Education…huh…yeah…What is it Good For?

When Edwin Starr released his anti-anthem “War (What is it Good For?)” in 1970, the number of high school graduates in the United States heading off to college was near peak, just north of 50%. The percentage had been growing for over twenty years, thanks in large part to World War II era perks for veterans.

For the previous three hundred years, college had been, more or less, the province of gentlemen, with all the privilege and snobbery that F. Scott Fitzgerald reveals in This Side of Paradise. College cost a relative lot of money and prepared mostly white men for soft-hand positions like the ministry and law, or even loftier pursuits of literature or philosophy.

The GI Bill shook all that up, making college accessible and affordable, just as our thrall with a technology-based consumer society ratcheted the demand for engineering and science. College became more than a place to refine etiquette and noodle your brain; you could also learn useful stuff. Slide-rule meccas like Cal Tech and Purdue flourished. As did niche start-ups, like Berklee School of Music, whose mass-churn business model embraced music’s electronic potential and, within two generations, grew from concept to the…