Increasingly, the motivation for higher education is not education at all. So what remains?
Are college campuses becoming a burial ground for self-empowerment and critical awareness? Have these ideas waffled under a trade school atmosphere fueled by sex, drugs and the pursuit of money?
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, from 1985 to 2002 undergraduate enrollment increased 26 percent, reaching 16.6 million students. And by 2014, college enrollment is projected to reach 19.5 million.
So, are college classrooms and campuses training a work force and reinforcing unhealthy attitudes about the meaning of youth? Or, is the college experience a haven for thirsty minds?
Maybe college institutions and the pursuit of higher education have become an excuse for American kids to prolong the process of growing up. Is it a means to dodge responsibility and figure the world out on someone else dime? Or, is it simply doing what your peers and parents expect of you?
What is the value of a college diploma? Is it four years of hard academic endeavors? Maybe, six years of skating by, drinking booze and smoking pot? Or is it a schedule of meaningless tasks and tests, just to prove the monkey can be trained?
And after graduation, who goes to grad school, who will build a career and who will keep delivering pizzas to make the rent?
But what are the answers?
Simply put, college enrollment numbers are increasing because employers want educated and trainable employees. As America moves into a post-industrial economy, the demand for specialized job skills make college curriculum adapt to market needs. As to the demise of self-empowerment and critical awareness, those are personal gains that students obtain at different stages in the academic and life process.
In many working and middle-class families, an idea exists that a college education provides a means to make a living. Most parents want their children to have more opportunities than themselves, and as a result, college education is the key to unlocking those future opportunities.
Thus, it’s only natural that these students will experiment with chemicals, sex and other vices that occur away from the watchful eyes of mom and dad. But to say the college environment encourages promiscuous sex and drug abuse is to neglect the notion of personal freedom and choice.
As to the value of a college diploma, it is what you do with that diploma and what is gained through the experience, which determines your personal success and the value of your piece of paper.
As another class leaves the nest of academia, ask yourself this question: “What have I learned?”
Is it the four P’s of marketing? Cultural behavior of early Native Americans? Or the Pabst beer special every Thursday night? Oh, how they all made your head hurt.
Most importantly, are you becoming the person you want to be? Are you opening your eyes to the world around you? Or are you just more confused and lost than before?
The college experience is a combination of many personal and external questions. Yet it is only through asking “the” questions and pursuing “the” answers that we begin to understand ourselves and thus we begin to learn.
