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"Where did you go to college?" someone asks you casually.
Perhaps they're curious about you, but they might also want to pigeonhole you into some ill-conceived pecking-order rooted on a vague, but broadly accepted, mostly unchallenged, and hardly exact scale of collegiate prestige ― or lack of it. (On its cover and within its pages, U.S. News and World Report touts its annual college ranking as "definitive," but its editors must know that they don't come close to matching the thoroughness and accuracy with which Sports Illustrated annually ranks football and basketball teams.)
Not everyone assumes that a degree from a top-rated college on that questionable scale counts for anything in determining your worth, but many do. Many prospective employers who should know better will hire or not hire you, depending on the college from which you graduated. The same prospective employers, though, rarely consider whether or not you learned anything worthwhile, regardless of where you went to college.
Judging people by the college they attended is of course as stupid as judging them by what their parents do for a living, or what ethnic group into which they were born and raised, or ― ridiculous and utterly trivial ― what fraternity or sorority or secret society they were invited (or not invited) to join during their undergrad days. The presumed prestige of your college, your GPA, the prominence of the person who wrote a recommendation for you, or your frat affiliation are only the sketchiest details about you. Still, some people can and will judge you on these points ― limited as they are ― which reveals more about their judgments than it does about you.
Someone else may ask about the score you made on an acclaimed and trusted test, figuring as many do that the test score is infallible proof of your ability. That test score only shows how clever you were in answering the questions correctly on the day of the test. It doesn't show whether you are trustworthy, dependable, or if you conduct yourself honorably. Nor does it show all that you learned during the courses you endured and the countless all-nighters you spent studying and working on term papers and group projects that you had to complete to the satisfaction of your professors so you could earn your degree.
If the test score indicates what a person learned in college, then why do prospective test-takers enroll in cram courses designed to help them goose up their scores on that test? It's a poor use of time to scheme how to trick out a test score or a grade with which to impress others, even if some consider your GPA more important than the work you did to get it.
The lasting qualities about you aren't testable anyway. What really matters is the value you impart to others and to the world through your good work, and for that, it's not where you went to college but what you did while you were there.
College is an ideal place where students can cultivate good habits of work and study through reading and writing and attending lectures by learned people. A good college gives its students opportunities to engage in serious discussions, not just with their professors but also with their fellow classmates through which they can enhance their capacities to listen carefully and think clearly.
A college education should infect students with the desire to pursue worthy perception and lofty goals in their lifelong journeys. These pursuits demand they be honest with themselves and continue to study and question everything long after they've left college and strive as best they can to make the world better for everyone, traits a decent college will help them develop ― regardless of its ranking.
If they carry on day-to-day with these lessons, they will live the best possible lives they can live, and this is why people should go to college.
Lyman McLallen is a professor in the College of English at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
