Spirituality

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You don't get what you pay for

Friday, February 14, 2025Spirituality

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... in our own time, the institution which most elicits such poor trades is higher education. People choose it for every reason except what it is valuable for.

Michael
Pakaluk

In the market, because better things are rarer and more widely sought after, in general you get what you pay for. If you want the best steak you must pay $30 per pound or more, and if you pay only $10 per pound, you're likely to get a steak you'll need to wrestle with at the table.
But outside of the market, we do not get what we pay for. If we are on a good path, we get much more than we pay for. The wedding ring, which cost three months' salary, conveyed as a token of love, perhaps won the man a lifetime of a woman's devotion. Jesus said that what we give in alms converts into treasure in heaven: the one finite, the other everlasting. St. Pope Gregory the Great in his "Gospel Homilies," observes that Peter and his brother made a very shrewd trade: they gave up their boat and their nets when they were called, and in exchange got eternal life.
On the other hand, if we are on a bad path, we get much less than we pay for. A mess of pottage is nowhere near as valuable as a birthright. The pleasures of a torrid affair fall incomparably below the goods of fidelity, honesty, the unity of a family, and the respect of your children. Admittedly, these bad trades can sometimes have a very strong allure. That is why on Easter we all renounce "the glamor of evil."

This rule of exchanges outside the market is presumably why Jesus liked to teach, as many Fathers tell us, "Be good bankers." One might say: be savvy about substantive value and not fooled by allure.
The same rule applies to the choice of institutions and states outside the market. I mentioned marriage already, assuming that what people want in a marriage are the traditional: children, conjugal faith, and the sacrament. (A list like this one from St. Augustine is highly useful, because it gives a clear accounting of the value.)
But this wasn't always so. St. John Chrysostom, in multiple homilies, attacks Christians who viewed marriages as stepping stones to influence and material prosperity. If the better alternative is available, these people most definitely do not get what they pay for. Power and money do not make up for what they gave up. To trade those three priceless goods of marriage for power and money is a very poor trade.
And it probably is no longer so. Hardly anyone knows St. Augustine's list anymore. To choose perpetual dating, or even companionships responding "to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there" -- if someone does so in lieu of a genuine marriage -- is to be a very bad banker.
Nonetheless, in our own time, the institution which most elicits such poor trades is higher education. People choose it for every reason except what it is valuable for.
It is difficult enough for parents to discern motives in young children and cultivate the right ones. Perhaps motives and intentions, like character, are already formed by the time someone goes off to college. If parents especially (teachers seem too distant to discern) have not taken care in this subtle matter of forming the right intentions, then probably it can no longer be changed, or not easily changed.
Consider prestige. Students who choose a college because it is prestigious hardly have reason to study, or to study beyond that handful of courses necessary to get into professional school. There is no further competition they can win (except a Marshall, Rhodes or Gates) that comes anywhere close to the competition of being admitted to that university. Prestigious universities pride themselves on having admitted the best students, so it is very hard to fail out of them. The moment a student is admitted, then, he or she already gains what was sought for in the choice. No further effort is needed.
This realization will dawn quickly upon the student once he arrives on campus. Hardly any of his peers are working very hard, but they are getting As or A-minuses. He learns that the reason for this is that his professors and administrators believe that grades should be calculated not relative to his peers at that institution, but relative to the entire pool of students attending universities. He was admitted to one of the most prestigious, therefore, they reason, already he is deserving of high grades.
With the same mentality his highly specialized research professors, although their syllabi are impressive for the mountains of readings which are assigned, do not actually expect the students to do these specialized readings with care, and cannot explain why anyone outside of their narrow expertise should study them.
After he is there a little longer, he will learn that the consensus view is that the purpose of a sojourn at that institution is to "signal" to future employers that its graduates would be productive workers to hire. But he sees that getting admitted already was enough signaling.
What did he pay for this education? I do not mean the dollars (as Jesus said, "they have their reward," Mt 6:2) but what lasting goods did he give up? Something incomparably greater -- a genuine higher education. You need to find out what this is, if you do not know it already.

- Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book is "Mary's Voice in the Gospel of John." You may follow him on X (twitter) @michael_pakaluk.