Shaan
Ali
Professor
Goeller
English
201
28
September 2013
College is a place where students go
to truly discover what is right for them and what they really want to do in
life. It is a place where students find themselves and realize their true
potential and talents. Not only that it is a place where some long lasting
relationships are made and some of life’s greatest learning experiences occur.
Everyone wants their college experience to be perfect because once it has
passed it will never come back, and you want to be able to look back later on
in life and say that you truly experienced everything you wanted in college. In
todays day and age however this is far from the truth and students are lucky if
they ever get to experience half of what they want. College now is becoming not
a place to find yourself but a place to find a solution to your number one
problem, debt. Unless you are one of the lucky ones that have the luxury of
paying out of the pocket and therefore accumulating no debt chances are that paying
off your debt is a major problem. Higher education now is in the process of
making a huge shift, one that is moving away from being a public good that can
be seen as benefitting the society through a more intellectual and educated
workforce to a privatized institution benefitting and filling the pockets of
only the individuals involved. This shift is affecting many people but the ones
who are the most affected are the students attending these big universities to
get the best education possible. From the second they make their decision to
attend the school of their choice they are falling into a trap that will not let
them go for a very long time. Most students are not even aware of how deep in
the mud they really are until after they graduate and for the ones that do know
get overwhelmed by the pressures of getting the best grades possible and
finding a high paying job so that they can pay off the loans after they
graduate. This pressure often times ends up being too much for students and
their choices and decisions they make in college get negatively affected as a
result of this.
Students nowadays are taking out
more loans than ever and most of them don’t realize what they are getting
themselves into. “Privatization suggests a movement away from public financing
and toward private financing” (NEA, pg1). When students first take out a loan
the thought of paying it off in the future seems like a distant idea so far
away that there is no point in worrying about it and this is the mindset that
gets students into trouble later on. “I’d known that I had debt, of course, and
that I’d one day have to pay it off, but that day always seemed so far away, as
if it would take place in a second lifetime or a far- fetched futuristic world
with flying cars, robots, and universal health care” (Ilgunas, pg31). It seems
far away but in reality it is very close because four years in college go by in
a blink of an eye and before you know it the time will come to start paying off
those loans and the majority of students will not be in a good position to pay
them off and this will lead to the accumulation of more and more debt. “ I
could boast of a B.A. in history and English from a respectable college, a
couple of internships under my belt, not to mention a long history of employment.
Who wouldn’t want to hire me? I’d failed to realize, though, that my
credentials were identical to those of thousands of other job- seeking grads” (Ilgunas,
pg34). This is a major issue for many job seeking grads because there is just
so much competition in the job market that it is becoming harder and harder to
find a good job. Everyone is stuck in the same situation and is looking for a
way to get out.
More and more students are putting
off grad school and jumping right into the job market right after they graduate
because their debt if too high and this is why there is so much competition and
struggle to find jobs and why more and more students just go deeper and deeper
in debt. “But after one year- between second thoughts about grad school and worries
about interest that was stealthily accruing on his loans (which had leaped to
$58,000) – he dropped out of school to find work” (Ilgunas, pg37). This shows
that the shift to privatization of higher education is not only drowning
students in debt but is taking away the opportunity to continue with their
education. Students are so afraid about their debt that they bypass on a
graduate education. Not only does privatization have an effect on life after
graduating but the effects it has while students are in school are much
greater.
Students are just not getting the
benefits from college that they need to be successful after they graduate and
they are also not making the most of the college experience. This is all due to
privatization and the hold it has on students. There is one thing that
privatization creates that influences every decision a student makes in college
and that is pressure. Having all this debt puts students in so much stress that
they can’t focus on things that are crucial during the college experience such
as building relationships and experiencing new things.
Students get so caught up in worrying
about their debt that they miss out on the important aspects of a college
education. “ I positioned myself in such a way that I can’t have a meaningful
romantic relationship, because I’m always busy and the people that I am
interested in are always busy, too” (Taylor, pg1). Relationships are important
in college because they gives you a chance to experience different types of
people but students now are too busy and stressed out to invest any time in
relationships and this is hurting them in the long run. Also the relationships
you build while in college can help you out after as well. For example if you
need help with finding a job or need references it would be very helpful if a
professor that you knew very well wrote a letter for you. But nowadays students
are too busy and worried about all the other things in their life that they
forget about these things. “ For A., college is an endless series of
competitions: to get into student clubs, some of which demand multiple rounds
of interviews; to be selected for special research projects and the choicest
internships; and, in the end, to land the most elite job offers” (Taylor, pg3).
Students just have too much on their plate nowadays and it has to do with the
pressure to be the best so they can make money to pay off their debt. Even if
they don’t talk about the debt it is always running through their mind.
Higher education is becoming more and
more like a business that is finding ways to take money out of the pockets of
students and draw them into a web of debt that will follow most students for a
very long time. “ I’d heard of people who’d spent years, decades, their whole
lives (!) paying off their debts, working eight hours a day, five days a week,
fifty weeks a year, decades, lifetimes, epochs” (Ilgunas, pg37)! So not only is
the privatization causing stress while students are in school but it also
affects you after you have graduated and have nothing to do with school
anymore. Even if you have a well established you still have to worry about the
debt because the more you delay the more debt will accumulate. Also for the
ones that don’t find a good job immediately after college it is even more of a
nightmare because they have to work low class jobs to make their payments. “
More than 100,000 college graduates are janitors and 18,000 push carts. (There
are 5,057 janitors in the United States who have doctorates and professional
degrees!)” (Ilgunas, pg37) Coming into college most students do not know what
they are getting themselves into because they believe that a job in the field
that they are interested in is guaranteed and that they will be making enough
money right when they graduate to pay off their loans, sadly though this is far
from the truth. This is just what the people involved in this privatization
process want you to believe so they can lure you into their trap.
Even though the privatization of higher
education hurts students while they are in college and even after they leave
the sad news is that it will continue to grow and will start growing at an even
faster rate than it was before. The reason for this is quite simple,
privatization of higher education brings in a lot of money and fills the
pockets of those involved and as long as it is doing this it will not stop.
Also the effects of this will be widespread and will have a significant impact
on everyone involved in higher education. For example we will only see aspects
of higher education that are profitable. “The functions of higher education are
traditionally described as teaching, research, and service. Teaching is the
only one of these functions that is universally profitable to college and
universities. Consequently, the new providers in higher education will only be
interested in teaching” (Levine, pg5). We might end up losing the research and
service aspect of education because it does not bring in an adequate amount of
money.
This will end up being a big blow for
students because being involved in research is something many students are
interested in and it helps them on their way to their careers. Another thing
that might happen if privatization of higher education continues is that higher
education will become more individualized. “ Instruction will be available
anytime or anyplace. Students will be able to receive their education on a
campus, in the office, at home, in the car or on a train, in a hotel, at a
conference, or on a vacation” (Levine, pg6). Now although this may be very
convenient for students who are on the go or want the luxury of leaning from
home, it may alter the level of education that they receive. There will be so
many suppliers of education that the quality of it may significantly drop so it
may end up hurting students instead of helping them.
Students enter college thinking that they
are going into this perfect place where they will have the best four years of
their lives and will come out as better people with the careers that they have
always wanted. They do not realize that higher education is not what it use to
be, it is becoming less and less like a public good that will benefit society
and more like a business whose sole purpose is to make profit. As soon as
students decide to go to the college that they want they fall victim to the
trap that privatization has created and a trap that will not let them go until
many years after they have graduated. This is a process that has become more
and more apparent in the past few years and one that will continue at an even
faster rate in the years to come.