The price of a liberal arts education

Though my mom has since loosened her definition of “employable” majors, my choices definitely aren’t on the list. Every time I call home, her basic argument hangs in the air between us. Last week, I called her in raptures while walking out of my three-hour freshman seminar. I rambled excitedly, describing to her the fun I had discussing philosophy with my peers. When I finally paused to take a breath, she interjected with something I’m sure she had been dying to say since I had started talking. “So what exactly did you learn?” she asked impatiently. Thrown off by the question, I spent the rest of the conversation trying to convince her that though the majority of my courses do not have concrete results as in material learned, in a few short weeks, my skills for rhetoric and critical thinking have increased dramatically. She reluctantly conceded my point of view, for the time being at least, but this is not the last time I expect to have this conversation.

I disagree with my mom, but I can understand where she is coming from. In her generation, you went to college mainly so you could get a higher-paying job. You would major in a conventionally useful field such as business or finance to get that desired job. So, to her, majoring in anthropology or any other unorthodox discipline doesn’t fit in with her idea of the path college is supposed to set you on. Majoring in business produced tangible results for my mom. Yet, given the majors I’m currently considering (undecided but definitely something humanities-ish) I’m definitely not headed down that well-trodden path.

I think the underlying point also has to do with cost. Princeton is considered to be one of the best universities in the world; people will do almost anything to get in. But $23,700 for a semester and $48,000 plus for the year? That’s not even counting the numerous little extras like textbooks, the occasional U-Store run and my dearly beloved Starbucks chai lattes. The kinds of resources and opportunities Princeton offers are unparalleled, however. This is one of the reasons my parents encouraged me to come here; they wanted me to get the best undergraduate education and experience possible. Nevertheless, I can see why my mom would be confused. Knowing the costs per course in dollars and cents, it would be a little disquieting to have your daughter call you and prattle on about how she does nothing but debate philosophy in three-fourths of her classes.

By the end of my four years here, I’m hoping to show my mom that despite the lack of tangible results, an A.B. education offers less obvious rewards that make it well worth the cost. After only a couple of weeks, the knock-down-drag-out debates that regularly take place in the majority of my classes have increased my aptitude for rhetoric and strengthened my critical thinking skills. So I already know the education I’m getting here is worth every penny. Between my mom and me, however, the debate about the true value of an A.B. Princeton education has yet to be won.

Kelsey Zimmerman is a freshman from Glen Allen, Virginia. She can be reached at kzimmerm@princeton.edu.