In a college religion class we studied the history of universities in the United States. Most of them had a similar trajectory: begin as small colleges to train pastors and teachers. Places to learn to reason together. Conversation, contemplation, commentary. Repeat.

The assumption was that professional training in most fields would happen as apprenticeships. Learn by doing.

Incremental changes added courses, faculty, programs.

These, in turn, require new buildings.

Which require funds.

Which opens the question: to whom should we appeal to fund all this expansion? And what are we willing to give up in that process?

What most schools gave up—again, incrementally—was whatever made them distinct in the first place.

All still speak of vision, aims, mission, values, timeless commitments.

Few still have anything like a unique value proposition, and if they do have one, even fewer of them have a unique value proposition related to the curriculum.

Fewer still seem to have a vision of something unique that they can offer that the world needs. Plenty will speak of what the individual will gain from their time at the school. Occasionally they will connect the prosperity of the individual with scientific research.

Very few speak of the importance of conversation, contemplation, and commentary. Few speak of the importance of learning human cultures so we can understand one another. Of studying languages so we can speak to one another. Of fostering civil conversation that leads to contemplation of the great stories we are all a part of, and from there to thoughtful commentary on how we can flourish mutually.

Obviously, studying those things doesn’t lead to a particular profession. My students who read great books with me and discuss them in Socratic seminars go on to all sorts of professions. Some become lawyers, some become research scientists, some are CEOs and legislators, some work in national security, and quite a few are teachers and pastors.

And loads of them return for homecoming or during holiday breaks and ask if we can get together for a meal, and for more conversation, more contemplation.

About fifteen years ago I saw a gap in our curriculum: we had no course on the great books of India and China (you know, a third of the world’s population) so I decided to develop one. It would be a seminar on classical texts. Students would read the great books with me, each one would learn some rudimentary Sanskrit and/or Classical Chinese (dipping their toes in the waters, so that they would develop research skills they could build on), and they’d discuss these books three times a week at a seminar table where no one sits in the back row. Face-to-face discussion with books open and with attention paid to the others at the table.

In order to prepare for this course, I decided I needed my own seminar group that would meet each week before I led the student seminars. I put out a call on social media: if you’re an alum of my college who is willing to meet with me each week to discuss these books over a beer, I’ll buy the books and the first round. I thought if I could get seven or eight people to meet with me that would help me to come to class as the best student in the room.

Within an hour I had forty-five people asking to join the group locally, and many more who live far away wanting to join remotely or wanting to start their own group.

Colleges that don’t notice this hunger among their alumni are paying attention to the wrong things.

We are all hungry for meaningful conversation.

We are all hungry for help thinking through the great questions (we call them “Great Books” because they raise the questions well and they show us others grappling with them.)

We are all hungry for a chance to step aside from the daily tasks that must be done, and to emerge from good conversations with a little more commentary forming in our hearts and minds, commentary that is slower and deeper than what social media and “breaking news” (such an apt name with an unintended double meaning) can ever offer.

I’m not opposed to teaching technical skills. In my career I have taught business courses, technology development, practical skills in building, landscape design, music, mathematics, biology and ecology, wilderness and backcountry skills, and languages. I’ve trekked forty miles with my students through dense rainforest, dived with them on coral reefs, hiked with them across remote tundra, brought them to a former Soviet bloc state to teach English and to do construction work.

And all of that has been great.

But very little can compare with the conversations we have when students open a classic text they thought was inaccessible and then, an hour later, discover that they found a story in that text that help them to understand themselves, their neighbors, and their world better.

Colleges should certainly pay attention to the data available as they try to chart the course ahead. It would be foolish not to prepare students for meaningful work. It would be also be foolish not to balance the budget.

But perhaps the greatest foolishness of all would be to fail to ask: why are we even trying to keep the doors open?

If it is valuable for our students to examine their own lives and their place in the world, then every college that claims to be able to help students to do that ought to practice what they preach.

And any college that does not help students examine their lives is not worthy to be called a college.