Many of us post-grad students go to college in hopes of attaining a degree, with a career we love, making a decent amount of cash along the way. To many, college is just the next step climbing the ladder to a fulfilling life. And herein lies the problem! Many people live their lives in a series of steps, which family, friends or society prescribes as the best moves for one to make. Go to college, get a job, marry and reproduce, and finally, death! Sometimes, we can feel suffocated by not feeling as though we have choices or that the choices we choose aren't in accordance with the person we want to be in this life. College serves as a great example! Many of my closest friends have questioned if going to college was worth it, and many that have degrees still are employed in mediocre jobs, making an hourly wage. This list sheds light on a few problems, I see, that college students and grads, may endure!
5. Professors
Professors are scum, well let's say most professors! Many have this sense of power, like cops or club bouncers! It's their class, their rules. Sick and missed a class? So what, no excuses, even if you die, no reason to miss my class, tell your ghost to take the test for you! Oh, you have an interview for a job after school? So what, if you go I'll flunk you and you'll be here another year! Then there's the issue of examinations. Professors give exams with questions such as: Can you tell me what time it is?
A. Three o'clock
B. 3:00 pm
C. 3am
D. All of the above
E. None of the above
F. I'm number illiterate and can't read time
You always have those loser professors that try to be funny on an exam! Now it may seem as though most answers could suffice but professors, the weirdos that most of them are, always find some little reason to mess with your head! If you answered A your correct because that's the only answer that can be given if it's 3pm or 3am! They provide multiple choice answers that differ only by one or two words, and think it an efficient way to test knowledge of a subject! I remember being informed in high school that college tests weren't about route memorization and that in college, professors didn't take attendance! Wrong and its true that some professors don't take attendance but 99% of them do! They find anyway to take 5% off a grade because realistically, professors want tenure and its hard to get tenure when your handing out A's to everyone in class! The professor hustle! They write text books every year in order to make money and have the audacity to teach a class about reserving natural resources! These books will contain one or two additional sentences, and be named 2nd Edition and sold for $300! Blow me! The professor hustle is even worse at large, research-driven universities. They don't give a damn what you learn, as long as someone is writing them a big enough check to study the mating patterns of insects! Furthermore, most professors can't teach! Talking from a PowerPoint for ninety minutes doesn't say you're a good teacher, it says we may have found a cure for insomnia, so don't get upset when the majority of your class naps or text in class because you're so boring!
4. Course Work
Let's try to guess why college degrees require four years of schooling. In most college info packets, they say its to make the student a well rounded individual. But, only if the student can afford to become a well rounded individual, seeing as how tuition is $3 million nowadays! Or maybe, they need a way to make more money, so they require lawyers to take music classes, doctors to take art classes and actors to take engineering classes! Many schools also offer certain classes, those many need to graduate, once a year! You ever get an assignment so absurd that it infuriates you? Today class I want you to keep a journal, that will count as class participation, solely for the purpose of entertaing me by reading about your personal issues! Seems like an elementary homework assignment to me! In college courses you may have exams, quizzes, pop quizzes, papers, reports, group projects, homework, class work, weekly assignments, mid-terms, finals and thought exercises all for one class! Pointless, mind-numbing work that preps students to become working members in corporate America, not for any specific career!
3. Your Degree
After graduating from a prestigious university and being tens of thousands of dollars in debt, your degree is supposed to be the key to jump starting your career. But soon you realize, degrees are not keys, just pieces of paper worth a lot of money you never had! I've talked to people who graduated from ivy league schools who were unemployed, not enough experience to get some jobs and over qualified for others! There are college grads working as cashiers at fast food places, janitors at companies and valet drivers! After dealing with obnoxious professors, completing pointless assignment after pointless assignment, the last thing you want to do is an entry level job. Especially when your degree is supposed to help you bipass that step. Your degree symbolizes the many sacrifices and steep price paid to complete schooling. It says I can learn any job rather quickly and stay focused around a group of binge drinkers. Also, there's a hint of classism in regards of where you go to receive your degree. Just like everything else in our society, there are different levels of degrees, such as Associate's, Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate's. I always thought it weird that someone with a PH.D always asks to be referred to as doctor. I understand, you worked hard in school, good, you got your degree but don't tell me what to call you! Then there's different levels of colleges. From community colleges, two year schools, four year universities, public and private schools and of course ivy league schools. Community students look at high school grads as though they're beneath them and traditional four year grads look at community students the same way and ivy league grads look at everyone as stupid and inferior! Another way in which to divide people and have them fight each other! Either way, where ever you are just remember, C's earn degrees!
2. Indoctrination or Education?
The problem with college as well as many other institutions, is the fact that there are people behind the scenes who have a vested interest in the results of an outcome. Let's say the referees for the Super Bowl bet on a certain team to win and are the refs calling penalities and possibly changing the outcome of a game. It's easy to see how the games outcome would be effected by someone with reasons to have one team win over another. College is very similar. Most universities do deals with major corporations for money. Maybe the school only offers PNC Banks on campus meaning that PNC gives the school some money and PNC gets lifelong customers in return. It's hard to think that the many deals that colleges and corporations engage in have no impact in what's taught in the classroom. Even in the case of professors, teachers trying to get published to get research grants and selling textbooks are presenting you with their point of view, not cultivating the students outlook of the world which is essentially what true education does. In college, your given the task of writing papers that basically follows this formula: pick from the subjects that I (I being the professor) tell you to write about, and then go and find "experts" from the field and cite what they think in your paper because, they're supposed to be correct! Your opinion or critiques of what is being forced in your head are rarley taken into consideration. This is also evident in the public school system, where the state tells the teacher what must be covered for the sake of passing a standardized test! This is why most young children don't know the truth about Thanksgiving or think Ben Franklin invented electricity. Even when I was a youngster, schools attempted to replace the word slavery with "peculiar institution." I guess raping women, killing children, owning and selling humans as property and forcing people to work for free, to death may seem a little peculiar to some! In certain states in America today, there's an attempt to remove talk of slavery all together, trying to clean up Americas image. All in all, college indoctrination and America's educational system as a whole, is an attempt to create obediant workers! College weeds out those who don't follow instruction or clash with the professor, known as insubordination, its an attempt to make those sumbit blindly to authority without questioning or thinking about why things are done, just to do what is told and expected!
1. Student Loans
Two quotes come to mind when thinking about the perils of student loan debt.
"A man in debt is so far a slave"- Ralph Waldo Emerson
And...
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword and the other is by debt"-John Adams
Here's the thing folks, college is too expensive! The average person cannot afford school and therefore most take out loans, with 18% interest rates. So, when you go to pay back that $10,000 loan it comes out to be more like fifteen thousand dollars. The fact that college has become a big business does little to deter student after student from begging Sallie Mae for loan money! And six months after graduation you have to pay your debtors! Unfortunately, in todays economy one could be less financially stable after graduation then when enrolled in college! So many students are forced to take jobs with companies that promise to help pay off loans or join the miltary, hoping the government will lend a helping hand! You go from making a decision based on what it is you want to do, to doing what it is you have to do because of your debt! It's not uncommon for grads to have student loan bills totaling $700, $900 or even $1500 a month! Student loans do provide access for higher learning to those who cannot afford it, but it also comes with a thirty year repayment plan! It's weird to hear that some countries offer college education for free! One would think that may be an idea worth researching seeing as how the students of today are the leaders of tomorrow. However, families with money can easily afford tuition which makes it easier for the student in both the short term, no need to work 30 hours a week for a paycheck and the long term, no monthly loan bills and no debt! Student loans are crippling many people who can't afford college or stuck slaving away to repay their loans!
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