They’re great, but —
If I had to do it all over again, I might have pursued a graduate degree in classics, but when I look at the, so to speak, degree to which the academy has aggressively pursued a strategy of acreditization monopoly, my hackles rise.
My aunt DR. Lila Gordon, who earned a Ph.d in education in middle age, would recount the words of an advisor, who told her class: “You think you’re the smartest but you’re really just the most persistent!”
Accumulating knowledge–what could be better? The value of the degree, however, depends in large part on the imagination and capabilities of the recipient, and his/her ability to think creatively and independently. Does the graduate degree aid those abilities? Not always.
I was thinking about this again as I read Thomas Frank’s essential and very upsetting new book Listen, Liberal, in which he describes the way that both the Clinton and Obama administrations privileged degree status over competency and above dedication to the public good. In so many cases, the degree-brandishers proved to be fiascos in government.