Two students struggling. Two conversations. I’m struggling to help each of them motivate themselves, to see the motivating “why” of getting an education, to understand the relevant meaning and purpose of an education to their lives. I ask them, “Why are you here?” One tells me that the only reason he is at the University is, “To make money. I was told by everyone it’s the only way to get a high paying job.” The other looks at me incredulously and says, “I want to play on a championship team and get picked in the draft for a fat contract.”

       Those two replies took me back fifteen years to when I wrote a Random Thought I called “What Is It We Are Paid To Do?” Today, I’m still asking what is so high about our institutions of higher learning? Now, I don’t want to get into $1,500,000 to $6,000,000 contract buyouts for collegiate football coaches, or how institutions of higher learning have become educational Jabez Stones by selling their souls for incomes from both lucrative television contracts as well as from outside foundation, corporate, and government research grant money, or how academics and administrators fight over money generating patents for technologies and inventions created under institutional auspices. No, I just want to say that the way you hear most people talk, education is fused to the dollar sign. Parents, politicians, recruiters, professors, administrators, and students alike are making institutions of higher education more and more into white collar vocational job training centers, professional farm clubs, or, in the palatable parlance of jargon, “career centers.” Sure, in catering to that word “higher” we call such jobs “professions” or “careers,” but a job by any other name is still a job. It’s a wonder that over the entranceways of our campuses there aren’t eye-catching neon signs flashing in vivid colors that would be the envy of any Las Vegas casino proclaiming:

                                            JOBS….JOBS….JOBS….

                                      DEGREE….SALARY….SUCCESS

                                           JOBS….JOBS….JOBS….

                                      DEGREE….SALARY….STATUS.

      Now, there’s nothing wrong with that–as far as it goes. But, the meaning of getting a higher education in today’s world doesn’t go far or high enough. Higher education must have a higher meaning than merely getting a fatter paycheck. Sure, it is important that we teach and the student learn the subject material; sure, it’s important we teach and the student learn what we call certain critical thinking skills. But, for what purpose? Just to get a grade, satisfy a requirement of a major, receive a diploma, and make a living? We live in a three dimensional world, but our institutions of higher education too often live in a two dimensional one of developing intelligence and getting a job. Where’s the third dimension, the often ignored “human and social dimension?”

       I say that being intelligent and skilled is not enough. I asked, “Where are our educational Daniel Websters to do battle with our collegiate Mr. Scratches?” Without helping a student develop emotional skills and people skills, higher education doesn’t fulfill its entire mission, or what is professed to be its entire mission as written in the myriad of poetic institutional mission statements. What makes higher education “higher” is more than being a third state of job training or a third level of vocational schooling. A baccalaureate education’s focus is supposed to be broader than that; it supposedly has a character focus on learning how to live rather than just the technical consideration of how to make a living, on developing emotional and social skills as well as vocational and intellectual skills, on developing communication and cooperative skills, on helping each student open herself and himself to herself, himself, and to others. Let me paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt: to educate a person in the mind but not the morals, is to train a menace to society. Ain’t that the truth. I’ll put it my way: the heart must control what the mind creates. We see all around us the grim result of character flabbiness: staggering greed, unprincipled selfishness, and gross irresponsibility that has brought us to the economic carnage around us. Many of us academics are part of the problem in that so many of us too often are concerned only with graduating more informed and more intellectually skilled people, but not necessarily better persons. Too many of us scholars live and work inside a large, opaque academic cocoon, strengthening our old habits and telling each other things we already agree with. The result is that too often we have given diplomas, honors, and recognition to highly intelligent and skilled people who have proven to be moral drop-outs.

       Now, we can be part of the long range solution if we are purposefully and consciously concerned with helping each student learn how to live the good life as well as how to earn a good living; if we help a student tone up her or his value system with an ethical fitness program of self-discipline, self-confidence, self-worth, integrity, self-respect, respect for others, honesty, commitment, perseverance, responsibility, pursuit of excellence, emotional courage, creativity, imagination, humility, kindness, trustworthiness, fairness, authenticity, caring, compassion for others and citizenship.

       So, why do we exist? What is the purpose of higher education? Think I live in opaque, dreamy clouds? Well, stop smirking. Listen to Warren Buffet. He certainly has his feet on the ground. He told us: “In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. But if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.” There are the three dimensions of higher education. Our mission must be to educate both the mind and heart, to develop both skills and ethics, to cultivate good professionals who are good people. Our purpose must be to help each student grow in her or his intellect and character, to help each of them to learn how both to do things right and to do the right things, to help each learn what is necessary for both a productive livelihood and a productive life.

Louis