APPLIED AND PRACTICAL ARTS. A participant in Slate's College Week asks, Will Econ Help Me Protect Afghanistan From Warlords?

For a long time I wanted to be an Econ major. But the other day I was sitting in one of my core economics classes at Yale—a huge class filled with overachievers sitting in the front row furiously jotting down notes and jocks huddled up in the back making obnoxious sounds, laughing at their own jokes (and in case you're curious, I sit somewhere in the middle)—going over the von Neumann-Morgenstein utility function, when a thought popped up: When am I ever going to need this? Sure, plenty of college students wonder this during a dull lecture. But in this case I was studying Econ: Knowing this stuff was actually pretty useful—if you planned on going into investment banking in New York. For Afghanistan, this seemed to be a little ways away.

What follows is even more instructive.

Part of my new dislike for Econ has to do with the difference between Yale and community college. At Diablo Valley College, my economics professor was a World Bank official who had experience everywhere from Yemen to India, and plenty of time—and the interest—to sit with me and discuss economic development in Afghanistan. Before I left, somebody warned me that the professors at "big-name" universities would not be the same.

That's proven to be the case, to some degree. Plenty of professors are great in the classroom. For others—especially some of the bigger names—teaching seems to be the last thing on their mind. One of my professors walks into class and starts copying down on the board exactly what he has given to us as notes, downloadable online from our class server—most of my friends don't see the point in coming to that class (and usually don't).

Read it all. Left as an exercise: would his experience be any different in any other major?