On an elevated level, this particular rite of passage ends in moral, intellectual, social, and psychological growth. The B.A. degree represents the gaining of wisdom, consciousness, conscience, membership in new communities, and character. My last two sentences, of course, are the staple of graduation speeches. Indeed, versions of them have often dropped like paper petals from my rosebud lips. In her impressive 1995 Bates Convocation address, the historian Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz elaborates on this idea.
Undergraduates are right to interpret their degrees in such a material way.
They are also right to believe that the more prestigious the undergraduate institution, the greater the currency and bankability of their degrees. In 1993, college graduates earned 57 percent more than non-college graduates. Only the earnings of the possessors of graduate degrees, unobtainable without an undergraduate degree, outstripped inflation over a twenty-year period. I would respond that economic opportunity is no mean thing. Higher education should be proud of, not apologetic about, providing upward mobility, good jobs, careers, and security.