Put That in Your Tuition Bill and Pay It

Ah, I love picking out my new classes. Yes, I’m kind of a nerd, but I’ve come to terms with that long ago, right about the time I picked up my super-duper decoder ring and went to the honors college ball (I’m not kidding about that second one, unfortunately). It gives me a kind of thrill to look at a list of classes and choose what knowledge I get to receive in the following year. Do I learn about culture or politics? Language or sociology? Swimming or pottery? It’s my future that I’m deciding, and it’s really fun to have an active say in the education that will become an important part of who I am. But by far, the best part is that this time, I’m picking my last classes. That’s right: in December, I will finish my B.A. in International Studies. Watch out world, here I come!

Even better than that is the fact that I only have 3 more classes, 9 credits total, to finish. That’s it. I won’t even count as a full-time student. I might only have to go to campus 2 or 3 days in a week. Does that rock or what? True, there is a part of me that doesn’t want to end, and not even because I don’t want to trade in the (sort of) carefree college life for a 9 to 5 and my somewhat active social life. I know that there’s more that MSU has to offer, and I want to take advantage of whatever that may be. For example, there’s a class called Language and Culture that I have had my eye on for the past two years but have been unable to take it for various circumstances. I’m talking to my advisor right now to see if I can substitute that class for another one of my requirements, so my fingers are crossed for that. However, it’s only a small part of me that will miss MSU. The greater part of me wants to blow this elaborate Popsicle stand called higher education and never look back.

In perusing MSU’s website for class information, I stumbled across some rather depressing statistics that were compiled as of 2001. Out of a cohort of incoming MSU freshman, 1/3 of them will not graduate in less than 6 years, either because they take longer than that to finish courses, they transfer to a different institution and finish their degree elsewhere, or they simply don’t graduate. Another 1/3 will graduate in 6 years. And only 1/3 will graduate in 4 years or less, which has long been considered the standard timeframe of college education. It looks like that is changing significantly. I should add that this is all worded very nicely, all PC-like, on the front page of the portal that students use to register for classes. Talking about stetting one up to be disappointed. It’s like the administration is telling the students to not expect to graduate in the timeframe they had originally expected. Welcome to MSU, now lower your standards a bit.

Maybe this is why going to college is becoming such an up-in-the-air for young people nowadays. Why spend about a hundred grand in some cases, spending upwards of 5 years in boring classes learning things you don’t need to know or even care about, to get a degree that might not get you anywhere? With the economy the way it is, even bachelor’s degrees don’t quite cut it anymore. One must spend even more money and more time to get a master’s or doctorate degree to get a decent, stable job. It’s not the way it always was, that’s for sure. My mom tells me stories of when she was in nursing school at the University of Michigan. She finished in less than 4 years and spent about 400 dollars each semester on tuition. For all of her classes. That’s ridiculous. I spend more than that on a single credit at MSU, and that’s a public university.

Why bring this up? Because I believe that it’s starting to develop into a similar situation in India, at least from what I’ve seen. Parents send their kids to schools not based on how good the schools are, but how much one spends on tuition. Actual education doesn’t seem to be important at all. As long as you pass the exams and show up to class for three years, you get a degree and a qualification that you can put on your resume. Yes, only three years, because every student in each degree takes exactly the same classes as every other student in their program. It’s like an automated assembly line for the mind. Young adults are just going to school because their parents want them to, and companies are hiring students based on tests scores. There’s no incentive to learn here, just to spend money and get a piece of paper with an institution’s name on it that says you’re a well-qualified worker. If it keeps going on like this, higher education, both in the U.S. and India, will become less and less valued, right along with actual knowledge. No wonder why the apes outsmart us in the future.

I am happy to say that by some luck and some more hard work, I get to be one of the lucky ones who graduates in 3 ½ years, but so what? I can completely understand the theoretical value of a college degree, and I’m glad I did the work, but if the rest of the world continues to devalue education and learning, there’s really no point, is there? One might as well not go to college. Go to India instead. It’s cheaper than the states and the food is better.