Passage 1

Higher education is more than a vocational or technical training. The essential purpose of it has never been about "usefulness" in a narrow sense of acquiring a specific, practical tool so as to make oneself marketable. In the words of my late college professor of philosophy, the purpose of higher education is for students to become broadly acquainted with cultural traditions and deeply appreciate them, so that it may help us become responsible citizens and good people in general.
    It is also about love—learning what one loves for the love of learning. Hence, it is "gloriously useless. " As for me, there was no way of knowing which major or degree was going to be "useful. " And since then, everything around me is constantly changing. I have long forgotten the details of what I absorbed in classrooms and libraries. I did, however, learn how to think for myself, and that is invaluable in the workplace and outside of it.