Long-Run in a Short-Run World

At the new student convocation each year, we acknowledge that the content presented to students in any given year will be replaced by new understanding in later years. Hence, if they are to prepare themselves for the long life ahead they need to learn how to self-teach. Our goal is not to prep them for their first job, but to prepare them for a life.

There is currently a large mismatch between much public discourse about higher education and the discussions within universities about their roles in the society. The public discourse is influenced by legislatures and elected government officials intervening in university organization, the lack of economic rewards of various college majors, and the lack of immediate applicability of various research products. The internal discussions within universities focus on supporting faculty scholarship, refreshing curricula to reflect the synthesis of various knowledge domains, innovating in pedagogical approaches using new technologies, and aligning research programs to pressing global problems. In an important way, external vs. internal discussions clash on short-run and long-run perspectives.

Universities are one of the few institutions in a society whose sole function is the ongoing search for truth. “Truth” refers to the discovery of the mechanisms underlying the natural world, the understanding of social and psychological influences on human behavior and organization, and the creation of new text, objects, and performances that unlock insights into humanity. These are all unceasing quests. The destination is never fully reached. Each development builds on prior ones. While the goal is to get closer to the truth, we are fully aware that it may fully be revealed.

The short-run, long-run conflict might be most obvious in external discussions of the arts and humanities. Some politicians deride various majors. Several institutions are planning to cut whole departments or programs. First-job income level appears to be the single most important criterion of evaluation. But from the university perspective, colleges, especially liberal arts institutions, are more than just prep schools for the first job.

In several studies, the skills that employers value from humanities graduates have been found to include the ability to communicate both in oral and written presentation, to synthesize complex information, to critically assess alternatives interpretations; to creatively solve problems, and to feel genuine empathy for others. Many of these are capacities are indirect effects of the scholarly methods of the humanities, probably derived from deep reading, entertaining different interpretations of the texts and objects, and production of text offering persuasive arguments.

But how does this translate into income? Here, too, the short-run, long-run contrast is huge. One report, about liberal arts undergraduate experiences, defines the “return on investment” as a function of the net price of college compared to post-graduation earnings. In the first ten years after graduation, graduates of liberal arts colleges do indeed earn less than those from other schools (relative to their total education costs). However, over a forty year period after graduation, they make more. Of course, there remain differences among majors in a liberal arts in lifetime earnings, but the short-run focus seems to ignore the value of liberal education’s expose students from all majors to the ways of thinking of the arts and humanities. That is, in the long-run the society rewards the capacities that result from the rigor of the arts and humanities. It is an easy hypothesis that these skills are those that make for a good manager and strategic leader. These are jobs that require both the skills of the first job and the skills that are less job specific, but important for the productivity of groups.

Why is long-run perspectives appropriate in higher education? Current entering students are likely to live to be over 100 years. They will experience not just multiple jobs, but multiple careers, as societal and technological change disrupt occupational families. They will need to retool. The critical thinking and synthesis-making capacities inherent in the humanities can facilitate that retooling.