Beyond flipping burgers

The worth of graduate schools comes from raising up those who can then train others to more faithfully seek the good, the true, and the beautiful.

These days, one is hard-pressed to hear anything positive about going to graduate school, especially in the humanities. You’ll get endless friendly elbow jabs accompanied by remarks about how a dissertation on some niche topic after years of studying will only qualify you to flip burgers more pretentiously (artificial intelligence’s ascendancy within the labor workforce notwithstanding, of course). With a dwindling academic job market, few seem keen to voluntarily whittle away a large part of one’s precious young adult life on something that will rarely produce any material profit.

What is needed is a reevaluation of the purpose of a graduate school education. David Brooks’ recent sweeping essay on how the Ivy League has ultimately failed America explores viewing an elite college degree as purely a guaranteed pass into the highest echelons of society. By encouraging misguided notions of achievement, the meritocracy itself has turned out to be a grand fiction. The consequences for graduate studies are just as clear. Pursuing a top-notch doctorate, let alone a Master of Arts, with the impression that it will serve as a passport to inevitable success and academic acclaim will quickly become a poor set of laurels to rest upon. The emperor’s lack of clothes won’t be helped by anybody imitating him.

The only path forward for ensuring the future of graduate schools is securing their foundations upon “truth-seeking” above all else. If graduate programs operate as nothing more than factories for churning out credentialed pontificators, then the rate of campus subletting and recreational repurposing for the universities that house them is unlikely to abate.

But things don’t have to be this way.

What Robert P. George and Cornel West have called “the currency of truth-seeking discourse by offering reasons, marshaling evidence, and making arguments” is the lifeblood of genuine, original scholarship. As they go on to say, truth-seeking “contributes vitally to the maintenance of a milieu in which people feel free to speak their minds, consider unpopular positions, and explore lines of argument that may undercut established ways of thinking.”

Graduate schools and their students can and must be at the front lines of promoting academic inquiry unfettered by the pressures of any form of ideological conformity. By allowing for spaces completely dedicated to enriching society through the cultivation of intellectual pursuits for their own sake, those from all walks of life can come to take part in conversations that get at the grain of our eternal purpose, keeping our hearts and minds in step with all that we were truly made for.

Thankfully, opportunities continue to emerge on the horizon for those wanting to further this vision for the next generation with their own careers. The University of Florida’s Hamilton Center and the University of Austin are two bright spots currently leading the charge for the renewal of academic freedom at the heart of higher education. The Chase Center at Ohio State University will soon be open for undergraduate students, with similar initiatives at many other institutions to follow. Thus, we need more scholars who will promote classical ideals and texts.

Of the need for grill cooks, there will, at least for now, be no end. But should that burger-flipping come about with a greater awareness of the cardinal virtues, a dedication to the Western canon, and a deeper awareness of what makes us human, it is because there are still enough authentic teachers in halls of learning, both old and new. In that light, the real reason for going to graduate school in the first place becomes obvious for all to see. So, what are you waiting for?