What’s the Point of Higher Education? – Thursday, September 5

Please join us for an in-person round table over lunch on what’s the point of higher education at noon on Thursday, September 5, at Landmark Center in St. Paul.

Should not education give students a sense of personal identity, an understanding of social harmony, a foundation for moral conduct and the exploration of that which cannot be known?

In the minds of most students and their parents, higher education has become unfulfilling and uninspiring because it has diminished its purpose from teaching critical thinking, virtue, a national/human unifying narrative, and a glorified vocational school.  A real teacher would never commit suicide, as Socrates did, over the teaching of welding or finance.

There are a number of headwinds troubling higher education today, such as cost of tuition, operating in a market without paying attention to the differences among demand, needs and wants and the inability to put first things first.

To the degree that higher education does not fully address these three imperatives, it lives from hand to mouth.

Some discussion starter questions include:

-How shall I come to know anything?

-How shall I conduct my life?

-How shall I be governed?

Please feel free to bring some of your own.

Registration and lunch will begin at 11:30 am.

Cost to attend is $20, which you can pay at the door.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last between an hour and hour and a half.