The State of Higher Education

Having been in the education system for 20+ years I have been able to experience the system from many different angles.  From student, to staff, to faculty, I have had the great opportunity to see the much of the system in a relatively short amount of time.

Given my unique position I would hope that my opinion (through this post) on this topic would be worth something seeing as I current occupy the roles of student, staff and educator, simultaneously.

As I have progressed through the education system I have had a continually changing perspective on the system and its purpose in society.  As with most people I went through the phase early in my life when I thought that school was a waste of time, that opinion progressed and developed over time into something very much the opposite, where now I look to the education system and can’t get enough of it.

Perhaps I was naive for the longest time but I was always under the impression that the education system is in place with learning as its primary objective.  I always thought that the primary goal of higher education was to educate the population, educate the next generation so that they may do the same for future generations.

Now after being in the roles I have currently hold I realize that the ideas of the higher education system being primarily about educating the people is not what its about at all.
It’s about the money.

This shouldn’t have surprised me as we live in a consumer economy and sadly the majority of things come down to money.

Perhaps I was naive to not realize this sooner, because I ?was? am young and didn’t know any better, or perhaps because I don’t believe money to be the most important thing in my life and I find far more value in the other aspects of my life

I find something fundamentally wrong when the mandate for places of higher education is to primarily fill the seats in their classrooms and as an ultimate goal: to make money.  When the primary aims of people who label themselves as educators is not to educate I begin to question why they are even in the so called “education system” to begin with. I begin to question the motivation, commitment, enthusiasm and outlook that these educators and educational institutions have towards the students they teach.

I am not arguing the fact of whether or not higher education should cost money, that’s not the point of this post and I am fully aware that educational institutions need to make enough money to pay for their expenses and support expansion, but when money becomes the primary goal over the actual education I begin to question the state of things in our society.

There are a number of examples I would like to use to help illustrate my point, but out of pure selfishness to keeping my job (s) I cannot mention even the slightest details of these examples.

I can only say this: when you choose to enroll 3 X as many students in a program than should be in the program just to make an extra buck you are doing the following things:

1)    Stretching the educators timing, effort, resources, attention and commitment to the students in the class, in the end degrading the quality of the education that the students receive.

2)    Lowering the entrance average, allowing students who shouldn’t be in the given program to be there, lowering the standards for all students and therefore lowering the quality of students that graduate from the program, subsequently lowering the skilled workforce in society.

3)    Stretching the “Hard Resources” (equipment, facilities etc.) that are available to the educators and students, therefore placing a greater strain on them and cause them to degrade at a greater pace.

4)    Increasing your income from tuition allowing for administrators to get paid for more than they are worth, allowing certain faculty to get paid more than they are worth and allowing institutions to show off to other competing institutions.

In the end it comes down to education, the need for quality educations, quality institutions and overall quality education.  The need to have the students at the forefront of the education mandate, no questions asked.

When money becomes the first and primary goal in the education system priorities becomes lost and in the end someone suffers because of it.  The students suffer.

Although there are problems with the elementary/secondary school system the problem isn’t a money issue in the way it is in the higher education realm.  Prior to higher education the educators care about the students, their progress, success and the like.  There isn’t the distraction of money, as an alternative and more important goal, education is still at the forefront; the priority.

Perhaps if the ultimate goals of these institutions weren’t to simply make money we would have graduates competent enough to run our city, government and companies with greater aspirations in mind other than just making money.  But since people are simply the products of what they were taught we will continue to have nothing more than people with dollar signs in their eyes coming out of these institutions with the intentions of running the world for their personal gain.