In January 1836 James Smithson, an obscure English amateur scientist who had never been to America, died and bequeathed $500,000 ($11 million in today’s dollars) to the U.S. government for science.

Selfless, random, forward-thinking, generous, thought-provoking, legendary – Smithson is worthy of American Idol status. Smithson wasn’t prescriptive in any way about the execution of his final wishes. Here’s some money, spend it on science. A complete stranger did America an incredibly-enduring solid: Put his money where his mouth is – from the grave.

Ultimately, the gift of knowledge can never be completely repaid. The most equitable repayment is to exchange one piece of knowledge for another, but for people like Smithson, knowledge was not a transaction, rather his recompense by all accounts was simply the free and open consumption of scientific fact. The cornerstone of the Smithsonian was laid in May 1847, and Smithson’s gift is today an archipelago of 19 museums, a research center and the National Zoo.

Valuable artifacts can be unearthed in a museum. They can also turn up in less likely places, maybe a bar, a cemetery, a car wash, a rock show. Knowledge acquisition has even been known to occur in our nation’s colleges and universities. I would say that the best thing about U.S. colleges is college football, but I don’t want to appear shallow. (Although at one point the president of the University of Oklahoma is reported to have commented, “We’re trying to build a university our football team can be proud of.”)  

The concept of higher education is a noble one. Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Although the chance to channel your inner Aristotle is valuable, I fear the promise of a college degree is quickly becoming an economic nonstarter. Even if you look past the state of the job market, the math just doesn’t work, because the debt incurred over four or more years is turning into a lifelong financial millstone. It doesn’t take having an advanced degree to figure out that the concept of a bachelor’s degree in whatever simply self-destructs if they hand you the diploma and a bill for $100,000+ at the same time.

At one point, it would have been risky to blow off college to work, now that risk has flipped. In some cases, certainly in liberal arts fields, we would better off returning to the apprentice system of colonial days. In all seriousness, I’m not likely to live long enough to see even a nominal return on what my family (me, the wife and our four kids) has invested in higher education.  

Okay, so college is the fast track to debt and financial ruin (bummed myself out there), but that doesn’t stop us from bragging about our alma maters. We all know that colleges aren’t about the value of a degree or the School of Pharmacy’s ranking in US News & World Report, it’s about putting on your school’s colors, donning the sweatshirt and crowing about your teams, alumni and history. The University of Pennsylvania was America’s first state college (and then our first university), founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1749. I won’t lie, being founded before the Revolution is a claim that’s hard to beat. Well, nine members of the Continental Congress (1787) went to Princeton. Throwing that out at a cocktail party wouldn’t suck until someone walks up with this one … William & Mary is the oldest university in the South and second oldest in the U.S. (Harvard, 1693), but get this, its alums include Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Tyler and Henry Clay. Three presidents win a lot of college alumni arguments. You know you have tradition working for you when your college used to be called something else; Brown used to be Rhode Island College, Princeton, the College of New Jersey and King’s College became Columbia.

If you read the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand you’ll like this one. Louis Zamperini, the subject of the book, spent 47 days adrift at sea and countless, torturing days as a POW during World War II. When he was finally rescued, he was asked to prove his identity, so Louis reached into his pocket and pulled out a pass to a USC football game with his name on it. Bam! I’m a Trojan, bitches.  

Bishop Milton Wright: “All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden on others.” When a lot of these old colleges like Bill & Mary were founded, the objective was intellectual enlightenment, learning more about our physical world, the meaning of life, the nature of human beings, the concepts of the great thinkers. I’m not sure what the intent is today. Smithson would give money so that others might learn, now we learn so as to make money.