I agree - A liberal arts education is crucial - without it how can we have an "educated" society.

Great post and I agree with the importance of a broad education. However, I didn't get that type of instruction at the undergraduate level. I wonder how many people did? In the 80s and early 90s, I think my college instructors had already moved beyond the "classics." I read a lot of literature, but none that helped me lead a better life. I think, perhaps, I got stuck in the cultural relativity trap. I've since discovered much of the classic works -- but either on my own or (surprisingly) during my post-graduate education. As a college professor, I now try to teach my college students some of those "expansive" lessons. I hope other college professors are doing the same thing.

Most people consider me nuts for saying that the best courses I took in college were ancient Greek (Attic dialect, three semesters worth) and classical rhetoric. The former gave me a sensitivity to the nature of language. As to the latter, I still maintain that Aristotle's "Rhetoric" is the most fundamental communications book ever written.

I think Bishop John Henry Newman said it best in "The Uses of Knowledge" when he wrote:

"Men, whose minds are possessed with some one object, take exaggerated views of its importance, are feverish in the pursuit of it, make it the measure of things which are utterly foreign to it, and are startled and despond if it happens to fail them. They are ever in alarm or in transport."

Richard,

You are on a very important point in these days of reduced job opportunities. Does the great liberal arts education that prepares you to live well also prepare you to earn a living? There is a reason corporate recruiters only included one Ivy in their Top 25 colleges -- state schools provide more technical/professional focus. That focus comes comes at the expense of broader learning, however, giving us more technically trained (and employable) graduates at the expense of a better educated populace.

I have noticed an interesting development here at Yale. By extending recruiting and aggressively increasing financial aid, we have been able to offer a Yale College education to bright young students from financial, social and geographic groups never before served by Yale. This is a great accomplishment. However, as these students leave Yale (or Harvard, Princeton, etc.) with a rich, if somewhat less focused, liberal arts education, they are finding the next step very difficult. Without the old social, economic frameworks of the priveledged there are few relatives or friends who can provide employment and family finances often cannot fund advanced degree work without great sacrifice.

The challenge then is to create an undergraduate liberal arts education that provides the opportunity to both live and to live well. Perhaps extending undergraduate education by a year to provide a fifth year of professional focus or an opportunity for masters-level work is an option. I would be interested in what others think.

I do agree on your post here. I guess one could argue that many of the greatest entrepreneurs have left university to purse early careers and had great success doing so.

Richard,



I agree with your comment that "Higher education is not simply about vocation. It is about learning in order to live well." In fact, I will go further and say, higher education is about learning to learn. The skills, and subject matters that students are taught at universities may become obsolete sooner or later, but a good school, a good teacher teaches us how to learn and that may last for a life time.



Now, I take issue with two of your critiques of The Social Network.

re: "That is the sole flash of intellectual pursuit in a two hour movie."

As a computer science major, I saw more than one scene of intellectual brilliance and consider your comment a bit unfair. The scene where Zuckerberg created a contest to hire new programmers was fun to watch and also showed his technical strength at the same time. The ability to hire and find great and competent people is very important. There are multiple smaller scenes in the movie where Zuckerberg's technical competence and brilliance is, for me, clear for all to see.

re: "Though The Social Network is entertainment more than a factual treatment …"

Aaron Sorkin is a big boy and doesn't need me to defend him here. But I just want to paraphrase what Sorkin has said in interviews about the film. He has apparently done extensive research to back up this film (with a book plus sworn statements in court documents by the various parties).

What Aaron has tried and successfully done with the film is not to take side by doing the film in Rashômon (1950) style, from the perspectives of the involved parties.

Discrediting the movie as "entertainment more than a factual treatment" may have missed the point of that Rashômon thing.

Regards

Good points Richard. I think higher education sets us up with research skills, critical thinking ability and teamwork experience. The rest is really up to us to form our own careers but there is definitely an inherent value in the education itself.

Learning is only part of the equation. The other part is executive experience. The line “Harvard graduates believe that inventing a job is better than getting one” is also telling in today's political environment where higher education is used as the foundation and structure for implementing an ideology. Highly educated politicians pushing an ideology, but lacking the executive experience has put this country in the difficult situation we find ourselves today.
In the case of Zuckerberg and his counterparts Gates, Dell, et all, their ideas were wildly successful because they brought in deep executive experience.

Hi Richard,

I was happy to see this post about the movie. I think a lot of us in digital media were personally touched by the movie, so it's a great blogging topic. (As much as I love tools web metrics, there's only so many of those I can read.)

Personally, I thought it was funny that the "intellectual" pursuits were supposedly motivated by girls. Isn't it instinct to want to impress potential mates?

I'm easily impressed by brilliance, but I was more impressed by the entrepreneurial spirit in Zuckerberg. I had just finished reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (prominently featured in Mad Men), and it affected my perception of the movie dramatically.

Atlas Shrugged tells the story of industrialist entrepreneurs who are constantly "looted" by characters in the book trying to leach off their money and steal their businesses. The metaphor is one man holding the world on his shoulders.

I was depressed coming out of the movie too, but not for the education system. (Any class that teaches logic and creativity can be useful in some capacity.) It was depressing in the way the characters tried to "loot", or leach off Zuckerberg's achievement. He seemed an island and so friendless, it was sort of heartbreaking.

I think many minds like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates could relate. The way the public tries to portray really successful people as intolerant or exploitative is really sad.

Anyways, I wish anyone like Zuckerberg the best of luck and hope entrepreneurs like him will be inspired. Our economy could definitely use a few more Facebooks.

Your cautionary note about rushing to adulthood was one of the more depressing aspects of the film and what business sees in many younger staff today. Certainly the is a rush to accomplishment and acquisition, to maturity not so much.

The men's environment throughout the film remained statically sophomoric, chaotic and frat boy laden. And their behaviors were classic Animal House antics.

Grow up, prodigies.

Hi Richard,

I really enjoyed reading your post and glad you decided to blog about the film. Like you, I have to disagree with the notion that "inventing a job is better than getting one," but I'm not sure I could have disagreed with that statement had I been at Harvard during Zuckerberg's time.

Mark "came of age" during a time of great prosperity - the dotcom boom of the late-90s and very early 00s - and was in the midst of a surge of technological change. He, like many of his classmates, were inundated with news of companies growing seemingly overnight. I can certainly see how "inventing a job" in the early 2000s would seem much more rewarding than getting one during that time. However, the college students of the late 2000s are entering the workforce in the midst of recession and are now inundated with news about layoffs and unemployment. As a 2009 grad, I see so many of my classmates still struggling to find work, so certainly being able to get hired is now considered a feat of its own.

I watched Edelman's 8095 millenials presentation yesterday, and I couldn't help but think how segmented this generation is, largely in part due to the changes that technology has made on our lives. The college students of the early 00s might not recognize the college lifestyle that me and my peers had during the second half of the decade, and I'm sure that we won't recognize the lifestyles our younger siblings will have in the years to come. Hopefully, one thing will remain consistent, and that is the quality of the education that we need to be successful whether we invent a job or get hired for one.

Thank you for your post Richard, and to Tom for his comment. I myself am the product of a great Ivy education, but finding that more of a handicap than a strength when it comes to finding a job. Even positions at Edelman that I've applied to value more the actual practical experience of candidates over their ability to think critcally and with originality.

Currently the job market favors those with practical experience, and the education you get at most so-called "elite" schools doesn't produce the kinds of experiences and traits employers are looking for, especially in this competitive job market. This also peeks into the phenomenon of "white collar poverty", in which educated individuals who followed all the directions they were given as youths are unable to find and hold onto jobs as adults. This was so eloquently depicted in the book "Bait and Switch" by Barbara Ehrenrich.

The silver lining in all of this, however, may be that lesser-known schools that actually do a better job of teaching employable skills are going to rise to the top of the heap over the so-called elite schools. If one of the key benefits of the information age is the leveling of the playing field, we are starting to see that in the realm of higher education, and institutions are going to have to evolve with that change or risk falling into irrelavancy.