As an English professor at Yale University, essayist and literary critic William Deresiewicz observed a trend across American higher education that troubled him deeply. Instead of learning to think independently, critically, creatively, and courageously, students were increasingly subscribing to a mode of careerism, credentialism, and conformism that focused on climbing the academic or professional ladder.

So what is the value of higher education? As Deresiewicz writes in his 2014 book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, colleges, first and foremost, are supposed to teach you to think, to help you develop a habit of skepticism and the capacity to put it into practice. More than that, college is where you build a soul — your moral, intellectual, sensual, emotional self, through exposure to books, ideas, works of art, and pressures of the minds around you that are looking for their own answers to the big questions. Questions of love, family, God, mortality, time, truth, dignity, and the human experience.

Over the course of our conversation, we discuss the search for a meaningful life, the worth of a liberal education, the role of mentorship, the relationship between solitude and leadership, what it means to cultivate moral imagination, and more.

In this episode, we discuss:

3:00 - Deresiewicz’ approach to teaching during his years as a college professor

6:25 - The reason why parents are not ideally positioned to guide their children through questions of what they want to do with their lives

8:02 - What Deresiewicz believes is the purpose of higher education

10:50 - What it means to “shape the soul” of students

17:12 - What we miss when we take a scientistic view of the world

20:45 - The challenge of establishing normative values in society, and why a “moral education” should be prioritized instead

28:25 - The search for individualism among students today

30:55 - What true leadership looks like and why people in powerful positions in our society do not often exhibit these traits

40:28 - What does it mean to have a sense of purpose?

43:00 - How young people can work to develop their sense of a calling or purpose

William Deresiewicz is the author of four books, including A Jane Austen Education (2011), Excellent Sheep (2014), The Death of the Artist (2020), and The End of Solitude (2022), as well as multiple essays, including Solitude and Leadership (2010) and The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008).

William Deresiewicz can be found on Twitter/X at @Wderesiewicz.

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