{"id":17151,"date":"2013-04-21T13:59:23","date_gmt":"2013-04-21T20:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17151"},"modified":"2013-04-22T04:56:50","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T11:56:50","slug":"questioning-the-mission-of-college-frank-brunis-column-in-todays-time-is-worth-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17151","title":{"rendered":"Questioning the Mission of College: Frank Bruni&#8217;s Column in Today&#8217;s Times is Worth Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I think <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/04\/21\/opinion\/sunday\/bruni-questioning-the-missionof-college.html?smid=pl-share\">the piece pretty much speaks for itself<\/a>, but here are a couple of paragraphs that stood out for me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How practical versus idealistic should the approach to college be? I\u2019m somewhat torn, and past columns have reflected that. I\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/04\/29\/opinion\/sunday\/bruni-the-imperiled-promise-of-college.html?ref=frankbruni\">applaud proposals<\/a>\u00a0to give young people better information about how various fields of study match up with the job market and about projected returns on their investments in college. And for students who want college to be an instant pivot into a job with decent pay, a nudge toward certain disciplines makes excellent sense.<\/p>\n<p>But college is about more than that, with less targeted, long-term benefits that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/01\/06\/opinion\/sunday\/bruni-how-to-choose-a-college.html?ref=frankbruni\">aren\u2019t easily captured<\/a>\u00a0by metrics. And some of the reforms being promoted right now lose sight of that and threaten to lessen the value of a degree.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s worth following the links in that quote; each piece raises some important questions. And I applaud the warning with which he closes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I\u2019d sound yet another alarm. Scratch the surface of some of the efforts to reform state universities and you find more than just legitimate qualms about efficiency and demands for accountability. You find the kind of indiscriminate anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism popular among more than a few right-wing conservatives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think the piece pretty much speaks for itself, but here are a couple of paragraphs that stood out for me: How practical versus idealistic should the approach to college be? I\u2019m somewhat torn, and past columns have reflected that. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17151\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17155,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17151\/revisions\/17155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}