Over the past twenty years, there are those who insist that the reason for college is to learn a job or even a craft—to study a subject that will prepare one to make a decent living and add to the gross national product.

Well, that’s one reason, certainly. But I sometimes fear we are losing sight of the value of being an educated human. Does anyone really need to know the symbolism in The Great Gatsby or the year the French and Indian War began? How important is it for a future insurance agent to understand mitosis or the themes in Beethoven’s Symphony No. Five?

We have, for some time, been moving toward an idea in the U. S. that the old model for a liberal arts education is somehow outdated. Its critics have come from the left and the right, and they either traffic in academic relativism or insist that the only useful education is one that trains one for a job.

I am entering my nineteenth year on campus and with each passing month, I am more certain than ever that a liberal arts education is crucial not only to our students but to the health of the country as well.

In some ways, it’s almost amazing that this model has endured for the history of America, since our society tends to value things based on money or fame alone. We judge our writers, artists, and composers, sadly, by how much money they make, not by the value of their art. And yet our children still come to the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences to learn what the green light at the end of the dock means in The Great Gatsby and how cells divide in living organisms.

This college is absolutely full of wonderful teachers—I talk to them virtually every day and never cease to be impressed. Carl Jung once wrote that “An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling.”

Human feeling, it seems, is what changes us from pupils to teachers. When students leave the University of Georgia, they are changed—they are the inheritors of a tradition that stretches back two thousand years. The best students understand that there is nobility—even grace—in passing on the accumulated knowledge of humanity, from Shakespeare’s to Albert Einstein’s. Fortunately, we have also opened the world of learning in the past half century to include other cultures and races, and we are far richer for it.

Mark Twain once said that “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Of course, that’s education of a kind, but how much poor we would be without the lessons from liberal arts! Perhaps the greatest legacy from a liberal arts education is what Socrates said: “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.”

This college does both. It teaches the great scope of past knowledge and the ability to think as well. Take a look at this issue and see if you don’t agree.

For those of you who are wondering where your spring issue of The Franklin Chronicle was... well, there wasn’t one. We are suffering in the state’s budget crisis like everyone else, and until further notice, we’ll only put one issue a year, in the fall. We ask your indulgence.

In the meantime, our colleagues keep heaping awards on our magazine, and for that we are grateful. In the most recent competitions for the southeastern district of the Council for the Support and Advancement of Education, the Chronicle was named third-best alumni magazine in the entire area. We’re proud of that.