“First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach a large economic reward to it that usually has nothing to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “B.A.”
Charles Murray in an arresting piece on America’s absurd, outmoded, socioeconomically cruel university system (thanks dad!). While at Bard I’d not have understood his points; my time at LSU illustrated his thesis: for many students, the B.A. is an artificial goal, often unattainable and usually unrelated to their subsequent careers; it is, in most cases, a token reward for waiting and surviving in the back of the classroom for a few years while sinking deep into debt. Perhaps its primary function is to communicate that one was able to afford not to work for some years: a class badge.
