What I mean is that if education is the imparting (or rather "drawing forth", from the Latin) of knowledge, a definition of useful knowledge that only hinges on

What I mean is that if education is the imparting (or rather "drawing forth", from the Latin) of knowledge, a definition of useful knowledge that only hinges on its immediate economic value to the graduate is depressingly narrow. Firstly, there are all sorts of arguments to be made for how a liberal education can actually end up being unexepectedly advantageous in a professional context. A fair number of the startup engineers I work with majored in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and they all bring interesting perspectives to the table. Steve Jobs has a fascinating anecdote about how a Typography class he dropped in on at Reed was the eventual inspiration for the proportionally spaced fonts of the first Macintosh. As others have pointed out, studying a broad array of intellectual disciplines with any intensity ultimately will ultimately change the way you think, because even if you don't end up going into a profession directly related to them, creative thinking benefits greatly from the ability to synthesize new connections between seemingly disparate topics. But there's still more to it than that. HN commenters love to philosophize, but many dismiss philosophy as such. We all have strong political opinions, but it's hard for me to imagine a functional political citizen that doesn't have a grasp of history, civics and the strains of thought that gave rise to our current civilization. We all consume art and music in some way, but presumably it's not worth studying. Or rather, I suspect many would prefer to continue deride those who waste their money and time on such an pursuit, while happily consuming the fruits of their labor. Even knowledge "for its own sake" is worthwhile if the end goal is personal enrichment. Personally, I'd prefer to live in a world with people whose educational prerogatives are not universally economically driven. Whether higher education should cost so much, whether liberal arts grads are expecting too much upon graduation, and so on are for another conversation.