Benjamin B. Bolger achieved the impressive feat of graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in sociology at the age of 19. He's 48 now, and as a profile in the New York Times Magazine explains, he hasn't stopped collecting diplomas. Bolger has 14 advanced degrees (in addition to a bachelor's and associate degree) in an eclectic range of subjects. If he keeps up this pace, he might well end up as the person with the most college degrees ever in the nation. But why? The Times' Joseph Bernstein says he pressed Bolger on that question over and over but failed to elicit anything more than the "anachronistically earnest" response of, "I just love learning." Bernstein draws something of a parallel between Bolger's "experiment" with higher education and Henry David Thoreau's experiment living at Walden Pond. One takeaway:
- "To spend any time around Bolger is to feel that you have been enrolled in a bespoke, man-shaped university, one capable of astonishing interdisciplinary leaps, and it basically all hangs together—the way that any mix of freshman electives at a top university might complement one another, might rhyme, produce its own sort of harmony. It is unclear what, exactly, is at the center. But there are gravitational forces at work nonetheless."
After all this learning, Bolger has settled on a fitting career: that of a consultant to high school students looking to elevate their college applications. (Read the
full piece.)
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