Vartan Gregorian writes in TIME’s Ideas blog about the latest assault on higher education. The philanthropic leader and former president of Brown University contends that Michael Ellsberg’s new volume, The Education of Millionaires, paints a misleading picture of the road to riches without a college degree.
Read the TIME blog.
Ellsberg’s conclusion, writes Gregorian, is that “higher education may sometimes be more a hindrance than a benefit to those seeking to thrive anywhere north of the poverty line.”
The Carnegie Corporation of New York President welcomes the “kind of robust debate about the value of higher education that [Ellsberg’s] book may engender.”
However, Gregorian goes on to caution readers that “what is forgotten in the discussion about dollars and cents is that the purpose of education, whatever its cost or its source, is not simply to enable one to earn a living but to prepare one for living over the course of an entire lifetime with all the ups and downs that come our way. This is particularly true of the liberal arts which, I believe, are the key to endowing students with the perspective for reflection upon the nature and texture of their own lives.”