纽约时报：学习代数有必要吗？

The simple fact is that a college or university education is not job
training. In recent decades, it's become conflated with job training, at
least in North America, and this is too bad. A liberal arts education is all
about expanding your mind, all about being able to think. It's not about
gaining skills that you are then going to use in a job. Too many of us
professors tend to not have any clue what somebody is supposed to do to earn
a living after a liberal arts education other than go to graduate school (
so that your liberal arts education is "training" for what you do next).
That's because that was our own life trajectory, and it's what we know.
Liberal arts education is to make people into good citizens, not into good
workers. They are to acquaint you with the intellectual achievements of
humankind. That is why we read the Iliad, why we watch a performance of
Hamlet, why we learn about the history of ancient Greece, and, yes, why we
study algebra. Because we want people to be educated so that they understand
the intellectual achievements that have made our society what it is today,
and that will drive our society in the future. We're training people to be
members of civilization, not employees.