ONE OF THE enduring benefits of a liberal education is that it broadens us. When we absorb great literature, we come face to face with ideas, experiences, and emotions that we might never otherwise encounter in our lifetime. When we read history, we encounter people from a different age and learn from their triumphs and travails. When we study physics and biology, we comprehend the mysteries of the universe and human life. And when we listen to great music, we are moved in ways that reason cannot comprehend. This may not help make a living, but it will help make a life. We all play many roles, professional and personal, in one lifetime. A liberal education gives us a greater capacity to be good workers, but it will also give us the capacity to be good partners, friends, parents, and citizens.
Does a liberal education make us better human beings? Students at colleges and universities certainly get a high-quality, expensive education as preparation to succeed in the outside world. But, according to many critics, even the best students—and sometimes especially the best—are limited in crucial ways. To put it bluntly, the charge is that they are achievement-oriented automatons, focused on themselves and their careers. They do not seem interested in delving deep into the search for inner knowledge, giving reign to their passions, or developing their character. The “Me Generation” was the name given to the baby boomers. Time magazine ran a cover in 2013 on the millennials with the title “The Me Me Me Generation.”
In early 2001, the columnist David Brooks wrote a now famous essay in the Atlantic titled “The Organization Kid,” based on days of meetings he had with students and professors during a visit to Princeton University. In the essay, Brooks described the next generation of American leaders and their daily schedule: “Crew practice at dawn, classes in the morning, resident-adviser duty, lunch, study groups, classes in the afternoon, tutoring disadvantaged kids in Trenton, a cappella practice, dinner, study, science lab, prayer session, hit the StairMaster, study a few hours more.” It’s an impressive list, but Brooks found that this intense set of activities was mostly in the service of building a resume and came with little intellectual curiosity. Even more noticeable, to him, was the total lack of desire to think about moral issues, to be introspective, or to focus on the building of character or virtue. In the end, he concluded:
At the top of the meritocratic ladder we have in America a generation of students who are extraordinarily bright, morally earnest, and incredibly industrious. They like to study and socialize in groups. They create and join organizations with great enthusiasm. They are responsible, safety-conscious, and mature. They feel no compelling need to rebel—not even a hint of one. They not only defer to authority; they admire it. “Alienation” is a word one almost never hears from them. They regard the universe as beneficent, orderly, and meaningful. At the schools and colleges where the next leadership class is being bred, one finds not angry revolutionaries, despondent slackers, or dark cynics but the Organization Kid.
In 2014, the essayist William Deresiewicz stepped up the criticism with his book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. In it, Deresiewicz recounts his experiences teaching undergraduates at Yale and describes them as having spent their lives getting ready to attend elite colleges but lacking any sense of direction once they arrived. They had jumped through one hurdle after another in order to get a liberal education, but they didn’t know what to do with it once they had their degree. As a result, Deresiewicz finds them to be privileged—“entitled little shit[s]” is the phrase he uses—but intellectually and morally uncurious, uninterested in exploring the larger questions about the meaning of life, and unwilling to take intellectual risks. They are comfortably bourgeois and achievement oriented, but they care little about the inner self and the soul.
The notion that young people are somehow callow and morally unserious is not a new charge. In 700 BC, the Greek poet Hesiod wrote about it. The philosophers Xenophon and Plato were dismayed by the moral decay of their youth. The Romans saw loss of virtue all around them. The Victorians decried the decline in religiosity in the next generation. And while America has always been different—born new, focused on the future, itself an experiment in modernity—it has had its own tradition of jeremiads. From the Puritans to Henry David Thoreau, to conservatives horrified by the 1960s, to Christopher Lasch, who wrote The Culture of Narcissism in 1979, they all worried about a new generation that was less interested in community and more interested in itself.
The most recent round of critiques began with the conservative intellectual Allan Bloom and the publication of his 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind. But since then, conservatives and liberals have jumped in with equal fervor. Brooks, Deresiewicz, and Anthony Kronman, former dean of the Yale Law School, have all joined the chorus, sounding a similar, plaintive tone. But most of the complaints today are quite different from the reactionary concerns of the past. After centuries of bemoaning the fact that the young are too rebellious and disrespectful, the problem today, it appears, is that they are not rebellious and disrespectful enough. They aren’t willing to challenge conventional wisdom, neither the liberal pieties that offended Allan Bloom nor the conservative ones that gall Deresiewicz. After having been pilloried for trying to destroy the bourgeois order in the 1960s and 1970s, the youth are now scorned for being too bourgeois. Too many young people, it seems, are well adjusted, responsible, and looking for good jobs. If only they would wander off campus and study tantric rituals, smoke pot and read Hegel, and stage a sit-in or two—then they would show us their inner souls. (Of course, imagine the reaction of many of the same critics were the college students actually to do that!) You can’t help but sympathize with the sophomore who said to me, “I think that whatever we did, we would be falling short by some measure—and people would write about that.”
In fact, the picture that the critics paint certainly does ring true in its focus on the culture of achievement that dominates student lives at the top educational institutions today. But it’s strange to blame the students for something that is largely beyond their control. After all, they did not devise the intense system of tests that comprise the gateway to American higher education, nor did they create the highly competitive job market in anxious economic times. Admissions offices now prize nothing less than perfection. I once asked the head of admissions at an Ivy League college, “Do you take in many kids who have failed in some significant way in high school?” He immediately answered, “No, that would place them at a disadvantage compared with others with better records.” I pointed out that how one responds to and recovers from failure is one of the most important characteristics of an individual, probably one that reveals more about his or her future success. The admissions officer, a deeply educated scholar, said he understood, but noted that if he admitted kids who had failed in some way—with transcripts and SAT scores reflecting this failure—the college would drop in its rankings and its “win-loss ratio” against other key schools (that is the percentage of students who, when admitted to two schools, accept one over the other). The pressure is intense, for the colleges and the kids. Is it such a wonder that students respond as they do?
The pressure doesn’t stop once they get into college. The race continues with markers set up to point them toward summer jobs, internships, and fellowships, and finally full-time jobs. The process of getting hired at a prestigious bank or consulting firm now involves a marathon of interviews and examinations, with thousands applying for the few positions on offer. But the critics seem to feel that in confronting this grueling system of rewards, kids should take it easy, relax, follow their bliss, and search for their souls. Apparently, Goldman Sachs will understand.
Moreover, students’ focus on achievement has not, so far as I can tell, produced young men and women who are, in some way, mean, selfish, or cruel. There’s really no evidence for this at all. They are probably less bigoted, racist, and sexist than prior generations of students, something that’s easy to caricature as political correctness but is admirable nonetheless, especially if you’re a minority, a woman, or gay. I have spent time on college campuses and around young people, and certainly I find them to be thoughtful, interesting, and stimulating. Professor Steven Pinker, who has spent much more time with college students (teaching them), has written in the same vein. But these are anecdotes. Is there any evidence? In fact, there is. Since 1966, UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) has asked incoming college freshmen a set of questions. The data collected show the following: Over the last four decades, students have become more conscious of the need to make money. But much of that change took place from 1967 to 1987, and the percentage of freshmen who identify “becoming well off financially” as a personal objective has steadied significantly since then. That’s surely a rational response to an economy that has produced fewer good jobs, where the median income has flatlined, and where globalization and technology are replacing all kinds of once-privileged tasks. In such circumstances, to be concerned about one’s future might be a sign of intelligence! Other life objectives that have risen in importance to students are “becoming a community leader,” “helping others who are in difficulty,” and, interestingly, “making a theoretical contribution to science,” none of which are signs of selfishness.
The data also show that students today combine their worldly aspirations with a strong desire to do good. The numbers who volunteer for programs like the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps have risen substantially. In 2014, Teach for America received over fifty thousand applications, more than twice the number received in 2008. Many talented and highly credentialed students choose to work at nonprofits for a while. It’s true that nongovernmental organizations have become cool, but that is the point. They have become cool precisely because young people today view them as a valuable and worthwhile way to spend part—or all—of their lives. As much as any generation before them that might have gone into politics and government or volunteered for war and exploration, they want to do good, change the world, and follow their principles. They just do it in an incremental, practical, best-practices kind of way—more McKinsey than Mother Teresa.
Somewhat different from “college students” are the millennials—generally the term is used for people born from 1980 to 2000. The charges against them are similar, though, and nastier. The cover story in Time magazine mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, and written by its talented humor columnist Joel Stein, accuses the millennials of narcissism, entitlement, and (this is a new one) laziness. The first charge is presented as a “cold, hard” fact. Citing the National Institutes of Health, Stein writes, “The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their twenties as for the generation that’s now 65 or older.” But as the journalist Elspeth Reeve has pointed out, this finding is disputed by other scholars who argue that the research merely shows all young people tend to be somewhat narcissistic but that the narcissism fades over time—for all. Or, to quote from the 2010 study that Reeve cites, “First, we show that when new data on narcissism are folded into preexisting meta-analytic data, there is no increase in narcissism in college students over the last few decades.” As for slothfulness, there is really no evidence for this at all. The basic problem for American workers of all ages has been that their hours and productivity keep rising but their wages do not.
A 2014 Nielsen report, Millennials: Breaking the Myths, offers some data on the generation’s attitude toward volunteering. In 2011, 75 percent made a donation to a charity, 71 percent raised money for one, and 57 percent volunteered, “more than any other generation.” The three causes they care the most about, according to the report, are education, poverty, and the environment. A study of the group sponsored by the Case Foundation, also in 2014, came to very similar conclusions. Of the 87 percent of millennials who had donated to a nonprofit, more than half had given more than one hundred dollars. In a “TED Talk” explaining the behavior of millennials, marketing expert Scott Hess contrasts them with their predecessors, “Generation X.” Instead of being “slackers,” “judgmental,” and “anti-corporate,” he said, millennials are “leaning forward,” “engaged,” “inclusive,” and “tolerant,” and they believe that “commerce” can be “lubricated by conscience.” And unlike generations right before them, they don’t view their parents as adversaries but rather as friends and helpers. Perhaps I say this because I’m a parent, but is this so terrible?
A constant refrain one hears about the young, whether millennials or students or young workers, is that they are utterly focused on themselves. They set up their own Facebook pages, tweet, and send pictures of themselves eating or playing sports. In a talk at Princeton in November 2012, David Brooks praised the self-abnegation of General George Marshall, who refused to ask for command of Operation Overlord—the D-day invasion of Europe—because he thought it would be self-serving. I love that story about Marshall myself, but I also recognize that he lived in a different age. Those were times when large institutions—private and public—dominated life. They were powerful and stable, and they looked after individuals for their entire careers. Your task was to fit in, to put the interest of the institution above your own, to be a good team player. Then you would be rewarded with security and success. (Marshall was subsequently appointed secretary of state, then secretary of defense.) Today, everyone is told, that compact has been broken. Everything is in flux. You must be entrepreneurial and recognize that you will need to change jobs and even careers over a lifetime. No company will stay loyal to you, nor can you lock yourself into one place. The billionaire-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, wrote a book titled The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career, to explain how to succeed in today’s world. The ultimate irony, surely, is that the very commentators who are urging young Americans to be less self-obsessed are busily building their own personal brands, complete with websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts. If it’s right for them, why is it not right for everyone else?
Some things the young don’t do. In general, political activism on campuses has declined in recent decades—despite spikes during the first Reagan and Obama campaigns. But that lack of enthusiasm for politics again reflects a broader social trend. Most Americans are deeply disenchanted with politics. Younger Americans believe that the U.S. government has become dysfunctional and polarized. The young might choose to effect social change by working with NGOs rather than working for government, but that is about the mechanism not the goal. And given the state of politics, the bureaucracy of government, and the intrusions of a hyperactive media, surely they are being rational, maybe even wise.
Perhaps the most striking result from the HERI survey involves the broadest issue: the number of incoming freshmen who consider “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” essential or very important has plummeted from 86 percent in 1967 to 45 percent in 2013. That number is probably what Brooks, Deresiewicz, and others are describing in richer detail in their portrayals of college campuses today. And it makes them worried about the present and nostalgic for an earlier age.
I understand the nostalgia. Today’s students don’t seem as animated by big arguments as generations of the past did. They don’t make big speeches about grand philosophical issues. They don’t stay up late arguing about Nietzsche or Marx or Tolstoy. But that is part of the tenor of the times, something students reflect rather than create. When I was growing up, the Cold War was raging, and that meant there was a great contest of ideas taking place around the world. People wondered whether countries such as India would go capitalist, communist, or something in between. These political ideas mattered to people—young and old—and had huge consequences. And the political ideas, in turn, rested on large philosophical ideas about the nature of human beings and societies. I arrived at college in 1982, which, it turned out, coincided with the last gasp of the ideological battle that had dominated the twentieth century. Ronald Reagan had come to power and had called the Soviet Union an evil empire. The Soviets were still on the march in much of the Third World. Communism and capitalism were still ideas in battle around the world.
My friends and I would sit around in coffee shops and passionately debate the American nuclear buildup, the proxy war in Central America, Reagan’s and Thatcher’s policies. The divisions were deep, the answers were unknown, and the consequences were believed to be huge. In 1983, ABC aired a television movie called The Day After, dramatizing what life in America would look like in the wake of a nuclear war. It ran for two hours in prime time and was followed by an interview of then secretary of state George Shultz and a long discussion including Henry Kissinger, Elie Weisel, Carl Sagan, William Buckley, and Robert McNamara. For weeks afterward, people talked about the movie and the politics and ethics involved in making it. College students were deeply engaged by these kinds of events. They marched by the thousands over the divestment campaign against South Africa, American support for the contras in Nicaragua, and the nuclear freeze. But it all emanated from that central philosophical-political contest of ideas between communism and capitalism, Leninism and democracy.
We live in a very different age today, one in which there are fewer grand ideological debates with great consequences. It is inconceivable that anything like The Day After would be made, let alone trigger much discussion. Islamic terrorism is a security threat and did provoke some debate after 9/11, but it has limited potency and certainly has no chance of seducing a non-Muslim country. Even in Muslim countries, jihadists have to resort to terror precisely because they can convince only a small band of extremists of the strength of their ideas. They pose a threat but not an ideological threat. We have noisy partisanship in Washington, but over fairly routine political differences. On issues, both parties are actually much closer than they were thirty or forty years ago. As a result, our youth are not very ideological. They combine a mix of impulses—capitalist, socially liberal, supportive of social welfare, but uncomfortable with bureaucracy and regulation. It doesn’t quite add up to a passionate political philosophy. And certainly, it doesn’t take them to the barricades.
Our age is defined by capitalism, globalization, and technology. The trends changing life come from those forces—powering a new information revolution that creates new industries overnight, pushing the frontiers of computer learning, changing medicine in fundamental ways, allowing billions to rise in China and India, and altering the structures of economic, political, and social power everywhere. The icons of the age are entrepreneurs, technologists, and businesspeople. Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are far more important symbols than any politician today, and they occupy the space that iconic political figures did in earlier eras. The young reflect today’s realities. Their lives are more involved with these economic and technological forces than with ideology and geopolitics. And that means there is less scope for grand theorizing, fewer intense late-night bull sessions, less stirring eloquence at the student forums and political unions. It’s a new world, and the young know it.
But is this so bad? Are the issues that students today think about less important than those of war and peace? Are their heroes inferior to those of past ages? The geeky culture of the technology era is less conspicuously interested in ideas than Cold War society was, with its great statesmen and philosophers. But is it any worse? Consider Bill Gates, perhaps too old now to be sexy but certainly the iconic figure of this age. A technology entrepreneur and businessman, Gates was one of the first larger-than-life private figures in contemporary America. He is informal, brainy, merit oriented, and seemingly uninterested in showing off his wealth. On the whole, these are great values to transmit. Gates is also deeply interested in ideas that range from science to economics to education. His speeches and blog posts are filled with discussions of books, including arguments, analyses, and data about them. His kind of wonkery may not look like a grand exercise in philosophy, but he is actively engaged with important ideas that could change the world.
More important, his main handiwork now, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, sees its central mission as saving the largest number of human lives it can, no matter where they live, what color their skin is, or what passport they carry. In other words, it is built on an idea, that all human life is of equal value, something only a few charities believe in or act on. This might once have been considered a Christian idea—that we are all equal in God’s eyes—but Gates has translated it into a secular one, and he is giving away the world’s largest fortune in service of it. His friend Warren Buffett, the second-richest man in America, is giving away most of his wealth to the same cause—without asking for any credit, not even to have his name put on the foundation’s door. (That is surely an act that bears some similarity to Marshall’s modesty.)
In his writings and talks, David Brooks emphasizes his concern that the young lack a language about virtue today. They are, he believes, “morally inarticulate.” And it’s true that we don’t use words like honorable, noble, and virtuous much these days, but surely that is how Gates’s and Buffett’s actions should be described. They are examples of people who have been moved to take large, important actions out of deep convictions, ideas, and values—out of a philosophy of life and a commitment to those ideas. Their model is surely as inspiring as any statesman or general of the past who spoke in lofty tones about good and evil, honor and sacrifice.
Not everyone can do what Gates and Buffett are doing. College students today search for morality and the meaning of life in different ways than in prior ages, as with any new generation, especially in times of tremendous change. They are more incremental and practical. They seek truth, but perhaps through quieter avenues than the heroic ones of the past. They try to combine their great urges with a good life.
The HERI survey data show that the objective most important to students, besides making money, is raising a family. That number has been remarkably stable over the years, rising somewhat, and is now around 75 percent. It’s a bourgeois concern. But is there really something soulless about trying to make a living, create a home, and raise a family? One of the higher achievements of the liberal democratic project is surely that people today can spend less time worrying about revolution and war and focus instead on building a private sphere within which they can find meaning, fulfillment, and happiness. I remember reading once about a judge in South Africa who spoke to American college students. She contrasted the high-stakes politics in her country—the breakdown of apartheid, the birth of a new country—with the trivia she read about in American newspapers. And she concluded by fervently hoping that one day her country would be normal enough to have its papers filled with trivia.
There are plenty of challenges abroad and at home, injustice and imbalances that need to be corrected and reformed. But there are also those times and places where people are lucky enough that private virtues might be cultivated. As John Adams famously wrote during the American Revolution, “I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.” So maybe today they’re writing apps rather than studying poetry, but that’s an adjustment for the age.
These are not the sorts of ambitions that have people rallying to the ramparts and declaiming in purple prose, but they are still real and authentic and important. And they are worth a brief defense, which is what I have attempted here. This much I will concede: Because of the times we live in, all of us, young and old, do not spend enough time and effort thinking about the meaning of life. We do not look inside of ourselves enough to understand our strengths and weaknesses, and we do not look around enough—at the world, in history—to ask the deepest and broadest questions. The solution surely is that, even now, we could all use a little bit more of a liberal education.