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JOSEPH REISERT: ‘College experience’ doesn’t last, education enriches life forever

If you’re one of the millions heading off to college this fall, you should ask yourself one question before you arrive: Are you going for the “college experience” or to get an education?

The “college experience” is higher education as seen through the camera lens. It is the world of “Old School” and “Animal House,” where the parties last all weekend, and the weekends begin on Wednesdays.

It’s where the learning all happens outside the classroom, through experimentation with alcohol, music, drugs and sex.

College-bound students understand that such movies don’t depict reality, but too many see them as caricature rather than parody. The result is a distorted conception of the “college experience” defined by the freedom to do whatever you want, without regard for money or consequences, but with the expectation that these will somehow be the defining years of your life.

Maybe that means four years of raucous parties and random hookups, but it may mean four more years of playing a sport you’ll never be able to play professionally, or doing something else, such as music or theater, that’s challenging and fun, or maybe it means just four years of vaguely hanging out with roommates and friends.

Very few colleges or universities do much to challenge the popular idea of the “college experience,” and many institutions — especially the expensive, private and selective ones — do a lot to reinforce it.

In part, that may be because it is easy to provide the “college experience.” Expensive, but easy. Make sure the campus is beautiful, and provide the latest architectural amenities.

Pay for sports teams, practice fields and music groups; subsidize a host of clubs and activities; hire staff to coordinate student life and activities, and then just let the students do what they want. If you can afford it, adorn the faculty with a few star professors, so that students can bask in their reflected glory.

Leaving the students free to enjoy the “college experience” is popular with the faculty, too, since the students’ freedom to study whatever they want, in practice means that the faculty are free to teach whatever they want, and thus to concentrate on trying to publish works of scholarship that will get them wooed as stars by competing institutions.

If you want to know whether a particular college is mainly in the business of providing the “experience” or of offering an education, just visit the campus and ask around.

Ask the faculty about the institution’s purpose and goals. If you get a lot of different answers, or similar but vague ones, such as, “We offer a broad, liberal-arts curriculum,” or “We teach you how to think,” then it’s a safe bet that the institution is mainly in the “college experience” business.

Ask the students what they have learned there. If they can’t answer, or all give different answers, or vague ones, then it’s not likely that the institution is seriously trying to provide an education.

Fortunately, it is possible for motivated students to learn almost anywhere, provided they have the inclination to try and the strength of character to persevere against an institutional culture that doesn’t particularly value education.

But where institutions provide no real guidance about what is worth learning and what is not, and why, it is likely that these motivated students will tend to gravitate toward one or other of the specialized academic disciplines, becoming deeply but only narrowly learned.

A genuine education, however, should do more than this.

It should prepare students to become fully participating members of our civilization.

It should introduce a number of the great, culture-defining works of art and letters, so that graduates genuinely appreciate the different visions of life they articulate and can take part in the debate among them.

It should explain major historical events and political and economic systems, so that graduates can take intelligent part in deliberations about public policy.

It should teach the methods and major results of the natural sciences, so that every graduate can understand the significance of the latest scientific developments.

And every graduate should be able to communicate clearly and effectively the results of his or her work, whatever that work may be, to any other educated person.

Why should a student prefer such an education to the “college experience”? Because you won’t remember the parties and the hookups after you graduate, but books and ideas that shape your thinking and form your character will enrich your life forever.



Joseph R. Reisert is associate professor of American constitutional law and chairman of the department of government at Colby College in Waterville.