The Founding Fathers would be disappointed with the state of our modern education. Thomas Jefferson believed that the republic’s survival depended on the vitality, virtue and intellect of its citizenry, famously declaring that “wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” Pulling from ideas in works such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile and John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Jefferson claimed that education ought to shape the soul of the citizen, building a sense of virtue and justice, civic responsibility and independent judgment.
American universities have absorbed society’s obsession with what is profitable over what is valuable. This fixation with optimization has seeped into the education system, substituting intellectual formation and the cultivation of judgment and character with the pursuit of numerical validation. To reclaim what was once a spark in American culture, we only need to look to Oxford University, long the gold standard in the humanities, which has stayed true to its principles: the cultivation of the mind and the pursuit of wisdom.
As a visiting student at Oxford, I entered a system unlike any I had known. At orientation, the academic master made our duty as students very clear. We were to master our assigned texts each week and be prepared to defend our arguments to an expert the following week.
I was committed to these new expectations. I filled up my notepad with scribbled arguments, tracing ideas that stretched from antiquity to the present.
Eight weeks in, I had written sixteen essays, 32,000 words and drawn on more than 240 books. What replaced the drudgery of weekly homework assignments, daily participation markers and frequent quizzes and assessments were hours spent with primary texts stacked atop secondary commentaries. I was inspired and teeming with ideas. I had a deep sense that something was missing back at home.
Oxford humanities students meet with their assigned scholars, one-on-one, twice a week. There are no grades to chase, only detailed feedback and Socratic dialogue that pushes students toward better argumentation. Your reward for a well-defended argument is not a grade, but a deeper understanding of the text itself and a richer appreciation for the ideas contained within its pages. It is a system that refuses to reduce learning to numbers or letters on a transcript, but instead glorifies the pursuit of ideas and knowledge for its own sake.
In many American universities, the incentives point in a very different direction. Americans are worried mostly about their grade, club positions and their summer internship salaries. This is no accident; our universities are shaped by a society obsessed with utility, optimization and numeric validation. Students skip lectures and miss readings because they can achieve the same numerical outcome by studying the night before an exam. Their time is better spent networking with alumni, lowering the acceptance rate of their clubs or memorizing the technical questions that Goldman Sachs expects every undergraduate to master before applying for an internship. Even if society has abandoned engagement with the Western canon and our founding principles, universities must resist the drift. They must shield students from cultural decay, preserve timeless ideas that have shaped our civilization and help us cultivate our own.
To shift student incentives, we must first lower the cost of education. Leading American universities charge over $100,000 in tuition annually, as graduates sink deeper into spiraling debt. It becomes unsurprising that students treat abstraction and values as luxuries they cannot afford. Higher education has become far too expensive for anything that is not immediately practical and does not promise a profitable return on investment. By contrast, tuition at Oxford is roughly $10,000 annually for U.K. students, and loans are forgiven after 30 years. Students are able to pursue ideas for their own sake and to specialize in fields that genuinely command their interest. Free from the grasp of financial burden, learning can become an end rather than a means.
Additionally, we must shift our focus away from incessant progress reports and numerical evaluations. The Oxford model determines grades at the end of a three-year undergraduate degree. Progress updates are provided only once after an eight-week term. Students spend less time building up their grades and more time grappling with texts and timeless ideas. Their incentives lie in a far better place.
Tutorials at Oxford demand that students think, argue and engage with material at a far deeper level than large seminar classes. American universities need smaller discussion groups and curricula that build in more time for reading primary texts. We need more and better-paid teacher assistants leading discussions who act as inspiring mentors to our students, not bureaucratic administrators bogged down in gradework.
These structural changes will allow a realignment of incentives anchored in the pursuit of knowledge as something inherently valuable. New emphasis on Socratic dialogue within our educational institutions may result in a more engaged and deeply informed citizenry, seeking what Plato called the “form” of beauty, not merely its appearance. Leaders will emerge equipped to confront the most pressing questions of our time. They will have the courage to elevate above profit, seeking truth even when it offers no immediate monetary reward. We will achieve a better culture, one more aligned with the intentions of our founding fathers: a republic rooted not in materialism, but in the pursuit of the good.
Paul Kurgan '27 is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying Government and Philosophy. He can be reached at pjk239@cornell.edu.
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