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Skyler Schain's avatar

Great piece. This whole series is a brilliant idea, a conversation that needs to happen. As a millenial with a humanities undergrad degree, I was always – and still sometimes am – tempted by the siren song of a humanities Master's degree. School is fun!

How does pleasure factor into this question? It seems insulting to compare higher ed to summer camp, but enjoyment of the experience itself is undeniably part of college's value. We like to talk about education through the lens of its professional implications, but what is the true cost of "the experience" that most of the sources here are describing? Many students without family wealth opt out of the humanities for good reason. For those choosing less vocationally assured routes, the pleasure of learning is part of what you pay for. We can debate whether that is ethical, but it seems worth calling out.

Whether or not we admit the pleasure value, these higher ed institutions are definitely capitalizing on its existence.

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wisely_and_slow's avatar

Reading this, I can't help but thinking about how capitalism is responsible. Not in the obvious "university needs money, makes bullshit program profitable by lying about opportunities" way, but in the way that our society devalues many of the most essential jobs (food growing/production/service, child and elder care, etc.) in pursuit of runaway profits while also refusing to allow space for learning for the sake of learning.

If the options are work at Starbucks being treated like shit for less than a living wage and being too tired to pursue learning for the sake of learning or taking on massive debt in order to learn and hopefully come out with a white collar job that allows you a modicum of freedom and a comfortable wage, of course the risk is going to seem worth it. Especially if you've always been praised for being "smart" and especially if your smaller community (and family) devalue service jobs and trades.

The simple fact is, we need a lot more food growers and producers than we do MPHs or MLISs, but many seeking graduate degrees have experienced how exhausting, underpaid, and often humiliating service/production work is, and see graduate degrees (even with exorbitant debt and no promise of a good job on the other end) as the path out.

I don't know how we steer away from this race to the bottom. It seems like it's too late and too far gone and politics of greed and hatred are too effective at capturing people who are feeling desperate and agrieved to even imagine a different world.

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