Personalization and Education

Sunstein's article about the effectiveness of today's university made me reflect on my own experience at CUA. I find Sunstein's argument for the total personalization of education to be totally flawed. Though university education is incredible costly, it is not a normal commodity to be bought and sold. Education is about much more than learning about what you want, or what you think you want, to learn about. I have been able to take something positive away from each of my classes here. All of them have helped me to widen my perspective, and in some cases even find new interests. If I only had a base in Media Studies my knowledge would be incredible limited, and with nothing to compare it to even my Media Studies knowledge would be less valuable.
Education is about a lot more than what we learn in the classroom. There is value in learning how to do something you do not want to do. Coming into contact with different perspectives and value systems prepares one to go out into the world and be effective. Knowledge is useless without the proper context.
As I think back on my education here at CUA I can't help but think that the most important lessons are those learned outside of the classroom. As Albert Einstein said, "Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school." If we follow Sunstein's advice I fear that future students will have an incredibly limited scope of knowledge, with no way to apply it.