The End of the English Major
I&#x27;ve wrestled with this since I graduated in &#x27;08 with an English degree from a shit school and far, far too much debt. Still, you can&#x27;t put a price on what I learned. My thinking changed fundamentally. The world opened up. It&#x27;s a rich field, connected to history, politics, philosophy, and more. I had wonderful professors and the epiphanies I had in their classes I will cherish forever. Life without art is not really life.<p>After I graduated, I was in so much debt I became suicidally depressed. I thought my future was over. (I ended up learning to program and got a job doing that, instead.) The outlook that reduces education in the abstract to its ROI is bleak; the refusal to descend into the real world and consider the economics of education is naive and useless.<p>I&#x27;ve given a lot of thought about what I&#x27;ll advise my son to do, assuming he listens to me. It&#x27;s true that he could always read any books in his free time, but that would leave out the discussion, writing, and instruction, which are indispensable. I do NOT want him going into a horrible amount of debt for it, or miss out on a career that will actually support him. But I want so much for him to have something like the mental and cultural enrichment I got to have, whose effects are hard to even explain because they&#x27;ve touched every part of my life. I don&#x27;t have an answer yet.