President Roth replies that "it's easy to complain" about the cost of college and then points out that most students receive some financial aid anyway. As someone who just finished paying off her student loans last month-- even though I received a financial aid/scholarship package when I entered college in 1996--I guess I beg to differ that this Marie Antoinette level of indifference to student debt is appropriate, especially when it comes from administrators who profit so handsomely in the current system.
Roth then offers some thoughts about what college is for. The answer is learning, but more specifically, students should learn: (1) what they love to do; (2) how to practice and improve at doing it; and (3) how to share this knowledge with others.
I am not impressed with this vision of a college education. For if we tell students to follow their passions without offering them any vision of what is good around which they might discipline and direct those passions--including, yes, the passion for knowledge--then we are simply refusing to educate them in a serious way. If we offer them no synoptic vision of reality, and instead tell them to study whatever discipline or methodology they happen to love, then we have taken education out of the realm of self-transcendence and into the realm of personal fulfillment.
Finally, this do-what-you-love approach makes it difficult to share what one has learned with others, since private preferences are by definition not necessarily shared. If Jane is into math but her roommate Jack hates it, and Jane has not been given any sense of universal truth or knowledge, such that she might be able to see how her study of math relates to reality generally, then telling her she must share her math skills with Jack is a task she is in no position to take up in a serious way. After all, Jack hates math; he studies journalism. Jane, knowing nothing about journalism, is at a loss as to how to convince him of the value of what she loves. What do Jack and Jane really have to say to one another regarding what they study? I don't see the resources in the do what you love and get better at it approach to answer this question. After all, Jack and Jane are not members of an intellectual community seeking a common end together in their studies, but two individuals who happen to be at the same credentialing institution pursuing their individual, discreet, possibly incommensurable passions.
I believe that college is for the pursuit of universal truth as a common good around which students should organize their life of study. On this view, the goal of such an education is universal knowledge, which is essentially shareable. A common life of study so ordered is a pearl of great price, because it speaks to our highest aspirations. This is a far cry, however, from the vision that Roth is offering us.