Why Is University Education Important Beyond Getting a Job? A High School Teacher’s Perspective
Last October, I sat across from Mrs. Herrera at my scuffed classroom conference table, a half-cold cup of chamomile tea between us, listening as she twisted her wedding band around her finger. Her son Jake, a senior in my AP US History class, had already told me he was set on majoring in history. Mrs. Herrera got right to the point: I know he’s good at it, but what’s the point if it doesn’t land him a steady, well-paying job right out of school? I grew up scraping by, I just want him to be secure. I’ve had this conversation dozens of times over my 12 years teaching high school. Most parents ask it, in one way or another, and it’s not an unreasonable question. But what I end up explaining, when I can, is that there’s a lot university gives your kid that has nothing to do with the job they’ll take after graduation.
Last June, Mia, who graduated from my class 7 years ago, stopped by my room to drop off a box of old textbooks she didn’t need anymore. She majored in classics in college – most people told her that was a waste of time, that she’d never get a job with it. Today she works as a communications lead for a local non-profit that builds and restores community parks in low-income neighborhoods across the state. She told me last year, she had to write a 20-page proposal to the city council asking for funding to add 12 new public drinking fountains across west Detroit. The skill that made that proposal strong, she said, came from her sophomore year seminar on Roman public life. She’d spent 3 months pulling together scattered sources from poetry, city records, and pottery fragments to argue that access to free public water was a core part of how Roman politicians built trust with working-class voters. That same skill, connecting a small, current need to a bigger story of what people owe each other, is what got her proposal funded. No one was hiring her for that job because she could name all the Roman emperors. They hired her because she’d spent four years practicing that kind of thinking, on topics that felt useless at the time.
Another thing that doesn’t show up on graduate salary reports is the practice of being around people who aren’t like you. Jake has grown up in this suburb, gone to school with the same 200 kids since kindergarten, works after school at the grocery store on Main Street where most customers are just like his family. At university, he’ll likely share a bathroom with a kid who grew up in a homeless shelter in Portland, go to group projects with a woman who served 5 years in the Army before going back to school, debate politics at 2 a.m. with someone who votes very differently than he does. That’s not just some abstract feel-good lesson. It’s practice. It’s learning how to disagree about something that matters to you both, then still turn in your group project on time, still borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor when you run out. I’ve had former students tell me that skill is what made them better parents, better friends, better coaches for their kid’s rec league team. It matters more, in a lot of daily moments, than the salary you make.
University also gives your kid time to test out what they care about when the stakes are still low. Right out of high school, most kids don’t know what they want to do for the rest of their life. I had a student named Tyler who started pre-med because his dad was a doctor and that’s what everyone expected. He failed organic chemistry twice, switched to education, and now he’s a beloved high school biology teacher 20 minutes from here. If he hadn’t gone to university, he might have spent 10 years working toward a medical career he hated before he worked up the courage to switch, when he had a mortgage and kids to support. Four years of exploring different classes and interests is a gift that’s hard to get later in life.
I don’t tell parents this to dismiss their worries. I get wanting your kid to be able to pay rent and afford health insurance. Jobs matter, and there’s no shame in prioritizing that. But there are small, low-effort things you can do to make sure your kid gets those extra benefits from university, even if you’re still focused on long-term job prospects. First, instead of opening every conversation about college with “What job do you think that degree will get you?” try opening with “What class are you most excited to take for that major?” It shifts the conversation from only the end goal to what your kid will actually be doing for four years, and it helps you see what they’ll gain beyond a job title. Second, when you’re scrolling through college rankings and salary data, take five minutes to look at the list of student clubs and lower-level elective classes the school offers. If your kid loves birding, or drawing, or talking about old cars, see if there’s a group or class for that, even if it has nothing to do with their intended major. Those are the spaces where they’ll learn those soft, unspoken skills that don’t show up on a transcript. Third, if you’re really nervous about a major that doesn’t have a clear career path, ask your kid to email two or three recent graduates of that program from the school they’re looking at. Most graduates will answer a 3-sentence email honestly, and you’ll hear more about what they actually got out of the degree than any college brochure will tell you.
A week after my conference with Mrs. Herrera, Jake stopped me by my classroom door after school. He had a beat-up library copy of The Guns of August tucked under his arm, and he told me his grandpa, who was a union organizer at the auto plant down the highway, had told him stories about sitting down on the line for better pay when he was 19. Jake wants to study that history, to write about those workers, because no one in his family ever got to do that before. I told him that even if he never becomes a professor, even if he ends up working in an office or driving a truck or teaching high school like me, that knowing that story, that getting to spend four years digging into something that matters to him, that’s not nothing.
Last month, Mrs. Herrera came to our school’s annual history fair, where Jake presented his project on the 1937 Flint sit-down strike. She stood in the back while he talked, and when he was done, she pulled out her phone and took a picture of his tri-fold poster board. She didn’t say much to me after, but she smiled when I told her how well Jake had done. Jake’s still waiting on acceptance letters right now. I don’t know if he’ll get into his first-choice school, I don’t know what job he’ll end up taking 10 years from now. What I do know is that whatever he does, the things he learns in university that have nothing to do with his job will be with him, every day.
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