As a bright-eyed lover of knowledge and intellect, I looked forward to attending college my entire life. The way that I would hear college being talked about in literature and media made me even more excited to finally graduate and move forward in my academic career. I felt that, while at university, I would finally find a community with other open-minded people who cared just as much as I do, not only about the subject matter in my major, but also about academics and intellectual pursuits in general. However, after two years of college at three very different, yet respected institutions, I found myself completely disillusioned with the modern university structure and experience.
My disappointment could be partially relegated to my extremely high expectations of what I thought university was going to be, but I feel that there are also some real issues with how higher education is being structured and mass-marketed to today’s youth in America. I was overly hopeful that university was a place where passionate people went to challenge, nurture and feed their love for individual disciplines, while also learning more broadly about life and how we, as humans, find our place in it. While, of course, this could be a textbook definition of a university, it doesn’t fit what I have experienced in my college career thus far. Instead of finding enrichment and passion, I have been shocked to see hundreds of students who do not care about their studies and classes with professors who have little more than high-school-level expectations. It seems as though university has now become somewhat of a high school part two. The rigor and passion that once existed and defined a university education are disappearing as the number of students enrolled in higher education continues to rise.
Courtesy: Mikael Kristenson
Since I’ve been able to voice my views, I have always been an advocate for accessible education. I believe that education is the most valuable thing a person can have because it adds meaning to life and is something that can never be taken away. Once I got to college, though, I began to see how increased accessibility could also have negative impacts on the value of education. As university has become more accessible, it has also come to be a societal expectation (and almost requirement) to have a successful and secure future. While it is possible to thrive without a degree, it has become extremely difficult to do so, which in turn pushes more people to attend university to get a degree. While this, in theory, seems like a positive phenomenon, I think it is severely damaging the excellence and stature of university education.
Other students like me could just as easily explain that there are massive amounts of people in college that shouldn’t be. College is not for everyone. Some people learn and develop better in other ways, but because of the high priority that society has placed on a college degree, many people who could have been better off learning and growing in other ways are now sitting in a classroom setting that they feel is restricting and dreadful. Such feelings and negative attitudes toward learning and classes have negative impacts, not only on the experience of the person having them, but also their peers. Many times, I have felt that my classes and the knowledge that I could gain from them were restricted because of the lack of participation and disinterest on the part of others. Not only that, but professors also begin to expect less out of their students. It pains me to sit in a class that I care deeply about and see peers scrolling on social media or texting on their laptops instead of listening and participating in the topic of discussion. Learning can only go so far when restricted to just the thoughts and opinions of the professor and two other students. I can wholeheartedly understand if the class is not engaging for some people, but that makes me question why they are even at university and taking classes in the first place. Then I am brought back to the harsh reality that this is what society is pushing everyone to do.
Courtesy: Nathan Dumlao
The lack of participation and caring plagues the value of the modern university education, but so too does the idea that college is a place to socialize, party and live out the last days of youth with a bang. I think that now more than ever, the university is more of a social powerhouse than an academic one. Mixed with accessibility and students who don’t want to be there, socialization becomes the main focus of many students instead of receiving an education. While networking and socializing are a fundamental part of young-adult development, they should not be the main focus in a university setting. Studying and challenging one’s thoughts and capabilities should be on the top list of priorities in college, not seeing how many friends one can gain or how many parties can be attended. Yet, the idea that socialization is the most important part of university remains in the minds of many. Despite paying for classes, students will not attend them just so they can sleep, watch television, hang out with friends or recover from the debauchery of the previous night. This, too, negatively impacts the quality of education when precedence is placed on everything besides taking the time to study and form useful insights and ideas about the courses being taken.
Although it seems easy to identify the problems and downfalls of the university structure as it exists today, it is not as simple to come up with ideas for how to solve or better them. In my view, I think it would be beneficial to rethink the structure and academic plans that many universities and colleges follow today. There needs to be some major consideration of how classroom lectures and discussions can be blended and well balanced with real-world experience, networking and socializing. However, there also needs to be greater recognition in society that going to university and getting a degree isn’t the correct or best path for everyone. As we move toward the future, I would love to witness a return to the more traditional form of the university; one that restores the institution into a breeding ground for ideas and shared intellect without oversaturation or massive amounts of students who don’t want to be there. I want to know that future generations will feel as though their university experience was worth the large investments they made to pursue it, because I cannot say that I feel the same. How my generation and I choose to move forward and think about the value of our university education holds the possibility of change for the better in the future.
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