A local journalist recently contacted my wife to ask her about the value of a college degree in theatre.  The impetus behind this is a recent report on The Daily Beast of The 13 Most Useless Majors.  Coming in at #2 on the list was a major in Theatre.  So Beki was contacted, being a theatre professional, to offer her thoughts on whether or not a major in theatre had value.  I thought it was an intriguing discussion, so I’m venturing my opinion as well.  

First off, lest my credentials to comment on the subject be questioned, I must point out a few things relative to the original article.  I hold a BFA in their #2 most worthless degree category, an MDiv in their #6, and I began my undergrad as a major in #11 - towards which I earned almost enough credits for a minor.  I have serious interests, although not degrees, in #7, #9, and #12.  Also, I plan to get a doctorate in #6 as well.  So I’d say I’ve got a dog in this fight.

First of all, I seriously question the premise of this whole discussion.  What makes a major useless?  According to the original article, the criteria was: “Recent graduate employment, Experienced graduate employment, Recent graduate earnings, Experienced graduate earnings, Projected growth in total number of jobs from 2010–2020.”  What is unsaid is the underlying assumption that the career into which one enters and the major one achieves in undergraduate college education are necessarily directly linked.  And I concede that such a paradigm is the purported norm.  However, in my experience, such an assumption is far from safe.  I know very few friends, regardless of what their undergraduate major was, who are working in a job that is a direct result of their undergraduate education.  One friend is a banker who majored in secondary education, another is a minister who majored in finance, and yet another is a cop who majored in communications.  This list is not exhaustive, but it makes my point.  Assuming that someone who majored in theatre has a worthless degree if they are not employed in professional theatre is as flawed an assumption as any other major being a necessary direct link with a person’s resulting job or career.

Really, isn’t that whole idea a large part of the Occupy outrage?  There’s a collective disconnect, rightly or wrongly, between our society’s pervasive narrative that young people should go to college, study hard, take out loans, and they’ll have a place in professional society waiting for them to reward their labors when they’re done on the one hand, and the reality that such a system is a flimsy bill of goods on the other.  Education has been reduced to part of the American syllogism that is supposed to promise contentment and financial reward.  It is not, as it has been in the past regarded, the expansion and adornment of the mind, the exercise and extension of our humanity, and the playground wherein we learn in a broad sense who we are in the world and how we fit in.  We are awakening to the knowledge that education and career are not as directly linked as we had been told, and therefore education must have value beyond the mathematical equation to which it has been reduced.

After all, it is widely acknowledged that the entry point to many careers in America today is “an undergraduate degree.”  It really doesn’t matter so much what the focus is, most questionnaires that are interested in such information only pose a barrier to entry as identifying the “highest level of academic achievement,” not necessarily a specific degree.  The true American pastime, marketing, has long identified “higher education” as a status symbol without regard to the focus of that education.  It shows up in every survey I fill out.  In my work in Arts development, I frequently used that information in surveys.  I knew, as do all Arts professionals, that the single-highest indicator of whether or not a person is likely to attend Arts events is the attainment of higher education.  It never matters the focus; the assumption is that the process of achieving higher education brings culture and refinement that inculcates an appreciation for Art in a very particular way.

Even in the absence of an ability to articulate precisely what it is that differentiates a person with higher education from one without, (as, honestly, it is impossible to do with any real consistency since the exceptions almost defy the rule in both directions), it is not a stretch to observe that education of any kind matters in a deep and real way.  Truly, one may be college-educated and be a vapid waste on the landscape of culture, ideas, imagination, altruism, and intellectual pursuits the way one with a degree is expected be otherwise.  Conversely, it is more than possible to have no formal education and be a titan of the above virtues.  I have friends that prove both points whose names I will omit to spare us all.  So as much as a major does not equate with a career, neither does a degree necessarily equate with an education.  Education has value beyond a piece of paper and beyond a specific area of expertise.

All of this is to say that education of any kind matters far beyond the limited scope of metrics that the original article provided.  So on the grounds that a degree in theatre is worthless because it does not equate strongly with a career in professional theatre, (or at least a rigorous, promising, and lucrative one), I find the argument of the article wanting.

In the next part of this series, I’ll look at the specific ways that an education in theatre matters in ways not explored by the question that prompted this discussion.

Tomorrow morning, Sunday the 29th, I’ll be preaching at Trinity Presbyterian Church at the 11:00am service.  The texts for the day will be the 23rd Psalm and Jesus’ discourse on The Good Shepherd from John 10.  If you’re in town, we’d love to see you there!  Below is an excerpt from the sermon:

“When Jesus says he is the sheep gate, he’s not being as abstract as it may seem.  In biblical times, the sheep fold was an enclosure where the sheep slept at night.  It had walls, usually of stone, built up either in a circle or in a circular shape off the side of a home.  It was open at one point for the sheep to enter and exit.  This was the sheep gate.  At night, the shepherd would literally use his body to enclose the fold.  He would lie down in the gap so that anything that wanted to come in would have to go through him.  So when Jesus says he is the gate, he does not just mean so in the abstract sense of being the channel through which abundant life flows, although he certainly means that too; he also means that with his very life and its sacrifice, he will protect his sheep…

…I know what it is like to be a lost sheep.  Thanks in no small part to my experiences growing up, it is my go-to metaphor for the sense of disconnectedness that I often feel.  When I feel far from God, when I do that which I know I should not do, when I can’t seem to figure out what it is that I should do, when I feel alone and adrift with a purposeless sense of existential despair, as I then hit my knees in prayer it is the Good Shepherd that I pray for.  I pray to hear the voice of the one who knows me calling my name.  I pray for the sure knowledge that there awaits for me a fold, a family, belonging, still waters, and green pastures…”