To be or not to be (a college graduate)

With many college graduates unemployed in western countries and the relative value of college education declining everywhere, the unchallenged view that college education is primarily for employment needs to be put to sleep. There’s more to college education than just the skills that you acquire there in classes and extracurricular activities.  Of course, college is also a fun place to be, especially if you’re living alone. There’s an abundance of adventure-both academic and non-academic in college. That’s why there is a case to be made that college education should be treated as a “good” like books. Books should also be bought for their entertainment value and not only because they’ll give you smart tricks to make money.

Common sense dictates that people should choose college majors that lead to well-paying jobs yet we find people who study all kinds of majors with seemingly little value. I recently read an article bashing “classical literature” majors for choosing such a worthless major that doesn’t land you any job after graduation. The truth is people go to college for wide variety of reasons- employment being just one of them. So there’s nothing irrational about what specialization you choose. Saying that spending lots of money studying an offbeat subject is irrational is the same thing as attacking people for reading “crime fiction” instead of bestselling books on finance. The only difference is that of degree.

Rationality is not “common” sense in that it doesn’t require public approval. It is often incorrectly assumed that the most rational person would also be the richest. In my opinion, one cannot classify people by their rationality even if you can create billionaire lists simply because all of us are equally rational. To a vacation-freak spending all your money on vacations instead of investing on education for higher returns is rational just like the fact that those who are passionate about research getting a Ph.D. and those with a penchant for sports skipping school to train for competitions are acting perfectly (and equally) rationally. Sure, richer people have more resources to fulfill their wants but that’s getting nowhere since in becoming rich they have squandered opportunities to play sports professionally, do ground breaking research and take off more vacations (and write blogs). The only exception to this is if you inherit a lot of money. That probably explains why most of early renaissance thinkers and scientists happened to be born into nobility. For a person without a bequest, there is choice between chasing money now to do something later or doing something now and foregoing pleasurable activities in the future.

I’ll come back to the topic of colleges. College education does give you an edge in the job market, but that’s no reason to go to college. Those who read books are more likely to win quizzes than those who don’t. Weirdly there’s more value attached to going to college than reading. It’s hard to blame anybody here. Those who think that employment is the sole reason they want to go to college are doing so rationally because they know that those with college degrees are more employable. But those who don’t go to college to go into sports or those who take up a not so promising subject and get a Ph.D. in that too are acting rationally. So what’s the fuss? Nothing. Just don’t assume everybody goes to college to end up employed and don’t praise or criticize college dropouts-those are all individual decisions. Sure, a few college dropouts have made it rich. Yes, but at the cost of not being able to enjoy college life or discuss quantum physics with the best minds. And those not interested in research or other things college helps you get do a professional diploma and end up employed instead of becoming an unemployed graduate. If they are all rational, then why do people end up unemployed after going to college? Good question. Why do gamblers lose money? Those who go to college to get a job are gambling. Some lose, some win, some don’t gamble at all and some are just gambling for fun! (Moral remark: getting Ph.D. is better than gambling for fun. Economic response: “only for you”. )