If you don’t know, synchronicity is the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection, per my Google search. When the universe sends you a message, I believe it behooves you to listen and reflect. And if you’re me, you write a piece for the Standard-Examiner about it.

Last week, I had some synchronicity in my professional life. Thursday found me on KSL in the morning discussing a new degree in Ireland that trains people to be influencers. In that conversation, Dave Noriega asked what was the point of college if they were doing ridiculous degrees like “influencer.” Friday found me at a conference called “What is an Educated Person?” and a speaker rightly pointed out that, given we’ve been having this conference for 26 years, one would think we would have the answer by now.

The thing about synchronicity is that it happens with “no discernible causal connection.” I was not supposed to be on KSL on Thursday; I was filling in for someone who was out. I attended the conference because a friend asked me to and, to be honest, I was not super thrilled to be there. But the answers to Dave’s questions were there at that conference. The universe put me right where I was supposed to be.

Dave was asking what quite a few people in the country have been asking: What is the value of a college degree? Back in March, a Wall Street Journal poll found that 56% of Americans believe a college degree is not worth the cost. According to the Cultural Currents Institute, Google searches for “is college worth it” have increased 1,400% over the last 20 years, hitting an all-time high in September of this year; Utah ranks seventh in the nation for the search.

The keynote speaker for the “What is an Educated Person?” conference was Richard Detweiler, who has a book out called “The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs: Lives of Consequence, Inquiry, and Accomplishment.” Detweiler interviewed 1,000 people aged 25-65 to see what they got out of their college education. His insights were interesting and resonated with me. Get the book, read it, if you want to wade into the weeds. But here I want to do the 30-foot view of my takeaway: College education has a purpose to contribute to the common good, regardless of what specialty you find yourself in.

In 1787, the Congress that was operating under the Articles of Confederation in the United States wrote a policy to be used as the plan to expand to the Pacific, which they based on the work of Thomas Jefferson’s Ordinance of 1784. For the record, I am not tone deaf to all the issues; this is the document that was used to further manifest destiny and resulted in the forced displacement of countless indigenous people and it was based on the work of an enslaver. The Northwest Ordinance forbade slavery and said that “the utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent.” As has been true of America always, we do not always live up to the ideals.

I want to focus on another ideal in the Northwest Ordinance: “religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” The reason we don’t see anything about territories in the Constitution, adopted the same year, is that the founders knew the Northwest Ordinance was what they wanted and built into that policy the ideal of a general education. The answer to Dave’s question is that the purpose of education is so that America’s people can contribute to the common good and be happy.

While I struggled to answer Dave’s question on Thursday, the universe gave me the knowledge and input to answer it on Friday, and so I share it with you here. An influencer degree is adorable, but what we want is influencers who have a breadth of knowledge to draw from, and a college general education gives you that. We need specialists, the world needs experts, but we do not want or need our common good run exclusively by people who only know one thing super well, so those people need the general education that embeds a specialization in a broad wealth of knowledge.

Leah Murray is a Brady Distinguished Presidential Professor of Political Science and the director of the Olene S. Walker Institute of Politics & Public Service at Weber State University.

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