it seems. Right from financial constraints to lack of funds and scholarships at universities, problems are many. There are many universities and academic centers of excellence that support higher education facilities at their campuses. But, to provide the required infrastructure and research facilities for higher education, it needs an equal amount of investment in terms of time and money on the part of the college.

Hence, higher education costs are usually exorbitant and unreachable to the common masses. A scholarship facility or a provision to avail study loans will definitely help in this matter. Reservation for category and minority students is another issue in our country. The cream of the rank achieving lot gets absorbed by the premier institutes of the country. But the remaining large percentage runs helter skelter to find a good place for an opportunity in higher education.

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The Importance of Higher Education in Our Life

• Categories: High School

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Words: 1259 |

Published: Jan 21, 2020

Words: 1259 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Works Cited:

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• Denton, J. A. (2016). The use of television in American higher education. Routledge.
• Ellis, J. C., & Wightman, M. (2016). The black mirror reflection: Exploring cultural phenomena in a media studies classroom. In Teaching social media: The can't miss classroom (pp. 161-174). Lexington Books.
• Gerdes, L. C., & Segal, J. (Eds.). (2013). Social issues in television fiction (Vol. 17). Walter de Gruyter.
• Kreuzer, M. (2019). ‘The Office’ farewell: What we learn from Michael Scott. The Daily Campus. https://www.smudailycampus.com/opinion/the-office-farewell-what-we-learn-from-michael-scott

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Is free college a good idea? Increasingly, evidence says yes

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, douglas n. harris douglas n. harris nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy , professor and chair, department of economics - tulane university @douglasharris99.

May 10, 2021

• 10 min read

In just a few short years, the idea of free college has moved from a radical idea to mainstream Democratic thinking. President Biden made free college one of his core campaign planks , and one that the first lady has been promoting for years. In his recent address to Congress, the president also signaled that he is ready for legislative action on a scaled-back version of the idea as part of his American Families Plan .

Two weeks ago, the nonprofit College Promise (CP)—led by Martha Kanter, who served as President Obama’s undersecretary for education—also released a proposal that will influence the free college debate. (Full disclosure: I previously advised the Biden campaign and presently advise CP, but have received no compensation for these efforts.)

In today’s polarized environment, the free college idea stands out for its bipartisan support. A majority of self-identified Republicans has supported the notion of free college in some polls. In fact, one of the first such statewide programs was put in place by Bill Haslam, the former Republican governor of Tennessee. While this could go the way of Obamacare, which faced strong GOP congressional opposition despite the law’s origins with Republican Mitt Romney, free college seems different. Biden’s latest plan only applies to community colleges, which focus on career and vocational education of the sort Republicans support, as opposed to universities, which many Republicans view as hostile battlegrounds in a culture war.

But I am less interested in the politics than the evidence of effectiveness. I have studied college access for many years and run two randomized control trials of financial aid , which produced some of the first causal evidence on free college in Milwaukee. Two years ago, Brookings released the first installment of the Milwaukee work, which I carried out with a team of researchers. Since then, we have collected more data and learned more about how students responded over time. Below, I summarize our just-released study (co-authored with Jonathan Mills), compare our results to other financial aid programs, and then discuss implications for the Biden and CP proposals. Consequently, I conclude that the evidence increasingly favors free college and “open access aid” more generally.

What Did We Learn in Milwaukee?

I developed The Degree Project (TDP) in 2009 as a demonstration program in partnership between the nonprofit Ascendium (then known as the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation and Affiliates) and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). TDP offered all first-time 9 th graders in half of MPS high schools $12,000 for college as “last-dollar” aid. Students could use the funds for college if they graduated from high school on time with a GPA of 2.5 and a class attendance rate of 90%. Also, as is the norm with free college programs, students had to fill out the FAFSA and have at least one dollar of unmet need. The aid could be used to attend any of the 66 public, in-state, two- or four-year colleges in Wisconsin. Ascendium provided up to $31 million to fund the grant and, as the main program administrator, sent regular letters to remind students about the program and its requirements. The organization also worked with school counselors to support students becoming eligible for the funds and preparing for college.

TDP was announced to students in the fall of 2011. Using anonymized data, we then tracked students’ high school, college, and life outcomes for eight years, and we recently received data extending through when students were roughly 22 years old. As a rare randomized trial, we could estimate the effects by comparing the control and treatment group outcomes. Here is what we found:

• For students who met the performance requirements, the program increased graduation from two-year colleges by 3 percentage points . This might seem small, but the denominator here is comprised of low-income 9 th graders. Half of the control group did not even graduate from high school, let alone college. The effect amounts to a 25% increase in two-year degrees.
• The framing and design of the program as free two-year college changed student decisions in ways consistent with what free college advocates suggest. The $12,000 maximum award amount was selected because it was sufficient to cover tuition and fees for a two-year college degree. The fact that TDP made two-year college free, but only reduced the cost of four-year college, was clearly communicated to students. This appears to explain one of our main results: Student enrollments shifted from four-year to two-year colleges. This is noteworthy given that students could use the funds at either two- or four-year colleges. In fact, students likely would have been able to use more of the $12,000 if they had shifted to four-year colleges. The only plausible reason for shifting to two-year colleges is that they were really attracted to the idea of free college.
• The “early commitment” nature of the program had some modest positive effects on some high school outcomes . Students learned about TDP in their 9 th grade year, giving them time to change their high school behaviors and college plans. Although it did not improve high school academic achievement, we find that TDP increased college expectations and the steps students took to prepare for college. TDP recipients also reported working harder because of the program (even though this did not show up in the academic measures). This highlights the fact that free college might also help address not only college-going rates, but the long-term stagnancy in high school outcomes.
• The merit requirements undermined the program’s effectiveness . Though the 2.5 GPA and 90% attendance and other requirements were arguably modest, only 21% of eligible students ended up meeting them. So, they ended up excluding many students. We also tested the two main ways that the merit requirements could have been helpful: (a) merit requirements might provide incentives for students to work hard during high school and better prepare for college, and (b) merit requirements might target aid to students who respond to it most. We find no evidence of either benefit. While students did work harder (see point [3] above), this appears to be due to other elements of the program, not the merit requirements.

Overall, these results suggest that aid is most effective when it is “open access”—that is, aid with early commitment and free college framing, but no merit requirements.

What about the evidence beyond Milwaukee?

Our study also reviews other research on financial aid, including federal aid, state merit aid programs, and the newer “promise scholarship” programs that mimic free college. Our study is not alone in finding that financial aid improves student outcomes. In fact, the vast majority of the most rigorous studies find positive effects on college attendance and college graduation. Given the strong average benefits of college, we can expect follow-up studies to show effects on employment earnings, voting, and other outcomes.

What about the costs? Open access aid is more expensive to be sure. More students receive aid and the aid levels per students are larger than traditional financial aid. Is it worth it? Our analysis suggests it is. We carried out new cost-benefit analyses of multiple programs, including TDP, but also other actively studied programs in: Kalamazoo, Michigan; Knox County, Tennessee; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and one statewide program in Nebraska. We also used estimates of the average effects of aid taken from prior literature reviews. All of these programs pass a cost-benefit test. That is, the effects on college outcomes, and the effects of college outcomes on future earnings, is much larger than the cost to the government and society as a whole. Moreover, it appears that benefits-per-dollar-of-cost are at least as high with open access aid as with more restricted programs. This means that open access aid provides greater total benefits to the community as a whole.

Back to the Free College Proposals

What do these results mean for President Biden’s and CP’s proposals? The table below provides a side-by-side comparison. The main difference is the level of detail. This reflects that the CP plan was designed to align with, and flesh out, the Biden campaign proposal. Perhaps the only substantive difference is that the CP proposal (and the Milwaukee program) includes private colleges. The Biden campaign documents exclude private colleges, though the American Families Plan just says “free community college,” signaling alignment with the CP plan. Both proposals are clearly in the category of open access aid.

There are numerous similarities between these provisions and the Milwaukee program that my team and I studied. All three programs make two-year college free (or nearly so) for all students without income requirements and through early commitment of aid. All three require the FAFSA and high school graduation. Importantly, unlike both the Biden and CP proposals, the Milwaukee program had merit requirements, which undermined its success. This is partly why our evidence is so relevant to the current debate.

Some might wonder why the president has scaled back the proposal to just free community college. This reflects that the idea of free college—even the “scaled back” version—is such a marked departure from past policy, especially at the federal level. Free community college alone would still be arguably the largest shift in federal higher education policy in the past half-century.

Caveats and Concluding Thoughts

We cannot make policy from evidence alone, but it can and should play a key role. Sometimes, policy ideas have such limited evidence of effectiveness that it is difficult to make any plausible case for a large-scale, national program. In other cases, there is enough promise for pilot studies and competitive grants to establish efficacy. With free college, we seem to be well beyond that point. In addition to decades of results on general financial aid programs, we have a growing number of studies on state and local programs that all show positive evidence—the “laboratory of democracy” at work. The idea of a large, federal free-college program therefore has more and more credibility.

A decade ago, it was not at all obvious that this is what the evidence would show. There was really no evidence on free college programs when we started this project back in 2009. Also, there were good reasons to expect that such a large increase in aid would suffer from “diminishing returns”—the idea that the next dollar is less effective than the previous one. This could have made free college more costly than the benefits could justify. Now, we know better.

I do still worry a bit about other factors and challenges. For example, the above analyses can only capture the immediate effects of financial aid, yet a federal free college program is such a marked departure in policy that it could alter political and market forces operating on higher education in unpredictable ways, perhaps even lowering college spending and quality. Also, if the proposal remains focused on community colleges, then this will shift students out of four-year colleges and into colleges that currently have very low completion rates. There are also other ways to increase college affordability and access that do not require free college (e.g., increased Pell Grants and income-based loan repayment), some of which target funds more narrowly to the most disadvantaged students. And there are many details to be worked out as the president’s allies in Congress try to generate sufficient support without (a) sacrificing core principles, or (b) creating new problems that can arise when grafting new federal programs on to widely varying state contexts.

Still, it is not often that an idea comes around that addresses a widely acknowledged problem and has both research support and a fair degree of bipartisan political support. The stars seem aligned to make some form of national free college a reality. The more evidence we see, the more that would seem to be a step forward.

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Is College Worth It?

2. public views on the value of a college degree, table of contents.

• Labor force trends and economic outcomes for young adults
• Economic outcomes for young men
• Economic outcomes for young women
• Wealth trends for households headed by a young adult
• The importance of a four-year college degree
• Getting a high-paying job without a college degree
• Do Americans think their education prepared them for the workplace?
• Is college worth the cost?
• Acknowledgments
• The American Trends Panel survey methodology
• Current Population Survey methodology
• Survey of Consumer Finances methodology

We asked Americans what they think about the value of a four-year college degree from a few different angles:

• Is a degree important in order for someone to get a well-paying job in today’s economy?
• Has the value of a degree changed in recent decades?
• Can someone without a degree get a well-paying job?
• How useful do people think their own education was in preparing them for a well-paying job?
• Is the cost of college worth it today?

Four-in-ten Americans say it is not too or not at all important to have a four-year college degree in order to get a well-paying job in today’s economy.

Only 25% say it’s extremely or very important to have a college degree, and 35% say it’s somewhat important.

We also asked the public about the importance of a college degree now versus 20 years ago.

About half of Americans (49%) say it’s less important today than it was in the past for someone to have a four-year degree in order to get a well-paying job. About a third (32%) say having a degree is more important now, and 17% say its importance hasn’t really changed.

Differences by party

Half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents – compared with 30% of Democrats and Democratic leaners – say it’s not too or not at all important to have a four-year college degree to get a well-paying job.

And a majority of Republicans (57%) say having a degree is less important today than it was 20 years ago; 43% of Democrats say the same.

These partisan gaps hold even after controlling for differences in the educational attainment of Republicans and Democrats.

Differences by education

College graduates are more likely than those with less education to say that having a college degree is extremely or very important (30% vs. 22%).

But views on whether having a college degree is more or less important today than it was 20 years ago don’t differ significantly by education. Roughly half of four-year college graduates (51%) and those with less education (48%) say it’s less important today for someone to have a college degree than it was in the past.

Adults with a postgraduate degree, however, have somewhat different views than those with a bachelor’s degree on both of these measures. Some 35% of postgraduates say it’s extremely or very important to have a four-year college degree in order to get a well-paying job, compared with 27% of those whose highest attainment is a bachelor’s degree.

And 39% of postgraduates – compared with 30% of those with a bachelor’s degree – say it’s more important to have a college degree today than it was 20 years ago.

Differences by age

Young adults stand out in their views on the importance of a college degree today versus in the past.

Among those ages 18 to 29, 44% say having a degree is more important today in order to get a well-paying job than it was 20 years ago. By comparison, 29% of those 30 to 49 and 30% of those 50 and older say the same.

Americans also have mixed views when it comes to whether someone without a four-year college degree could get a well-paying job in today’s economy.

Only about a third (34%) say it’s extremely or very likely that someone withouta four-year degree could get this kind of job.

Nearly half say it’s somewhat likely that someone without a college degree could get a well-paying job, and 20% say it’s not too or not at all likely.

These views differ by:

• Partisanship: 42% of Republicans and 26% of Democrats say it’s extremely or very likely someone without a four-year degree could get a well-paying job. Among Democrats, 25% say it’s not too or not at all likely; just 15% of Republicans say the same.
• Education: 28% of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree say it’s extremely or very likely that someone without a college degree could get a well-paying job today. This compares with 37% of those with some college and 36% of those with a high school diploma or less education.

When thinking about how useful their own education was in giving them the skills and knowledge needed to get a well-paying job, a majority of those with a four-year college degree or more education (58%) say it was extremely or very useful. (This finding excludes the 9% of respondents who said this question did not apply to them.)

Adults with a postgraduate degree are especially likely to say their education was extremely or very useful: 72% say this, compared with 47% of those whose highest attainment is a bachelor’s.

By comparison, adults with less education have more mixed views. Among those who have not completed a bachelor’s degree, 38% say their education was not too or not at all useful in giving them the skills and knowledge needed to get a well-paying job; 35% say it was somewhat useful, and 26% say it was extremely or very useful.

These views don’t differ as substantially by age or by party.

When asked about the cost of college these days, many Americans question whether it’s worth it if a student has to take on debt. Nearly half of adults (47%) say a four-year college degree is worth the cost, but only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans in order to attend.

Only 22% say college is worth the cost even if someone has to take out loans. And 29% say college isn’t worth the cost.

Meanwhile, data from the Federal Reserve shows that more than four-in-ten adults who attended college say they took out student loans for their education .

Views on the value of college differ by partisanship, education and age. But notably, in all groups except for Republicans, pluralities say the cost of college is worth it only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans.

A narrow majority of Democrats (54%) say the cost of getting a four-year college degree is worth it, but only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans. A smaller share of Republicans (41%) say the same.

About one-in-four Democrats (26%), compared with 19% of Republicans, say the cost is worth it even with loans.

Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to say college is not worth the cost (38% vs. 19%).

Americans with at least a four-year college degree are much more likely than those with less education to say that college is worth the cost even if someone has to take out loans (32% vs. 17%).

Those with a postgraduate degree are among the most likely to express this view: 37% say college is worth the cost even after taking out loans. This compares with 29% among those with a bachelor’s but no postgraduate degree.

Even so, across all education levels, more say a four-year degree is worth the cost only if someone doesn’t take on debt than say it’s worth the cost with debt.

Those with some college or less education are about twice as likely as those with at least a bachelor’s degree to say the cost of getting a degree isn’t worth it at all (35% vs. 18%).

Young adults are more likely than their older counterparts to say the cost of a degree is worth it only if someone doesn’t take out loans: 55% of those ages 18 to 29 say this, compared with 48% of those 30 to 49 and 44% of those 50 and older.

And 18- to 29-year-olds are less likely to say the cost isn’t worth it at all (22% vs. roughly three-in-ten among older age groups).

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Half of Latinas Say Hispanic Women’s Situation Has Improved in the Past Decade and Expect More Gains

From businesses and banks to colleges and churches: americans’ views of u.s. institutions, fewer young men are in college, especially at 4-year schools, key facts about u.s. latinos with graduate degrees, private, selective colleges are most likely to use race, ethnicity as a factor in admissions decisions, most popular, report materials.

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Guest Essay

Higher Education Needs More Socrates and Plato

By Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Harun Küçük

Dr. Emanuel and Dr. Küçük are on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Emanuel is a professor and the vice provost for global initiatives and Dr. Küçük is an associate professor of the history and sociology of science.

The right attacks colleges and universities as leftist and woke. Progressives castigate them as perpetuating patriarchy and white privilege. The burdens of these culture war assaults are compounded by parents worried that the exorbitant costs of higher education aren’t worth it.

No wonder Americans’ faith in universities is at a low. Only 36 percent of Americans have confidence in higher education, according to a survey by Gallup last year, a significant drop from eight years ago. And this was before colleges and universities across the country were swept up in a wave of protests and counter-protests over the war in Gaza.

But the problems facing American higher education are not just the protests and culture war attacks on diversity, course content, speech and speakers. The problem is that higher education is fundamentally misunderstood. In response, colleges and universities must reassert the liberal arts ideals that have made them great but that have been slipping away.

By liberal arts, we mean a broad-based education that aspires to send out into society an educated citizenry prepared to make its way responsibly in an ever-more complex and divided world. We worry that at many schools, students can fulfill all or most of their general education requirements and take any number of electives without having had a single meaningful discussion that is relevant to one’s political life as a citizen.

Over the past century, what made American higher education the best in the world is not its superiority in career training, but educating students for democratic citizenship, cultivating critical thinking and contributing to the personal growth of its students through self-creation. To revive American higher education, we need to reinvigorate these roots.

In Europe and many countries elsewhere, colleges and universities have undergraduates specialize from Day 1, focusing on developing area-specific skills and knowledge. College students are trained to become doctors, lawyers or experts in international relations, English literature or computer science.

In the United States, European-style specialization for medical, legal, business or public policy careers is the purpose of post-collegiate professional schools. Traditionally, the American college has been about imparting a liberal arts education, emphasizing reasoning and problem solving. Those enduring skills are the critical ingredients for flourishing companies and countries.

Historically, students arriving on American college campuses spent a majority of their first two years taking classes outside their projected majors. This exposed them to a common curriculum that had them engage with thoughtful writings of the past to develop the skills and capacity to form sound, independent judgments.

Over the past half century, American colleges and universities have moved away from this ideal , becoming less confident in their ability to educate students for democratic citizenship. This has led to a decline in their commitment to the liberal arts, a trend underscored in the results last year of a survey of chief academic officers at American colleges and universities by Inside Higher Ed. Nearly two-thirds agreed that liberal arts education was in decline, and well over half felt that politicians, college presidents and university boards were increasingly unsympathetic to the liberal arts.

Today, there is almost no emphasis on shared courses among majors that explore and debate big questions about the meaning of equality, justice, patriotism, personal obligations, civic responsibility and the purpose of a human life. Majors that once required only eight or 10 courses now require 14 or more, and students are increasingly double majoring — all of which crowds out a liberal arts education. Ambitious students eager to land a prestigious consulting, finance or tech job will find it too easy to brush aside courses in the arts, humanities and social and natural sciences — the core of a liberal education.

The devaluing of the first two years of a shared liberal arts education has shortchanged our students and our nation. Educating young adults to be citizens is why the first two years of college still matter.

To that end, the so-called Great Books have long been the preferred way to foster citizenship. This approach is not, contrary to critics on the left and right, about sanctifying specific texts for veneration or a mechanism for heritage transmission.

Books by Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman as well as Wollstonecraft, Austen, Woolf, Baldwin, Hurston and Orwell are worthy of introductory collegiate courses for students of all majors. These writers address the fundamental questions of human life. They explore the ideas of self-determination, friendship, virtue, equality, democracy and religious toleration and race that we have all been shaped by.

As students address those big questions, the Great Books authors provide a road map as they challenge and criticize one another and the conventional wisdom of the past. The Socrates of Plato’s dialogues is the exemplar — asking about beliefs and then subjecting them to respectful but critical analysis and skepticism.

These books are best studied in small seminar discussions, which model and inculcate in students democratic behavior. This discourse is an antidote to the grandstanding in today’s media and social media.

The teacher is less an expert in specific writers and more a role model for intellectual curiosity, asking probing questions, offering critical analyses and seeking deeper understanding. In an idealized Socratic fashion, these discussions require listening at length and speaking briefly and, most important, being willing to go where the argument leads.

Parents who are paying for college might question the value of spending $80,000 a year so that their son or daughter can read Plato, Hobbes and Thoreau instead of studying molecular biology or machine learning. But discussing life’s big value questions in seminars gives students personal engagement with professors that can never be reproduced in large lecture halls. Discussions among students on their deepest thoughts cultivates curiosity and empathy, and forges bonds of friendship important for citizenship and fulfilling lives.

Although we like to set ourselves apart from the past by appeals to modernity, the fundamental questions that we find ourselves asking are not always modern, and the latest answer is not always right. But how would you know how to think beyond the readily presented check boxes if you haven’t done the work of laying things out and putting them back together for yourself?

War was no less a concern for Thucydides, Tacitus and Thoreau than it is today. Discussing Great Books allows students to gain distance from the daily noise and allows their reason to roam free among principles and foundations rather than becoming absorbed in contemporary events. Our biggest problems are often best addressed not by leaning in but by stepping away to reflect on enduring perspectives.

Liberal arts education is not value neutral. That is why it is indispensable today. Freedom of thought, critical reasoning, empathy for others and respectful disagreement are paramount for a flourishing democratic society. Without them, we get the unreasoned condemnations so pervasive in today’s malignant public discourse. With them, we have a hope of furthering the shared governance that is vital to America’s pluralistic society.

Ezekiel Emanuel and Harun Küçük are on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Emanuel is a professor and the vice provost for global initiatives and Dr. Küçük is an associate professor of the history and sociology of science.

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Higher Education Isn’t the Enemy

Those who threaten academic freedom, from outside or inside campus, are threatening higher education itself—to America’s peril.

I ’ve spent more than five decades making difficult decisions in finance, government, business, and politics. Looking back, what most prepared me for the life I’ve led was the open exchange of ideas that I experienced in college and law school, supported by a society-wide understanding that universities and their faculty should be allowed to pursue areas of study as they see fit, without undue political or financial pressure. More broadly, throughout my career, I have seen firsthand the way America’s higher-education system strengthens our nation.

I cannot recall a time when the country’s colleges and universities, and the wide range of benefits they bring, have faced such numerous or serious threats. Protests over Gaza, Israel, Hamas, and anti-Semitism—and the attempt by certain elected officials and donors to capitalize on these protests and push a broader anti-higher-education agenda—have been the stuff of daily headlines for months. But the challenges facing colleges and universities have been building for years, revealed in conflicts over everything from climate change and curriculum to ideological diversity and academic governance.

But there is a threat that is being ignored, one that goes beyond any single issue or political controversy. Transfixed by images of colleges and universities in turmoil, we risk overlooking the foundational role that higher education plays in American life. With its underlying principles of free expression and academic freedom, the university system is one of the nation’s great strengths. It is not to be taken for granted. Undermining higher education would harm all Americans, weakening our country and making us less able to confront the many challenges we face.

T he most recent upheavals on American campuses—and the threat posed to the underlying principles of higher education—have been well documented.

In some cases, individuals have been silenced or suppressed, not because they were threatening anyone’s physical safety or disrupting the functioning of the university environment, but rather, it seems, because of their opinions. The University of Southern California, for example, recently canceled its valedictorian’s speech at graduation. Although administrators cited safety concerns, many on campus, including the student herself, said they believe that the true cause lay in the speaker’s pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel views . One does not have to agree with the sentiments being expressed by a speaker in order to be troubled by the idea that they would be suppressed because of their content.

Conor Friedersdorf: Columbia University’s impossible position

In other cases, it is the demonstrators themselves who have sought to force their views on others—by breaking university policies regarding shared spaces, occupying buildings, and reportedly imposing ideological litmus tests on students seeking to enter public areas of campus. Some activists have advocated violence against those with whom they disagree. Even before the unrest of recent weeks, I had heard for many years from students and professors that they felt a chilling effect on campuses that rendered true discussion—including exchanges of ideas that might make others uncomfortable—very difficult.

Even as free speech faces serious threats from inside the campus, academic freedom is under assault from outside. To an unprecedented degree, donors have involved themselves in pressure campaigns, explicitly linking financial support to views expressed on campus and the scholarship undertaken by students and faculty. At the University of Pennsylvania, one such effort pressed donors to reduce their annual contribution to $1 to protest the university’s decision to host a Palestinian literary conference. At Yale, Beverly Gage, the head of the prestigious Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, felt compelled to resign after the program came under increasing pressure from its donors. Among other things, the donors objected to an op-ed by an instructor in the program headlined “How to Protect America From the Next Donald Trump.”

It’s not just donors. Elected officials and candidates for office are also attacking academic freedom. On a Zoom call whose content was subsequently leaked, a Republican member of Congress, Jim Banks of Indiana, characterized recent hearings with the presidents of Harvard, MIT, Penn, and Columbia—along with upcoming ones with the presidents of Rutgers, UCLA, and Northwestern—as part of a strategy to “defund these universities.” In a recent campaign video, former President Trump asserted that colleges are “turning our students into Communists and terrorists and sympathizers,” and promised to retaliate by taxing, fining, and suing private universities if he wins a second term. Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, a close ally of Trump’s, has introduced a bill that would punish schools that don’t crack down on demonstrators. The bill would tax the endowment of such schools heavily and curb their access to federal funds.

The methods of these donors and politicians—politically motivated subpoenas and hearings, social-media pressure campaigns, campaign-trail threats—may not violate the First Amendment. They do, however, seek to produce a chilling effect on free speech. The goal of these efforts is to force universities to bow to outside pressure and curtail the range of ideas they allow—not because scholars at universities believe those ideas lack merit, but because the ideas are at odds with the political views of those bringing the pressure.

A ll of this needs to be seen against a foreboding backdrop. At a time when trust in many American institutions is at an all-time low, skepticism about higher education is on the rise. Earlier this year, a noteworthy essay by Douglas Belkin in The Wall Street Journal explored “Why Americans Have Lost Faith in the Value of College.” The New York Times wondered last fall whether college might be a “risky bet.” According to Gallup, confidence in higher education has fallen dramatically—from 57 percent in 2015 to 36 percent in 2023. The attacks on free expression and academic freedom on campus are both causes and symptoms of this declining confidence.

It is ironic that, at a moment when higher education faces unprecedented assaults, more Americans than ever have a college diploma. When I graduated from college, in 1960, only 8 percent of Americans held a four-year degree. Today, that number has increased almost fivefold, to 38 percent. Even so, I suspect that many Americans don’t realize just how exceptional the country’s university system actually is. Although the United States can claim less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it is home to 65 percent of the world’s 20 highest-ranked universities (and 28 percent of the world’s top-200 universities). Americans can get a quality education at thousands of academic institutions throughout the country.

Despite the skepticism in some quarters about whether a college degree is really worth it, the financial benefits of obtaining a degree remain clear. At 25, college graduates may earn only about 27 percent more than high-school-diploma holders. However, the college wage premium doubles over the course of their lifetime, jumping to 60 percent by the time they reach age 55. Looking solely at an individual’s financial prospects, the case for attending college remains strong.

David Deming: The college backlash is going too far

But the societal benefits we gain from higher education are far greater—and that’s the larger point. Colleges and universities don’t receive tax exemptions and public funds because of the help they give to specific individuals. We invest in higher education because there’s a broad public purpose.

Our colleges and universities are seen, rightly, as centers of learning, but they are also engines of economic growth. Higher graduation rates among our young people lead to a better-educated workforce for businesses and a larger tax base for the country as a whole. Institutions of higher education spur early-stage research of all kinds, create environments for commercializing that research, provide a base for start-up and technology hubs, and serve as a mentoring incubator for new generations of entrepreneurs and business leaders. In many communities, especially smaller towns and rural areas, campuses also create jobs that would be difficult to replace.

The importance of colleges and universities to the American economy will grow in the coming decades. As the list of industries that can be automated with AI becomes longer, the liberal-arts values and critical-thinking skills taught by colleges and universities will become only more valuable. Machine learning can aid in decision making. It cannot fully replace thoughtfulness and judgment.

Colleges and universities also help the United States maintain a geopolitical edge. We continue to attract the best and brightest from around the world to study here. Although many of these students stay and strengthen the country, many more return home, bringing with them a lifelong positive association with the United States. When I served as Treasury secretary, I found it extremely advantageous that so many of my foreign counterparts had spent their formative years in the U.S. That’s just as true today. In many instances, even the leadership class in unfriendly countries aspires to send its children to study here. In a multipolar world, this kind of soft-power advantage matters more than ever.

At home, higher education helps create the kind of citizenry that is central to a democracy’s ability to function and perhaps even to survive. This impact may be hard to quantify, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

It is not just lawmakers and executives who must make difficult decisions in the face of uncertainty. All of us—from those running civil-society groups that seek to influence policy to the voters who put elected leaders in office in the first place—are called upon to make hard choices as we live our civic lives. All of us are aware that the country is not in its best condition—this is hardly news. Imagine what that condition might be if we set out to undermine the very institutions that nurture rigorous and disciplined thinking and the free exchange of ideas.

O f course , there is much about higher education that needs fixing. Precisely because colleges and universities are so valuable to society, they should do more to engage with it. Bringing down costs can help ensure that talented, qualified young people are not denied higher education for financial reasons. Being clear about the principles and policies regarding the open expression of views—even as we recognize that applying them may require judgment calls, and that it is crucial to protect student safety and maintain an environment where learning and research can be conducted—would help blunt the criticism, not always made in good faith, that universities have an ideological agenda. Communicating more effectively with the public would help more Americans understand what is truly at stake.

But the fact that universities can do more does not change a basic fact: It is harmful to society to put constraints on open discussion or to attack universities for purposes of short-term political gain. Perhaps some of those trying to discourage the open exchange of ideas at universities believe that we can maintain their quality while attacking the culture of academic independence. I disagree. Unfettered discussion and freedom of thought and expression are the foundation upon which the greatness of our higher-education system is built. You cannot undermine the former without damaging the latter. To take one recent example: After Governor Ron DeSantis reshaped Florida’s New College along ideological lines, one-third of the faculty left within a year. This included scholars not only in fields such as gender studies, which many conservatives view with distaste, but in areas such as neuroscience as well.

We can have the world’s greatest higher-education system, with all of the benefits it brings to our country, or we can have colleges and universities in which the open exchange of views is undermined by pressure campaigns from many directions. We can’t have both.