Yearly Archives: 2005

Why is College (4 years, $160k) the Default?

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A great post at the Creating Passionate Users blog titled “Does college matter?” She basically asks the same question I’ve been asking for a few months now: given the state of undergraduate education (she cites the new book Declining by Degrees: Higher Ed at Risk) and the fact beer is the overriding memory of college by most, why is it considered the default that after high school students charge off to a four year college? By the way, at a private college like the ones my brothers go to the tuition is $40k/year (everything included). Think about how one could spend $160k over four years to become a life long learner.

The conventional wisdom says that the specifics of what you learn are much less important than the fact that you’re learning the fundamentals, and you’re learning to learn–things you’ll need to maintain your skills and knowledge in a quickly changing world.

The problem is, you virtually never hear a student say that. It’s always the parents or someone speaking on behalf of the educational system. When was the last time you honestly heard (and believed) an actual current college student claim that the true benefit of their formal college education is in learning to be a lifelong learner? That’s just bull***.

Others claim that the benefit of a college degree is really more about socialization and independence. I’ve heard reasonably smart adults say, with all sincerity, that spending $80,000 [it’s more like $160k] so little Suzy could learn to live on her own was worth it. I think there are a thousand different, and often better, ways to achieve that. Suzy could join the peace corp, for example, or go on one of those “learning vacations” where you do an archeological dig. Hell, just a three-month long trip through Europe with a couple friends and a rail pass (or, as a friend of mine did, a bike trip across Turkey) is certainly going to do more for socialization and independence than a traditional college environment, and at a tiny fraction of the cost.

I have more thoughts on this issue but I am struggling to decide whether to post them publicly on my blog. Perhaps sometime in the near future I will share my idea for feedback.

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Book Reviews: Wealth and Democracy; Rich Dad/Poor Dad

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Two books about money. The first, by recommendation, was Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips. It has received critical acclaim for its broad treatment of history – starting at the very beginning – to the current administration. Phillips examines how the wealthy stay wealthy (and not by promoting less government, instead by exerting tremendous influence over the government) and the effects of the American rich on democracy. A number of compelling tidbits but the constant switching back and forth between history and present day (especially when all those historical details aren’t of great interest to me) makes me question whether it was worth the 350 page effort.

Second was Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money – That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not. I gave this to my Dad for father’s day and gave it a quick read when he was done. It’s been a NYT best seller for months and months so I had high expectations. Unfortunately the author comes across as a greedy son of a bitch who’s life starts and ends with making money. I say unfortunate because he makes a number of good points: take risks and live an entrepreneurial life, become financially literate, etc. But he forgets another important point: after taking care of basic needs, there’s no correlation between money and happiness.

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Anonymous Comment on Impassioned Readers Post

Posted inRandom3 Comments on Anonymous Comment on Impassioned Readers Post

I just got an anonymous comment on my post Impassioned Readers Lead Active Lives where he or she claims my final rhetorical question “Are you a vigorous actor on the stage of life engaged with the world of ideas?” wasn’t truly posed at the reader but was rather a veiled form of self-affirmation.

“Are you a vigorous actor on the stage of life engaged with the world of ideas?”

Oh please, Ben. You’ve got an incredible mind, and most of your blog entries are truly engaging and interesting to read, but this sentence is just a veiled form of self-affirmation. It has nothing to do with truly asking a question of the reader, and really only makes you come off as seeming insecure about yourself and whether reading so many books is truly a good thing to be doing with your time. If you truly were comfortable with being told by people to “break out of your shell”, you wouldn’t have to constantly keep defending just how “big and worldly” your shell is. You would just move on, knowing full well who you are, why you’re doing what you’re doing, and why your actions will speak for themselves in the long run. You don’t need to keep defending who you are.

I concede that it wasn’t a true question posed at readers, but rather a sign that I’m a sucker for eloquent rhetoric (the words appeared in the article) with a metaphor I’ve never heard before (actor on stage of life). I do suppose, however, that by including it in the way I did it came across as snooty, which I regret.

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The Pursuit and Misuse of Useless Information

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Will Price has a fantastic post summarizing a Princeton paper on “the pursuit and misuse of useless information.” He sums up the paper well by talking about how we love to obtain additional, useless information before making a decision and then how we let that noninstrumental information affect the process. It seems to me that people think about these things when making *big* decisions, so our real losses come during all those day-to-day decisions that we make without thinking twice and, given our bad habits, we fall prey to these fallacies.

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Impassioned Readers Lead Active Lives

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I got my periodic jolt of meta about my favorite hobby – reading. In the NYT Boook Review there’s an essay “How to Read a Book” which sort of reviews a book “The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life” but more importantly contains some good words on reading and booksluts in general:

In fact, most of us don’t look for the ”best” books the same way we would scout out the ”best” digital camera. Whether we’re reading a novel, a biography or for that matter a book about orchids, we seek an elusive combination of pleasure, utility and intellectual stimulation, something to pique our curiosity and engage our minds. But Leveen views books as an end in themselves, treating them primarily as objects to be fetishized.

At the same time, Leveen’s focus on reinventing the paper clip has left him with little understanding of how people actually make use of knowledge in their daily lives. He is amazed that such ”great achievers” as John Adams and Nelson Mandela ”manage to become impassioned readers and lead such remarkably active lives,” adding that ”many widely read people are not bookish stereotypes but vigorous actors on the stage of life.” Of course, there is no contradiction here; if ”active” means not only successful in one’s profession but also thoughtful and engaged with the world (including the world of ideas), then reading is essential to the active life.

Are you a vigorous actor on the stage of life engaged with the world of ideas?

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