Sections
A Short Guide to the Purposeful College Decision
The following essay first appeared as an article in Alvaro de Vicente’s Substack publication, Men in the Making. For more articles like this one, you can visit his page here. Subscribe to the publication to stay up-to-date on Alvaro’s writing.
Attending college is not an unqualified good. In fact, college poses many dangers. At its best, it offers opportunities to grow intellectually and prepare oneself professionally, but it also presents temptations to laziness and hedonism. Professors demanding too little of students—through practices such as grade inflation, leniency with missing or late assignments, and so on—encourages mediocre work. The abundance of free time and the lack of obligations easily devolves into selfish pleasure-seeking. The drinking practices of many students would likely be labeled alcoholism were they not pursued on a college campus—not to mention the easy access and cultural encouragement to engage in other immoral behavior. And, for all of this, people will pay—or worse, borrow—a lot of money.
To counteract these dangers, parents and teachers ought to help their boys approach the college decision purposefully. Attending college may seem like an inevitable next step on the educational treadmill, a step anyone who wants to be successful must take. Attending college, however, is not an inevitability; it is not even a goal. It is a means to attain certain goals. And means ought to be pursued prudently.
I want to share a few ideas for how to approach the decision of where—indeed, whether—to go to college. This is by no means an exhaustive list, or a final list, but any list without them is certainly incomplete. I have in mind four areas to ponder:
- Consider the end.
- Consider the setting.
- Consider your spending.
- Consider the support systems available.
1 – Consider the end
As the sage Yogi Berra put it, “if you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” Your son needs to know, as much as one can at his age, why he is going to college. To what end is college a fitting means?
College is a broad term used to describe two educational pursuits that are really quite different: university studies and pre-professional training. Though often labeled with the same name and housed in the same institution, they pursue different goals. University studies aim at the truth for its own sake. Ultimately, the fruit of these studies is growth in wisdom and understanding—as Aristotle would put it, the knowledge of principles and causes. University studies in this sense include the humanities, theoretical sciences, and mathematics. Pre-professional training, on the other hand, is geared toward preparing students to practice a particular trade. These studies are practical and technical. Their fruit is the knowledge and skills necessary to make or fix things—a business, a computer program, a building, the human body, and so on. Examples of these studies include the various kinds of engineering, as well as business and pre-medical programs. Though many universities offer both of these pursuits, it is helpful to clarify which is a student’s predominant aim, as that will determine what success looks like, and different institutions are better suited to one or the other goal.
And though one may have a primary purpose in mind, I should note that it is ideal for those pursuing university studies to also incorporate some trade preparation—whether in the form of classes, extracurricular study, or internships. And for pre-professional students, it is also helpful to pursue some courses in the humanities. The most professionally marketable students are those who have not only mastery over specific technical skills but also the ability to think and communicate clearly—not to mention the fact that, regardless of one’s professional path, thinking and communicating are generally useful for living a good life.
If your son wants to pursue university studies, he should ask himself if there is a particular field he is passionate about and wants to master. If there is, what are the top universities for that discipline? Are there professors at these schools who still believe in objective truth? What level of engagement do they have with undergraduate students?
If your son is more interested in pre-professional training, he should think deeply about what trade he hopes to practice. Wanting to study “business” in general is not a good reason to attend a university. This discipline tends to be a catch-all degree intended to capture people who actually don’t have any idea what they want to do in the future besides make money. It is equivalent to saying you want to learn a trade and, when asked which trade, responding: a trade that pays. Rather, one should think about what kind of trade he wants to engage in—tech, software, electrical engineering, and so on—or what aspect of business he would like to master, and look for an institution that is well-regarded for that specific field.
If your son does not know why he wants to go to college, that is ok. In this case, taking a gap year can be a great idea. There is no real reason why he needs to start college immediately after high school. It is better to spend a year discerning than waste $50,000—or more—for him to aimlessly pursue studies that he may later decide are pointless for what he wants in life.
2 – Consider the setting
Regardless of whether he chooses to pursue university studies or a trade, he should consider what kind of institution best suits him personally. Here is a list of questions to ponder:
- In what setting will he feel sufficiently challenged without becoming overwhelmed?
- What setting will motivate him to stay focused on his actual goals in attending college?
- What is the right size?
- What are the right geographical characteristics?
- What is the right environment for him to grow personally—one that outwardly supports his worldview or one that will challenge it?
- What extracurricular opportunities are important for his growth? What kind of social life would he prefer? Are sports a major factor for him?
- Are there any special programs he is looking for? For example, does he hope to study abroad?
3 – Consider your spending
College is a large financial investment. Many four-year degrees cost around $300,000. How will you know that such an investment is actually worth it? Not easy to say. But one thing is for certain: having a “college experience” is not worth paying $300,000—and it is definitely not worth going into debt for. If this is what he wants, he might as well get a job in Miami and party on the weekends; that may well be a better use of his time.
I know a father who asks his children to formulate a “business plan” for their lives. The idea is that each of his children is the founder of a very important start-up company, and that company is the child’s life. He and his wife are the venture capitalists. If his children want the venture capitalists to invest in their company, they better have a thoughtful business plan. Interestingly, the point of this start-up life business plan is not that his children have a strategy for how they will make money but for how they will find meaning. The two most important questions for which they need to formulate an answer are: why are you on this earth and for what are you willing to die?
For two of his children, the conclusion of this discernment process was that the college investment made sense. For one of them, it did not; he decided to serve his country in the armed forces. For all of them, they had a clear understanding of the reason for their choices.
When I was a college counselor in the ’90s, going into debt for college was considered a good investment. The common belief was that a college graduate would pay off his debt in a few years and prosper financially thereafter. This is no longer necessarily the case. It may still be acceptable to incur some debt to pay for college, but doing so should be part of a prudent “business plan.”
4 – Consider the support systems available
A final and necessary consideration is whether attending a particular institution will allow your son to continue growing morally and spiritually. The university itself does not need to be totally aligned with your values, nor does the culture of the school need to be perfectly fertile soil. As Chesterton put it in The Ballad of the White Horse, “his faith grew in a hard ground / of doubt and reason and falsehood found, / where no faith else could grow.” But, there do need to be support systems available, whether through the school itself or through ancillary programs and organizations. Whatever form it takes, the support system needs to be something fitted to your son, something that he finds attractive, and not merely something that you want for him; any support is only effective if the individual is willing to use it. In the end, this consideration is so vital that, if he is thinking about a college where there is not a good support system in place—or one he will not seek out—he should consider not attending it.
When you come to a fork in the road take it
In the end, there are likely many good options for your son. Considered for the right reasons, college can be fertile ground for his mission in life.
The next challenge may be even more important: how he chooses to approach his time once on campus. But that topic is for another article.
About the Author
Alvaro de Vicente
In addition to his responsibilities as headmaster of The Heights, Alvaro acts as a mentor to high schoolers, and teaches senior Apologetics.