It’s that time again. 

After an amazing sabbatical year where I taught myself Complex Systems Science (among other things), it’s time to go back to the classroom.  Given all that’s been going on with universities recently, and my absence from the classroom for a year, today I want to reflect on the title question.

What is College For?

There have definitely been issues facing universities over the last 20 years.  Tuition levels have grown so high that many students graduate with mortgage-level debt.  Efforts to bring a wider range of backgrounds into both student and faculty bodies have done some good but are still incomplete (most physics departments are, for example, still overwhelmingly male).  At the same time, over the last decade, universities often allowed themselves to narrow the kinds of discussions students were exposed to (for fear of triggering or some such).  It turns out this wasn’t helping students.  On the other hand, the assault currently underway on universities and their research programs is narrow-minded and purposeless.  If continued, the main outcome will be killing the goose that’s been laying golden eggs for the US economy since World War II.

Despite the recent difficulties, the deep value of universities and a university education remains.  That’s because the idea itself – a community of scholars, teachers and students - is ancient.  The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, was the first in Europe and began the model we find today.  Before that, however, there were institutions like Nalanda University, a hub of Buddhist scholarship in 5^th century India.  Before that there were the various schools and academies of ancient Greece.  

In all cases, the point of founding, nurturing and attending these institutions was to become broadly and deeply educated. To learn and question.  To study and seek answers.  To go beyond the day-to-day struggle for just getting by and build something for yourself and your society that could endure and be better.

That’s what I fell in love with back in the autumn of 1980 in my first semester at the University of Colorado, Boulder. (Go Buffs!)  I looked through the course catalogue and felt dizzy. Shakespeare, the History of Rome, The Philosophy of Music, Intro to Anthropology and, of course, all those physics courses.  Here was the possibility of seeing further and understanding more deeply what the hell was going on with life.  Then maybe, I could make wiser choices for myself and be of some help to everyone else.

That, to me, is what college is for.

Back then, as today, there was also emphasis on going to school as a kind of job training.  Sure.  Fine. That’s OK.  But, as I try and tell my students, they’re not just at school to gain skills.  Those brief four years can be – should be – something more. 

Humans created universities to find what might be universal amongst themselves and, in the process, open themselves to the Universe as a whole.  The capacity they offer to study, learn and be changed in the process is a lifetime skill that has endured for millennia and still carries the same immeasurable value. 

It’s also one of my deepest reasons for loving the fall.

— Adam Frank 🚀