College: Waste of time or waste of money?

Salon.com has another article about higher education .

This one is about an anthropologist who decided to study american college students, as if they were pacific islanders or yanomamo or bushmen (apparently, you don't call them San anymore- that's bad). That is, ethnographically and inaccurately. Like Tom Wolf without focusing so much on felatio. Or the charming white suit.

I'm 23 and a college student. An undergraduate. This is my seventh or eighth year as a college student. If you do the math, that means I started college before I finished high school. I've been in college longer than I've been driving, fucking, working, or been able to make a decent pie. I've been in college longer than most american marriages last.

And I can say one thing to this anthropologist: As fourth-tier universities go, you've done a pretty good job- just stop being such an apologist.

I go to a fourth tier university. Most of my classmates shouldn't be attending university at all. This is evidence of two separate but related phenomena in our society:

1. Students aren't well prepared for college level work.
2. Students are pushed into college even when innapropriate for their goals and abilities.

College has become the new high school; you need a degree (or are told you need a degree) for any job that has a chance of offering a middle-class existance. This goes along with the increasing length of adolesence in the US. People are forced by obscene housing costs and underemployment to live with their parents into their mid to late twenties. There's no hope of marrying, having children, living alone, or any of the traditional markers of adulthood until the mid-thirties at least, so an extra four years of education doesn't seem like a significant delay.

Of course, it can be. And it's a huge expense for individuals and their families. And it's not appropriate for all individuals. Vocational education has been neglected in this country. If it were a dog, it would be bald, underfed, flea-bitten and left in a locked car with the windows closed in August. I went to a vocational high school. People could leave with an education that would prepare them for careers in auto body, plumbing, carpetry, nursing, early childhood education, metal work, and more. In a few years, my old high school will move to a new building, and the vocational facilities will not be rebuilt. Parents don't want to be told their child won't be preparing for college. Career education has become a dirty word. People think that it's somehow less than the other tracks; it's not. The days of slotting slower learners into practical classes are over. Parents don't want it, though. They want their children to go to college, no matter what.

So college has become the place to go. And with this influx of students who don't quite know what they want, who don't quite know what to do with a degree, who don't quite even know if they wanted to continue their education, are pushed into fourth-tier universities. They go for the experience, for the extended adolescence, because it's what is expected of them. They go because there is an impression that without college, they will be waiters and janitors and maids.
The kids who, five years ago, graduated my high school with a top-notch vocational education are solidly middle class now. They're in unions, they have a trade, and they're making more than three times what I do. And they're competant professionals with the same chance I have of a fulfilling life.

Their younger sisters and brothers in my classes at UMass aren't as lucky. The standard education obtained from my high school doesn't prepare you well for college. English focuses on the five-paragraph essay, useless after 12th grade. Science progresses from the outdated taxonomy of plants, fungus, animals, bacteria and viruses to a cursory hurtle through Newton's laws. History is a whirlwind of commitee designed curricula. Native Americans and their belief systems are stressed- whether the war of 1812 happened before or after the civil war is not touched upon. And these kids are in college. And they're the majority. And they're lost.

They want good grades but they don't know what they might mean. They're not planning on graduate school but have been given a vague impression that college is something they're meant to do well in. They want to do well on the tests but don't really understand what they're meant to get from the course. They grade-grub. They want an A for showing up and trying hard. They don't want to write too many papers. They want to connect with their professors, but don't really want to work too hard. They feel that doing well is something they are owed.

I've had people in my classes complain that they shouldn't have to write papers in a course that wasn't english or creative writing. It's not fair, they claim, to be graded on anything but knowledge of the subject. I've had people in my classes complain that there is no attendance grade- what do they get for showing up? I've had people complain that material is too hard, the reading is too long, and the lectures aren't interesting to them.

Students demand the questions for a test in advance; if not the questions, they want a study guide; they're positively up in arms if the professor doesn't post her notes online. Nobody takes their own notes anymore. People don't know how. They resent information presented in class that isn't found in the book. They aren't lazy. They aren't stupid. They're just not at college to learn. They're at college because everyone they've known has told them that a bachelors degree is a passport to a successful adult life.

Of course they resent their professors; they are the ones making it harder for them to get that degree. It must seem slightly sadistic to these bumbling undergrads when a professor requires deep thought and analysis rather than a 1,2,3 pass system.

But this is just the fourth-tier university students. This is just my current classmates. My old school was entirely different. My discontent is different. I've been at UMass about eighteen months, give or take. In that time I've taken many classes, in many disciplines. Not once have I been asked to write a paper more than five pages long. Not once have I been allowed to choose a topic for a paper myself. (No teacher at Bennington would DREAM of teaching a course without at least one free-topic paper). Not once has a teacher required insight or application of concepts in a paper. I feel my teachers have been somewhat beaten by their students. By the need for objectively graded exams for sticklers with litigious leanings. Beaten by the need to have a course that is both relevant to the brain-sparing sophomores and palatable to the burned-out seniors. Not once have I been able to give a teacher a full enough impression of my work in order to ask for a reccomendation.

I take courses at the Harvard Extension sometimes. I like the way that the profs there respond to their students. I like the way most of the students there seem to know how to be students. I like the way analytical writing can be treated like a joy rather than a chore. I like the way profs make personal comments on papers. I like the mutual respect evident in the classroom. I like the way it seems to matter that I wrote my paper, rather than someone else writing an equally good paper for the same assignment.

I miss being a real student.