I’m tired of hearing all the doom and gloom about higher education… especially the liberal arts. You can’t pick up a paper nowadays without someone questioning whether a college degree is worth the price.

We’re in an incredibly complex world with complex problems. It seems like that would beg for more – not less – education. But not just any education, one that teaches you how to think, really think, and solve complex problems. At the same time, your education needs to provide you with practical, hands on, relevant learning that you can draw on in life after college.

You see, learning “things” isn’t enough. Learning “things” requires those “things” to be a part of your job if your education is to be valuable in doing your job. But in this complex world, we don’t always know what those “things” are in advance. The ever-changing global landscape creates new problems daily and the ones who will be prepared to solve those problems are the ones who can think creatively and are constantly training their minds to adapt.

Corporate America gets it. Executive education is booming because businesses realize if they are to be competitive their people need to learn continually. And they need to learn in a space that provides a blend of academics and reality.

Wofford gets it too. The Mungo Center bridges the theoretical and the practical by teaching relevant topics that complement students’ academic foundation. Our consulting, entrepreneurship, and Success Initiative programs leverage design thinking, leadership, negotiation skills, professional speaking, and a myriad of other hands-on experiences to prepare students for life outside the classroom.

The Mungo Center team has experienced the real world on a global scale, and we bring our experiences to students. Although it’s more accurate to say we place our students in those experiences. It’s this type of creativity in program development that higher education needs if it is going to fulfill its promise of preparing young people for the future.

So, I’m going to step out on a limb here and proclaim, Yes! A college degree IS worth the price.

Just make sure you get your degree from a school that understands the need to balance the theoretical and the practical.