Each commencement season, I enjoy surveying the landscape of addresses and essays which in one way or another attempt to provide vision and challenge for the year’s graduates. Most are utterly predictable, along the lines of “reach for the stars” or “make the world a better place.” But a few go deeper, some reminding us of misplaced priorities or of the too easily forgotten purposes of genuine education.

Consider the address of Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, who undoubtedly was speaking both to graduates and their parents when he repeated the often asked questions, “What’s my son going to do with this literature major?” or “What’s my daughter going to do with her degree in film studies, or in government?” Such questions seem all the more pertinent during tough economic times, when job prospects appear slim in every vocational field.

He went on to cite several examples of Wesleyan alumni who are putting their liberal arts degrees to work in remarkable ways – doing Arabic translation, writing film scripts, starting up businesses of various sorts, and working in transformational ways in government. Click to continue »