The Post-Journal

                 Is College Important Anymore?

LOCAL COMMENTARIES

OCT 21, 2023

ROLLAND KIDDER

 There seems to be a growing chorus that a college education isn’t worth it anymore…that the quicker a young person can find a good job the better.

I must tell you up front that I am not in that camp. I come from the “old school,” and believe that there is a lot more to college than just punching a ticket to get a job.

To that end, I enjoyed reading a recent article in the Financial Times titled “University is more than just a springboard to a job.”

I am a case in point. I went to college for four years and got a “Bachelor of Arts” degree in history. Then went to seminary and received a “Bachelor of Divinity” in theology. Then, after spending 3 1/2 years on active duty in the Navy, I went to law school and received a “Doctor of Jurisprudence” degree.

Interestingly, I never ended up being a history teacher, minister, career Naval officer or much of a lawyer. I eventually went into politics full-time in the state legislature, started a natural gas exploration company, then worked as an investment advisor and ended my working career as Executive Director of a non-profit organization.

Okay, I admit that I was a bit “over-educated,” yet, I have always believed that the various levels of formal education I experienced helped me in the long run in wending my way through life. Sometimes life is more of a pilgrimage than a straight line when it comes to making a living.

The Financial Times article did state that “degrees tend to boost earnings,” “open networks that can provide a life-long career advantage,” and help greatly in “critical thinking skills.”

The overall gist of the article was that a university education has benefits beyond monetary benefits or in just being a means or pathway to a good job.

Getting away from home and being out on your own in a university setting helps you grow up. It exposes you to new ideas. Life becomes an open-ended opportunity not just a narrow track. Most often, it will lead to a specialty and a job–but it also will open you up to the bigger world which is out there.

The article concludes with these words: “The value of university is not only about the individual but also public good. Education should help inform citizens, vital in an age of disinformation.”

No, college is not for everyone, but we should also not underestimate its importance and the good it can do. My guidance to my kids was always: “Pursue your dream, and strive to get a college education along the way.” I still believe that is good advice.

We need to work as a society to make college more affordable, yet it will probably always require some personal investment. Despite its cost, as my Dad used to say: “Getting a college education is like incurring a mortgage to buy a home–it is a good debt to have.”

 

When Climate Policy Hits the Food Chain

 There was an interesting article recently in the Financial Times describing the outrage in Ireland when dairy farmers were told that they would have to cull cows from their herds because they are excreting too much nitrogen into the environment—meaning, in other words, that they are producing more manure than is now allowable under European Union regulations.

 The farmers have rebelled as they did in Holland when similar restrictions were being proposed there.

 Maybe, instead of looking at it as a producer’s problem, we should be asking urban dwellers/consumers what they would think about reducing or eliminating dairy products in their diet.  For example, if you live in Amsterdam, Dublin, or perhaps, Manhattan, are you ready to give up your wine and cheese at night for, let’s say, wine with chips and salsa?

 Of course, that still gets us back to agriculture…but it would now be vegetable based--corn and tomatoes instead of dairy and cheese.  Though, then, with less cow manure to help fertilize the fields, we would need more artificial nitrogen-based fertilizer made from natural gas and chemical plants in order to grow the additional corn and tomatoes to do that. 

 And, that means we would need to consume more fossil fuels which everybody says are bad for the environment—which makes you wonder whether forcing farmers in Europe to reduce the size of their dairy herds makes any sense at all in the first place.

 I guess what it points to is that enforcing any kind of climate policy has its limits, especially when it starts affecting our food chain.

 After reading the article, it made me “dig” a little deeper into other environmental policies like carbon capture.  From what I could read, a beautiful, green cornfield near where I live, captures about 3/4ths of a metric ton/acre of carbon dioxide each summer as the corn plants take it out of the air during photosynthesis.

 Compare that to an acre of concrete, masonry buildings in Manhattan which take no carbon dioxide out of the air, but just add to it each and every day.  Maybe to solve the climate crisis, we should just ban people from living in cities where there is little or no green space and no carbon capture going on.

 I doubt that we will get to that.  There are just too many people and too many votes living in the cities to ever get that done.

 Yet, it makes you wonder.  Why should we be putting the onus of cleaning up the planet on dairy farmers and cheese producers?  Is it because there are so few of them?

 Maybe the deep thinkers in places like Brussels, Washington, Albany, etc. who are coming up with all of these ideas need to take a step back and think things through a bit.   I doubt that any of them are ready to give up enjoying the cheese they savor as an hors d’oeuvre before dinner and, who knows, wine could be the next thing to go.  A lot of energy, fertilizer, pest control, etc. goes into viniculture to say nothing of the heat, energy and raw material it takes to make a glass wine bottle.

 And, if we were to ban wine as well as cheese—then we really would have a crisis on our hands!