Pragmatism or perish

Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza claimed that “the highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

Today, higher education restricts freedom. I am afraid that understanding is no longer the goal.

Constraint emerges before one steps foot on campus for the first time. Some universities admit high school seniors to specific majors and expect them to follow course with little wiggle room to explore other fields. Graduate programs, especially those in STEM, applaud the undergraduate who races to join a niche research lab in freshman year and devote oneself toward little else. Even high school students grasp the “publish or perish” constraint as they scramble to start research earlier and earlier.

Students rarely practice freedom of expression on college campuses as the Socratic method is more fiction than fact. Certainly such teaching styles require students exert more effort, but no one claims that freedom is easily attained. One of my favorite thinkers, Hannah Arendt, describes the delicate balance between self-direction and guidance in “The Crisis in Education”

. . . education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world

I wonder if this teeter totter even exists anymore.

We could spend hours listing many more constraints in higher education. I will address a niche yet pressing issue in the first-generation community: the social and economic pressures to build human capital at university, often at the expense of less tangible qualities.

Sam Trejo in An Econometric Analysis of the Major Choice of First-Generation College Students shows that this population errs toward choosing more pragmatic majors. Cultural and utilitarian pressures envelope students for whom college is uncharted territory.

That is not to say that their families do not understand at least a morsel of higher education. Most cannot deny that college is an investment that offers financial returns. After all, the bachelor’s degree today is for better or for worse what the high school diploma was decades ago. It is no surprise that first-generation students often come from low-income families; college may seem risky when compared to jumping into the workforce after high school. It then appears “safer” for the student to choose a major with a greater chance of economic security post-graduation. One might argue that this phenomenon is positive, as it may alleviate income inequalities in the long run. That first-generation students are more inclined than their counterparts to pursue engineering encourages STEM disciplines to recruit minorities.

It should be noted that Trejo’s model controlled for differences in family income, race, gender, and ability between the two groups. Indeed, not having parents who attended college can single-handedly affect a student’s major selection.

Interestingly, not all of the majors favored by first-generation students – healthcare, engineering, education, psychology and social work, and computer science – necessarily promised high incomes. Education and nursing are reliable despite not being the most lucrative career paths. Yet all of these disciplines crystallize because of their high occupational concentration, resulting in career clarity. The arts, life sciences, communication, and the humanities are less attractive to first-generation students.

Reality eerily matches theory. Going to college is not an exploration but rather a do-or-die situation to realize steady employment before its end. Potential failure is two-fold: not only does this population typically lack role models who exemplify education’s intangible benefits, but American society also shames those who cannot secure jobs immediately post-graduation. It is no wonder first-generation students deem majors like English literature, history, and foreign language unworthy.

College major selection is nuanced and can hardly be reduced to a model. We cannot pinpoint exact causes, as if we are robots. But I cannot deny that Trejo’s findings match my personal experiences. I thrived in a variety of subjects in high school, especially foreign language and history. I liked STEM subjects like biology and chemistry, though I cannot say I adored them. I was actually probably the worst at them. I never attended any high school science camps or competitions that inspired me to specialize in this way. Yet even though I insisted on applying to universities featuring a liberal arts education model, I already mentally committed to being an engineering major. I never had any doubts in college, never second-guessed myself, even when my GPA suffered during my first two years. My parents never pressured me to study a specific topic. Am I simply grittier than other students who gave up on the sciences? I don’t think so.

I knew literature, linguistics, and history majors existed. UChicago boasts especially intriguing majors, such as Fundamentals: Issues and Texts or History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine (HIPS). Except at the same time, these were never options in my mind. They were not for me. Funnily enough, with two years in a biomedical engineering doctoral program under my belt, I increasingly contemplate alternative realities. I often daydream where I would currently be had I pursued philosophy or, maybe more likely, majored rather than minored in Germanic studies.

Though I experience these identity crises more than I would like to admit, I cannot say I regret my decisions so far. They are simply different. After all, I fell in love with biomedical engineering in my third year thanks to a course on tissue engineering. I enjoy my current work. But I concede that I think I fell victim to this constraint on first-generation students.

I do not intend to sway any student away from more pragmatic career paths, regardless of their background. Inviting diversity in STEM fields must continue. But is the constraint Trejo describes not yet another crisis in education? What would Spinoza think? Do first-generation students genuinely have the same freedom to “pursue something new” as Arendt envisioned?