Assembly-line education
School was about learning, now it’s about degrees. Welcome to the future of education.
Let’s take a look at our past to get a clue of what the future might hold.
In the past a college education was something special, reserved for the highest echelons of society. That education was the mark of a truely cultured individual. You knew that a college student was well on the path to becoming a well-rounded, intelligent gentleman.
The student was provided with a education in Liberal Arts. Since most jobs at the time required a apprenticeship, rather than a degree, colleges existed to make the students better citizens. It prepared them to be effective members of society.
Looking at college in that context, justifying the college ideal that exists today is pretty hard. Students take the shortest route to their degree, othen forgoing classes outside of their respective majors.
I almost can’t believe that we are getting charged to shuffle in and out of the halls of this institution to learn simply how to perform a task. We go through four years of education to be able to do one thing, in case I needed to put that in simpler terms.
This isn’t what college should be. We shouldn’t be treated like cars on an assembly line, Moved slowly down the track that was set for us when we walked through the door with a dream and a tuition check. We are students, we seek higher knowledge, we should not stand for this shocking mutation of the noble college tradition!
And yet, we do. College has become so big in our country that most believe you need it in order to succeed. The truth of the matter is not so black and white. Smart people exist, and those people can excel without any further education after high school. Some need to be sat down and told how to succeed on whatever path they have chosen. We are all different.
The thing we need to remember as we make it through our time in college is that this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We should be willing to take our time and learn as much as we can, especially outside the path that we, or others, have chosen for us.
We shouldn’t just stand on the line and watch our lives get constructed around us. We should use our time here to learn as much as we can, and grow as citizens and people.
Cameron Simek is the Opinions editor for the UVU Review at Utah Valley University. He can be reached at [email protected], and on twitter @Skabomb. www.uvureview.com