Reply to Article: Students increasingly treat college as a transaction

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Article: Students increasingly treat college as a transaction"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. These responses are pretty discouraging. I guess I'm an idealist and dream that college can be a place of exploration, critical thinking, lively peer discussions, debating ideas, and more.

I agree that there have always been a decent share of poor teachers at the college level and when I taught in a college setting was not a fan of the grade grubbing. And it's true that costs and competition are unreasonable. While the points in the article are valid, I think this is also a result of the stratification of our society into the haves and have-nots.

My kid wants a big school, but I'm trying to encourage them to still consider smaller ones where class sizes are better and you're more likely to know and talk to your professors and fellow students in class. [/quote]

NP. I agree that the thread is discouraging. It’s not that people aren’t making great points. Yes, there’s plenty to be cynical about: The cost of higher education has far outpaced earnings. As a nation we’ve hollowed out the middle class, adding a mind-boggling pressure on everything. Schools themselves are playing marketing games, even as they’re charging too much (and part of societal stratification!). All of that.

And yet I can’t shake a nagging feeling that the ones who are most hurt by treating education as transactional are the students themselves.

Anything I could say here about the value and power of a broad education over the course of a lifetime will seem twee and idealistic to the cynics. I don’t imagine I’ll convince anyone, so I won’t try. But I do know how much my own education has meant to me, in ways that both mattered to my career and didn’t…and I also know how hard it has been to distinguish between the two. Sometimes things that seemed impractical weren’t. Often, things that seemed practical didn’t turn out to have much utility at all.

So here I am, trying to talk to my kids about both the realities of this world and the importance of letting themselves be absolutely lit on fire by what they’re learning. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics