Photo Credit: Courtesy of http://www.occc.edu
Andrew Brimer
March 12, 2010
Filed under Opinion & Editorial
At the very beginning of my junior year letters and flyers from countless colleges started arriving in my mailbox. Most of the mailings featured vibrant colors, flashy ads, and scenic views of college campuses. In addition to physical mail, my email account also began to fill with college promotions. At first I found the attention to be quite flattering, but eventually the sheer volume of college correspondence became overwhelming; in fact, I was forced to create a new email account specifically for the few colleges I actually was interested in attending. To make matters worse many of these colleges send correspondence more than once, and by more than once I mean dozens of times. It actually felt as if entire forests had been cut down simply to secure my interest in any given institution. After asking around, I found that I was not alone. Many of my friends and other individuals my age also were undergoing the intensive college “treatment”.
I found myself wondering, “At what point did all of these colleges gain both mine and my friends contact information?” The answer quickly dawned on me: The College Board. When a student registers for the SATs or AP Tests they wind up being strongly advised to create a personal profile on the College Board website which is then released to colleges nationwide. After this information is released, well, you can kiss the privacy of your email address good bye. Out of all the colleges who sent me correspondence only one of them provided an option which stated: “We will not send more mail unless you check this box and return the card to us”.
I began to wonder just why it was that colleges seem to recruit so aggressively these days until it hit me: money. Colleges have become big business. Whereas once only very talented, hardworking, and/or wealthy students went to college, now colleges are attempting to open their “markets” and sell a degree to almost anyone. The result: the value of degrees in the workplace has gone down, people receive degrees they do not necessarily deserve, and ultimately the American workforce suffers as we lose jobs from the valuable primary and secondary economic sectors and instead have over 2/3 of our workforce devoted to the tertiary sector of the economy: service jobs. In short, we have a nation with a bunch of individuals who have degrees, but not necessarily any valuable skills.
I feel that although education is a very valuable asset, we as a nation and as an educational system have emphasized collegiate degrees wrongly. Teachers these days pressure all students to attend college and earn a degree even though college is not necessarily right for most people. Colleges in turn, cater to this crowd of unlikely “students” with classes which don’t necessarily offer a marketable skill, but rather contain some “intrinsic value”. Let’s be honest, intrinsic values don’t put food on the table, skills do. Teachers should emphasize the necessity of four basic traits: hard work, determination, a plan, and flexibility. For students who clearly excel in academics or have enormous potential to do so, college may be the right route, but for those who do not necessarily favor an academic environment, why put them in to one? College should not be placed upon such a pedestal. After all, you only need a degree for the first job, after that, employers care about what you can accomplish in the real world, not in a classroom.
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