Questioning the Worth of a University Degree
Recently, the value of obtaining a university degree has come under scrutiny.
Many parents might be surprised by what their financial contributions are actually covering.
Take a private university in Manhattan, for example. Tuition there is set at $60,240 per year, and that price tag doesn’t even include housing. Students at the university’s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts can enroll in a course titled “How to Steal.”
This class, offered through the sociology department, is designed to explore the “politics, ethics, and aesthetics of theft.”
However, it’s not about “minor crimes.” The course description states it aims to investigate global theft where accumulation is deemed sacred. This involves field trips to places like museums, banks, and even grocery stores—where, honestly, the idea of shoplifting for under $1,000 seems pretty commonplace. Locals tend to look past it, some even noting that they “see people leaving what they want.”
The emphasis of this course appears to be on “radical ethics,” posing profound questions such as, “Is it possible to steal something that has already been stolen?”
It’s quite a thought, isn’t it? And let’s not overlook that this course, which grants four credits, will set students (or their parents) back around $10,040.
This situation highlights the strange nature of higher education. For instance, Columbia University offers a course focused on HBO’s “Game of Thrones” that teaches about empires, integrating it into the school’s core curriculum.
At Princeton, a unique class called “Blackness of Games: Video Games and Anthropology of Race” explores the intersection of race and video games. While it may seem disconnected from real-world applications, I suppose it might benefit those who plan on teaching such topics in academia.
Yale even has a course titled “Bad Bunny: Musical Aesthetics and Politics,” which fulfills its humanities and arts requirements. Honestly, one has to wonder what happened to traditional literature like “The Odyssey” during this evolution.
There are undoubtedly classes that lean heavily into progressive ideology, such as one at Brown University focusing on “prison abolition.” And yes, students are encouraged to produce TikToks on such policies.
Meanwhile, NYU provides an array of courses, including topics like “Indigenous and Latino speculative films and fiction” and “Disability and Sexuality in American Culture.”
For reference, Columbia’s tuition bill hits around $96,260 a year, while NYU’s is slightly higher at $96,988. Brown is even steeper at $97,284.
Just think about that: nearly $400,000 in debt for a degree that may include courses like “Taylor Swift and Her World” offered at Harvard last year. With classes like these counting toward degrees at renowned institutions, it’s no surprise that people are beginning to doubt the true value of higher education.
A Gallup poll indicates that around 23% of Americans feel that higher education isn’t worth it, with another 33% viewing only part of it as valuable. Alarmingly, over half of recent graduates believe their degrees were a financial misstep.
Given this context, it’s understandable if universities seem to have lost sight of their purpose. They should be fostering responsible citizenship, critical thinking, and preparing students for successful careers.
In an analysis of over a million syllabi from American universities between 2008 and 2020, it was noted that Karl Marx has become more commonly assigned than William Shakespeare or Plato. Works by French postmodernists like Michel Foucault now overshadow Enlightenment figures like Immanuel Kant and John Locke. Even the writings of contemporary authors like Toni Morrison appear more frequently than those of historical political thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Niccolò Machiavelli.
There’s nothing wrong with including contemporary writers, of course, but completely sidelining classic texts is concerning. Young people need to engage with the foundational ideas that shaped Western civilization.
However, much of what universities prioritize now feels increasingly detached from both private and public spheres, often lacking relevance to real-world scenarios.
If universities are perplexed as to why their diplomas are doubted, perhaps they should consider how their steep prices and curriculum choices contribute to such skepticism. How is a prospective employer supposed to gauge the value of your education if it includes everything from video games to the lyrics of pop music?
