issue 15

唐棣UID: 3548307

题目是 educational institutions should actively encourage their students to choose fields of study that will prepare them for lucrative careers

Education, usually utilized as a mean to achieve one’s end, never cease to puzzle us for which project should it rear. The puzzle itself appears natural and moreover, essential. It is the uncertainty of the end of education that results in fruitful exploration. Only can the kind of rearing that does not confine one’s curiosity but categorically proffers support and nurturing bring about the reaping of one’s own deliberated choice. That is to say, educational institutions should not actively abet their students to marry a major that would lead to a profitable job. Instead, the very act of jeopardizing one’s autonomy of choosing, interfering one’s natural exploration, and discriminating some fields against others contradicts to the nature of education — to benefit, to support, to treat all ends equally and provides means to every ends possible.

Let us first understand the implications of educational institutions actively advising. Undoubtedly, as all education should hold neutral and embolden all non-harmful pursuits. Favoritism leads to bias and prejudice against some studies. Such unjust beliefs, cultivated by educational institutions, may seem innocuous: the lucrative careers brought by such discriminations would not only benefit one’s own life, but also add reputations to the institution. Nevertheless, such myopic ideas would not only creates the privation of those discriminated fields but also produces excess in those favored fields.

In details, fields that does not lead to future profits will become empty. And moreover, the held belief that such field should not be majored on since it does not prepare a lucrative career will put pressure on fields that aims at pure truth seeking. In fields like philosophy, anthropology, or sociology, a lucrative career seems intangible while contributions in those fields appears unutterably noble and tremendously provoking. For example, ethics, which is mainly studied by philosophers, provide us normative guide in every matter of our life. And without it, we all are just in dark and chaos: all profits may go from the dreadfuls and also result in more treachery. Thus, the standard of judging one major over another purely basing on its potentiality of lucrative job seems absurd. On the other hand, take a look at those enamored majors: with increasing population majoring, related job market would soon reach saturation and thus, the profitability must be recalculated: a major that may lead to greater chance of failure in job hunting transparently seems unappealing. Thereby, the educational institutions, who should hold responsible for such scenario, are to be blamed for its interference that leads to imbalance, and for its benign consul that results in malign consequences.

Admittedly, some may worry that my accusation goes too extreme: such advice would not necessarily make one’s choice, one can still choose the fields one resides one’s interests in. So the imbalance would not surface and such bias would vanish, for the same reason that one’s autonomy should be intact under a few words from the institution. While acknowledging that the objection is valid, I would like to take a situationist view that all our choices are the matters of the situations we are in. With that being said, our autonomy becomes our freedom to respond to situations. With educational institutions actively favoring certain fields, our circumstances would lose its neutrality and its randomness. Our choice of response would be qualified and thus our autonomy would be disrespected. Indeed, such advice would not guarantee imbalance or bias, but it would ascends the probability of such imbalance or bias. Therefore, my argument sustains: educational institutions should not advise one to major in certain fields over others for its partiality jeopardizing one’s autonomy.