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Good morning. We’ve been hearing a lot about degrees that are considered a waste of money – in that they don’t lead to highly skilled jobs or further study within 15 months of graduation. Higher education has always been an area of controversy. Maybe that’s because it’s a matter of faith: that’s to say, it invests towards outcomes that aren’t always certain.

Once the debate was around whether education was a drawing-out from students what they already had within them, or an instilling into them of wisdom to which only the teacher had access. Now it seems the question is around whether higher education is a product to be purchased or a guild to be entered.
Once the notion was that society invested in young people, trusting that such investment would benefit the culture as a whole. Now the thinking is that society enables young people to invest in themselves, trusting that such investment strengthens the economy. Hence a degree’s value now lies in a graduate’s ability to find a highly skilled job.

The term ‘degree’ derives from the notion of a step on a journey. It refers to a steady process of acquiring knowledge and skill, and eventually wisdom. I recall speaking to a university careers’ officer. She told me, ‘Most students will spend the majority of their lives working with things that haven’t been invented yet.’ And that was before we appreciated that artificial intelligence is going to change many jobs beyond recognition within ten years.

For that careers officer, the knowledge and skill the curriculum offered were a means to an end. The end was the wisdom that would enable the student, later in life, to adapt to new circumstances, new technologies, and new challenges with facility and imagination. University was the country’s investment in fostering people of character who would be ready to face whatever the future would bring.

There was once a teacher who called twelve students to study with him for three years. They gained knowledge and learned skills. We’re not told what fees they paid, or if they complained about the accommodation. But they were told it wouldn’t be easy. They were sent on internships. They gained wisdom through challenge and example. Jesus prepared his disciples not for a specific task, but to face opportunities and encounters no one had experienced before. He was expanding their imaginations to embrace concepts like the kingdom of God, resurrection and eternal life.

A university is a community that prepares people to live in the universe. That has to mean earning a living. But it must mean more than that. We’ll know our degrees are value for money not by our starting salaries, but by whether they’ve expanded our imaginations to face challenges no one has encountered before.

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