We have been covering the responses to a book was written by former Secretary of Education, Bill Bennett entitled “Is College Worth It”.

The student editorial board of The Stanford Review says, “Yes”: They also assert that strengthening student exposure to the humanities will increase an already-high return on the investment of a Stanford education.

Former U.S. Secretary of Education under President Reagan, William Bennett, recently published his book Is College Worth It? The book reignites the controversy surrounding the benefits of higher education in an era of rising college costs and a $1 trillion student debt, what many conservatives are calling the “bubble” of higher education. In particular, Bennett argues that only 150 out of America’s 3,500 colleges and universities seem to exhibit “positive returns on investment,” with Stanford University making it to No.4 on this narrow list.

…Yet threatening—or perhaps more conservatively, undermining—the value of a Stanford education is the declining quality of the required liberal arts courses, specifically among the humanities. What started out in the early 20th century as a popular yearlong required course entitled Western Civilization (“Western Civ”) has undergone several transformations beginning in the 1960s, leaving what is now a one-quarter, toe-in-the-water exposure to the deeper ocean of philosophical, historical, and literary inquiry. The program, entitled “Thinking Matters,” is supposed to be an improvement to the unpopular Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) requirement, which remained in effect from 1997 to 2012.Admittedly a bit cheesy, the very name “Thinking Matters” hints at precisely the problem confronting a university which, in popular culture, has become synonymous with Silicon Valley. More specifically, at an educational institution whose comparative advantage lies among the STEM fields, it is tempting to view the humanities’ lack of popularity as inevitable and the requirement of humanities courses as a ridiculous imposition among freshmen aspiring to become engineers and computer scientists. Ironically, in the very process of learning how to build or how to code, it becomes easier to forget that thinking indeed does matter.

This is unfortunate, particularly because greater exposure to the humanities can actually improve future employment prospects. A survey conducted among 318 employers by the Association of American Colleges and Universities released in April reveal that “more than nine in ten of those surveyed say it is important that those they hire demonstrate ethical judgment and integrity; intercultural skills; and the capacity for continued learning.” Furthermore, more than 75% of respondents “want colleges to place more emphasis on helping students develop…critical thinking, complex problem-solving, written and oral communication, and applied knowledge in real-world settings.”

…But it will not necessarily be effective to just expand the number of required humanities courses. Quality must first and foremost improve, with a stronger curricular emphasis on establishing connections between students and the works being studied…