The Worth of Higher Education

I've just finished reading an article discussing the declining value of higher education in America from this week's Economist. As the topic suggests, it was a sobering and pessimistic read. However, I thought that any discussion was focused too much on higher education not being good value for money and didn't even give mention to the non-financial benefits of being at university.

When I recently told a (much older) Cambridge alumni I had studied international relations for my MPhil but don't use it at all in my professional work, he responded with something along the lines of, "It doesn't matter. We do it because it's interesting." I don't think education can be classified as consumable leisure, but I do think the ability to one's intellectual curiosity and become exposed to a wider world of people ideas is not quantifiable in monetary terms. It's the little things like the friends you make for life and the little pleasures you acquire. As personal examples, I play Halo with my roommates in Berkeley weekly to stay in touch, and my year in Cambridge gave me a taste for choral music that I will continue to enjoy forever.

Of course, despite "party schools" and the many students who spend more time drinking than reading in college, higher education isn't all about fun—we all need to make income as productive members of society, after all. But nor is it just a four-year, leveraged financial product (using student loans) with calculable return on investment. Obviously, this isn't a point that is uncommonly made, and no one can fault The Economist for using the occasional tone of strictly financial rationalization, but I would have thought it a nice touch if they had ended with a more upbeat remark, as they usually do.

I Should Write More

As the title suggests, I really should write more. Hopefully blogging can become a self-reinforcing habit. One article that recently motivated me was this one from the BBC that discusses "information overload" in our contemporary world of easily accessible information on the Internet.

One insight here by the author is that, "A great curator, to me, is someone who takes such bits of information and transmutes them into useful knowledge." It is one thing to be up-to-date on the latest world news and to watch countless TED talks. It is another to be able to articulate one's own opinions and form information into knowledge. One of the things I learned from my undergraduate studies (yet have been failing to practice) is that writing is thinking. So hopefully by writing regularly I will be able to put together all the information I absorb into something more meaningful.

Blog Refresh

I resolve to try writing more on this blog. I think two motivations for this came up recently. I had lunch with a classmate from Berkeley who has an active blog with some interesting (though totally random) content, and it seems like it would be intellectually rewarding to be able to express my thoughts more fully than I can in just a tweet. The other is that the current election has been frustrating me with the amount of misinformation that has been disseminated, and I feel like I should take advantage of what avenues I can to contribute to the battle of ideas.

In the meantime, I've refreshed the blog with a color scheme based off base16. I'm now using the colorscheme in Vim (my text editor of choice), and I've even made a theme for my instant messaging client which I'll probably publish soon.

In the meantime, follow my thoughts on Twitter!