Graduate Doubt-Free

The publicity material continues to emphasize the 95% job placement rate of Butler graduates, and so is presumably a pun on what students might consider preferable, namely to graduate debt-free.

But when I first glanced the signage, I didn’t see the second part, as it was blocked by a vehicle. As a professor in the humanities, I don’t expect students to graduate “doubt-free” in the broader sense. I expect them, as a result of their university education, to be able to cope and learn to succeed and thrive in a world that is a place where doubts are inevitable, and at times appropriate. One of the courses I teach is called “Faith, Doubt, and Reason,” and I believe that a healthy student learns that there is a balance to be achieved, with each playing its role, and none to be eliminated.