The Education We Forgot to Value

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

When I think about what a well-rounded education used to mean, I think about freedom. The word liberal comes from liberalis, meaning “free person.” That’s what a liberal arts education was supposed to do. It was meant to make you free. Free in thought. Free in judgment. Free in how you see the world and your place in it.

It wasn’t designed to train you for a single job. It was meant to train your mind for every job and for the rest of your life. You studied history, literature, science, art, and philosophy not to fill a checklist but to understand how people think and why they act the way they do. You learned context and empathy. You learned how to see bullshit coming from a mile away.

That kind of education used to mean something. Now, we’ve let it be defined by numbers, debt, and slogans about “return on investment.” We’ve stripped the soul out of it.

A liberal arts education teaches you to wrestle with complexity. It forces you to sit in rooms with people who think differently than you. You debate. You listen. You get pissed off. You rethink things. That tension is the point. It’s how you grow.

In college, you can’t always pick who sits next to you. You get exposed to arguments that don’t fit your worldview. You learn that not everyone grew up like you or sees the world the same way. You learn to sit with discomfort instead of running from it. That’s what makes you stronger. That’s where judgment and humility come from.

That’s also why the liberal arts were built into the first two years of a college education in the United States. Those early classes were the base layer for everything else. You took writing, literature, philosophy, history, math, and science before you ever touched your major. It didn’t matter if you were going into business, biology, or engineering, you had to learn how to think, argue, and communicate first. Those first two years weren’t filler. They were the foundation. They were the reason American graduates could adapt, change careers, and actually connect ideas across disciplines. That’s what made our system different from the rest of the world.

The problem is that in the United States, we’ve turned higher education into a fucking business. Students became consumers. Classes became products. The question stopped being “What kind of person will this help me become?” and turned into “What kind of job will this get me?” That’s when things went off the fucking rails.

The cost of college is out of control. Debt is crushing people before they even start their lives. Parents want to know that the money they’re putting into tuition will pay off. I understand that completely. I don’t blame anyone for worrying about that. The system is built to scare you into thinking the only safe choice is a major that leads straight to a paycheck.

But that fear has made us stupid.

We’ve convinced an entire generation that reading deeply, writing clearly, or understanding history isn’t worth it unless it comes with a high salary. That’s fucking insane. The world is falling apart because people can’t think, can’t argue honestly, can’t listen to opposing views without losing their shit. The liberal arts were built to train the mind against that kind of fragility.

In other countries, they still seem to understand that education is a public good, not a private transaction. Germany offers low-cost or even free college to everyone, including foreigners. Britain has its own traditions of liberal education through Oxford and Cambridge, though they focus more on specialized study. Japan and other Asian countries are starting to adopt American-style liberal arts programs because they see value in it.

In places like Germany and Norway, you don’t hear people mocking students for majoring in philosophy or art history. The cost isn’t a death sentence, so people can study what gives their life meaning. Here in the U.S., we act like studying anything that isn’t directly monetizable is a moral failure. We punish curiosity with debt.

It wasn’t always like this. In the early days, college was mostly for the wealthy. If you were rich or connected, you could afford to spend years reading Greek philosophy and debating ethics because someone else was doing the work that paid for your life. A degree wasn’t about employability. It was a status symbol.

Then came the GI Bill, public universities, and community colleges. Higher education opened up to everyone. For a while, it worked. We built an educated middle class. We gave people access to something sacred. But as the money dried up, universities became brands. They built stadiums instead of libraries. They sold prestige instead of purpose.

And now, what do most people care about when it comes to college? The sports teams. The rankings. The merch. Parents wear the sweatshirts and tailgate like it’s a religion. Students go thousands of dollars into debt to sit in the student section for four years. It’s wild to me how the thing that gets the most attention is a scoreboard.

Don’t get me wrong. I love sports. Baseball is in my blood. But when the university’s biggest source of pride is how its football team did on Saturday, something’s fucking broken. College isn’t supposed to be a theme park for tribal identity. It’s supposed to be a place that builds citizens who can think clearly, act ethically, and engage with the world.

If all that’s left is school spirit and a degree that costs as much as a house, then we’ve gutted the whole fucking purpose.

I don’t think the liberal arts are some luxury for dreamers. I think they’re a necessity. They’re what teach us how to see multiple sides of truth, to question authority, to resist lies, to find meaning in chaos. They give us the tools to live, not just to work.

So yeah, the cost has to change. We need to rethink how we fund education. We need to stop treating universities like corporations. We need to give young people the chance to think without going broke. But we also need to defend the heart of it. We can’t just train people for jobs and call that education.

Because if we lose the liberal arts, we lose the ability to understand each other. We lose the memory of how we got here. We lose the imagination to build something better.

A well-rounded education used to mean you were prepared for life, not just for work. We’ve lost sight of that. It’s time to find it again.