February 19, 2008
College, really, is a business.
Think about it. You are handing out money to make yourself more appealing, more marketable to the professional world.
It’s not about education so much as assembly-line product.
However, it hasn't always been this way.
Just go back a generation or so, and you’ll find the exuberant '60s. Campuses were a meeting ground for intellectual pondering and a conduit for political activity and questioning of authority.
This is in direct opposition to the largely politically inactive, selfish scene of today - it is more a matter of how can I get ahead, than how can I help others. There is no mention of the intrinsic value of the college experience - no mention of self-education, cultural enhancement or personal growth. The values placed above all are hard work, and great effort that will keep you locked away from self-fulfillment.
This, obviously, has grown out of the need to grow up. The revolutionaries of today who bemoaned the pitfalls of capitalism are now just as materialistic and selfish as those they fought against.
It is uncommon to find a Baby Boomer without an iPod in one ear, a Blackberry in the other and a plasma TV at home. It is due to this inactivity that no ongoing societal, environmental or people-propelled political change has ever happened.
Without the cry for revolution, life has become planned: Do well in school, accumulate extracurriculars for the benefit of college applications, get a degree, earn lots of money, marry, have some kids, wash, rinse and repeat.
Oh, and don’t forget to live vicariously through your children for all the dreams you missed along the way.
This over-planning exemplifies how even after college the focus is again geared toward success (not of the personal type, mind you). Success is determined only by the size of your house and the price of your car.
You can’t land a well-paying job to buy all of the useless products you don’t need by broadening your culture or leading a self-fulfilled life.
The most time allotted to oneself is a week, perhaps, of vacation. This, of course, is a slap in the face of relaxation, because such vacations are often riddled with worries of finances, transportation, etc.
Inevitably, the middle class labels free thinkers as trouble makers.
So, we come back to the question: What is the goal and importance of college?
1. It is very important to extend the membership of the middle class and those in power. Of course, the power of these economic authorities is supplied willingly by we, the people.
2. The college experience becomes very important in the nostalgia of those who never grew out of those years - this superficiality is only marginally above those stuck in the high school years.
Despite my complete and utter cry of fatalism, I ask you not to choose between the life of affluence and the life of personal contentment, but merely to realize that there is a life outside the walls of the cubical and the brick wall of Ivy League ethics.
