My freshman year, my Hutton Honors College class asked me to write a short story about a dystopian future for education. I chose to write about a world where the state decided which college degrees were most “important,” mainly based on economic demands. The state would incentivize studying those degrees, while it defunded others, especially in the arts. The exercise acknowledged the importance of all education. Now, that dystopian future could become a reality.
In Indiana, Senate Bill 199 proposes cutting degree programs that do not yield graduates annual earnings over a set threshold, which would lie between $24,000 and $35,000, depending on the degree. The rationale is to target programs that will not prepare graduates to earn more than a high school diploma could earn them.
To that point, Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said college education is a major financial undertaking, and students should understand what their financial reality will look like once they graduate. After all, student debt can be a major burden that persists long into adulthood.
Ensuring students are aware of the debt a college education can incur is a noble aim. However, the same goal could easily be accomplished by requiring universities to be transparent about job prospects and potential earnings for graduates. Filling their websites and pamphlets with easily accessible information for parents and students to use does not seem like a large ask.
And so the bill we are left with completely disregards the intrinsic value of education. It judges degrees in a way that has nothing to do with the benefits of gaining knowledge and everything to do with economic benefit. If this were to pass, it would hammer another nail into the coffin of higher education as we know it.
Choice has always been an essential aspect of higher education. Students, although still young adults working to navigate newfound independence, are people. So, we should be able to trust them to take in information, weigh it and come to their own conclusions about the best path for them.
On a deeper level, the bill, intentionally or not, effectively becomes a way to discourage students from pursuing the arts and other fields which draw people because of their passion, not their desire for pay. For example, degrees like the bachelor in music at IU and dance at Ball State could soon be in jeopardy.
If we drive everyone who wants to study music away, what will we listen to? Art enriches our lives, promotes creativity and enjoyment. Continuously devaluing it is pushing us further toward a society that centers around work.
If I may muse on the meaning of life for a moment, I don’t believe that the point of being a person is to accumulate money. Money is necessary. But it isn’t everything. So much enjoyment can be gained from hobbies, from spending time with loved ones, from taking time away from work.
Students should be able to enjoy what they are doing. People who make art do it because they love it. Discouraging people from doing what they love will create more future hardship for them, not less.
I would much rather look back on my time in college knowing I studied something I enjoyed than something that would make me a lot of money in the future. I’m an education major. I know I won’t be making a fortune in my future career. But I believe teaching is important, and I am passionate about it. I would be devastated if I couldn’t pursue that just because some lawmakers think education is only valuable if it makes you money in the future.
Every day I am reminded of the importance of not only teaching my students what they need to know, but doing right by them and making school a safe place. It has never just been about the information passed in the classroom; it is about giving students the tools to move forward. It is about centering them and making sure they get as much out of the experience as possible.
This bill feels like a departure from that, the core of what I believe an educational institution’s job is. The degree cuts are more concerned with what would be best for the state than what is really best for a student’s health and happiness, giving them the opportunity to study what they wish.
Even if a graduate with a music degree may not make as much as one with a business degree, they have still dedicated themselves to a craft. They have demonstrated hard work, gained new knowledge, developed critical thinking and social skills. All things that any type of education can offer.
Any time spent learning means time spent learning how to learn. Education creates a steady foundation on which to build experiences, interpret the world and interact with other people. Learning something new will never be detrimental. SB 199 seems to imply that knowledge that will not help you in your future career is not worth gaining, and that is untrue.
College does not have to be job training. College is one of the only places where a student can pursue their more obscure academic interests before starting out on their own. It should be a place where we are allowed to explore. To take the class about the Beach Boys or scuba diving. College should be fun.
One of the beautiful things about this country is all of the opportunities to become educated. If we let the state meddle in what students are allowed to study, those opportunities go away. The freedom to share and gain all knowledge on our campuses goes away.
How long before the earning threshold changes? How long before the state legislature once again arbitrarily decides which degrees we should be allowed to obtain?
We have to fight this now, or in a few years, college is going to look very different.
Sasha Burton (she/her) is studying elementary education with minors in Spanish and English.
