When I was a public high school English teacher in New York City, we observed our obligation to “meet the students where they are.” That bromide implied an obligation to motivate students to want to move on as learners, and a wise teacher took the time to do so, as students attended high school under threat of legal consequences if they failed to appear. The law hauled them in; if a teacher wanted to avoid threats of violence, broken schoolroom windows, or vandalized cars, the teacher took the time to motivate. Public school teachers are charged with teaching sufficient literacy for civic engagement; a spirit of inquiry or appreciation of the arts is at best a happy by-product, not a goal. My very weakest students sometimes found literacy too challenging; they failed to graduate. My best students enjoyed some exposure to Big Ideas in such classes as AP English. But in Brooklyn, New York, be assured the former far outnumbered the latter . In America, students have the right to fail. In major cities, high school failures outnumber graduates (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-06-20-dropout-rates_x.htm). In Lynn, in 2007, 31.5 percent failed to graduate (http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/grad_report.aspx?orgcode=01630000&orgtypecode=5&dropDownOrgCode=2). In Revere, 25 percent (http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/grad_report.aspx?orgcode=02480505&fycode=2008&orgtypecode=6&).

But “higher education” likes to presume an audience that is not under duress. College students self-select schools and courses of study at those institutions for their own purposes. No truant officer raps on dormitory doors. The presumption of willful attendance frees professors from the obligation to motivate—a time-consuming task that requires professors each and every semester justifying themselves and their subjects to an audience that may be doubtful and possibly hostile.

The presumption is incorrect. Duress exists. The duress is economic.

At Salem State, and at many schools whose constituency is the sons and daughters of working class people, “education” is equated with social mobility. There are certainly problems with that idea, but if we acknowledge that we have to meet students where they are, instead of wishing they had purposes more closely aligned with our love of pondering Big Ideas, then we have to also acknowledge that the time needed to motivate toward that habit of mind is terribly expensive. Student complaints about being forced to take “irrelevant” subjects are financially justified, not intellectual yahoo-ism or the consequence of misguided high school educations.

The stakes of a leisurely march through Big Idea is simply too high. A generation ago, the cost of a year of private college education might represent 25 – 30 percent of a family’s annual income; today, a year’s cost represents more than a family’s entire annual income, and the cost of four years, including interest on loans, might equal a prospective graduates’ entire income for most of a decade. Pity the family with three children spaced two years apart. Costs at Salem State, at rock bottom prices and with a significant commuter base who are not paying for room and board, still represents a huge investment for the average family from Lynn, Revere, Medford, and other communities for which we are a beacon of hope. Most often, the education we sell constitutes crushing debt for the individual student, a debt that disallows any major in a low salary entry-level career, one that likely means they will not be granted the credit to buy a car or house until they are more than a decade from school, and should they enroll in a program of study that requires graduate education for any hope at a livelihood, the debt becomes all that more overpowering. If high school diplomas are no longer vocational preparation, and graduate degrees are not vocational certification, any undergraduate insisting on a “relevant” program of study is making a considered and intelligent economic demand.

For such students—most of our student body—a core curriculum is an obstacle course. How could it be perceived otherwise? It is not perceived to be a gateway to a world of exciting ideas, contemplation, or intellectual discourse—it’s perceived as a distracting road to economic ruin. And should one fail to navigate the obstacle course, well, the economic burden rises as courses are repeated and graduation is delayed.

Beyond hoping for wealthier students with a philosophic cast of mind, we have alternatives that may restore a doubting professor’s lack of faith in education. We don’t need to resort to grades as carrot or stick. Grades are assessment measures, but education is not only what we assess. At Salem State, we might want to motivate the Humanities as a process of inquiry, not as a set of answers, a process that will lead to lucrative leadership in a set of flexible career choices. The answers to the Big Questions usually reduce to an ethic of reciprocity—the Golden Rule, something common to almost all cultures at all times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity). Perhaps Pausch’s lecture is as popular as it is precisely because he offers answers instead of process, and our students see no value to any process that is only an expensive time waster about ideas to which everyone already knows the answers: be nice, have fun.