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Films

Good Will Hunting

Michael J. Ferreira takes apart a controversial claim about self-education.

In the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon plays the title role of Will Hunting, an undiscovered mathematical genius working as a janitor at MIT. In the movie, Hunting famously drops this hard-hitting zinger on a pompous Harvard graduate student in a bar:

“See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in fifty years you’re gonna start doin’ some thinkin’ on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that… you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a ?#@! education you coulda’ got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.”

For many folks it was a gratifying cinematic moment. But there’s something that makes me uncomfortable in Will’s cavalier suggestion that formal education is not worth its weight in cash. It’s difficult to put a finger on the worry, but here’s a first pass: I’m suspicious of the suggestion that anyone can learn as much on their own as they can in a university environment.

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