University won't 'get' you anywhere
ARLA LATTO-HALL THE CORD WEEKLY (WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY)
WATERLOO, Ont. (CUP) — It’s this time of year that school starts kicking us in the proverbial butt. Midterms and papers come back with less-than-stellar grades, and you think for a moment: “Why am I doing this?”
We know that being at university is “good for us.” At the same time, we’re enticed into staying because of the assurance that it will lead us to more respect, success and wealth. And it’s working: university enrolment in Canada has hit record highs for seven consecutive years, breaking one million in 2004-05.
It’s been a great promotional tool for the government of Ontario, which has put full-page ads in the Economist, boasting that 56 per cent of Ontario’s workforce possesses a post-secondary education, and that its 44 universities and colleges produce graduates for the technology sector, and will contribute to Ontario’s “competitive economy committed to the commercialization of research and innovation.”
We can assume this is aimed at foreign investors who will saunter over the border with their fat wallets and invest in our knowledge economy. We can also infer that Ontario thinks universities produce a steady supply of workers ready to serve its economy.
But earnings fail to follow suit. Men between the ages of 25 and 34 with a university degree saw their average real earnings decline 2.3 per cent between 2000 and 2005, while those with blue-collar jobs have seen theirs increase. Those with some post-secondary education have seen their average real earnings increase 2.7 per cent for the same time period, according to Statistics Canada. The news is even better for those with fewer years of schooling behind them.
This is surprising in our knowledge-based economy, but the university is doing nothing to dispel the notion that a university education will “get you somewhere,” in the conservative, career-track sense. With snowballing enrolments, universities have responded unexpectedly: by dropping their standards. As U.S. writer and humourist Finley Peter Dunne said, “Ye can lead a man up to the university, but ye can’t make him think.”
For example, new students at Wilfred Laurier University are required to maintain a 74 per cent average in their English classes — although the administration was prepared to lower the requirements to 65 per cent to meet their enrolment quota. Any student pursuing graduate studies has learned that the way to a higher level of education isn’t always hard work — their key to success is a good student-professor relationship and a relatively easy workload. No wonder an undergraduate degree means less than it used to.
It is at this point that we have to take our learning and education into our own hands, irrespective of the minimal requirements. Realize that easy courses aren’t rewarding, and hours upon hours in the library reading and researching contributes to our adult lives. That people who are interesting are the same ones who are interested in the world. They are the ones who will always be learning, either inside or out of the classroom. And they’re the ones so wrapped up in the world of thought that they care less about their earnings and what university will “get” them (so long as they can afford a beer to accompany good conversation).
This is the point. Although we’d love to believe that these four years — give or take — will help us along our way, we have to remind ourselves that the purpose of the university, for us as students, is not to “get” us anywhere. Gerard Delanty, a sociology professor at the University of Liverpool, puts it best: “Perhaps it is the role of the university to enable society to live with choice and uncertainty.” It should stop parading itself as a forum for anything but.
