What is the College Experience?
I hear this phase all the time — “I want to have the college experience.” Most recently I’ve heard it from my daughter who is now close to college age. This phrase is strange to me because it really didn’t exist when I was in college. Way back in the mid-eighties when I attended college, the college experience was known as 4 years of living in crowded quarters with others, eating cheap tasteless meals, and dressing in worn jeans and hoodies. In other words, the college experience was living a very simple life for 4 years. It meant spending most of your time at the library, walking to classes in the rain and snow, and sitting in lecture halls of 200 plus people.
These days the college experience is something completely different. It has become almost a right-of-passage and a required period of time for young people to find themselves. Could they find themselves outside of college? Not likely, according to most people. Today it is believed that young people require this college transition period between high school and a working career in order to make a successful passage into adulthood.
I’ve often pondered this college right-of-passive need within our current society. It does indeed seem to be true. There is no longer “learning on the job” or “working your way up”. Society and especially businesses want college educated people, even if the positions they are hiring for can be learned completely on the job. in prior generations, it was quite natural for people to start working after high school, or even before. But no more; it is almost as if you are an incomplete person, mentally and socially, without a college education.
The college-attending requirement is generally accepted because most people really enjoy going to college. They like being a part of a college community, going to tailgates, cheering on football games, and sitting in the student union with hundreds of other students their own age. However, there is the simple problem that college has become too expensive. When I went to college, it was fairly cheap — not as many people attended so the state paid for most of the tuition. This is no longer the case. More students are attending, and this is requiring colleges to raise tuition and to engage in grade inflation to get everyone through.
What is to be done? I believe the simple answer is that most people should attend a community college for the first 2 years of their college time. Then they can attend the next 2 years at a university and maybe longer, as businesses usually require internships before they are prepared to hire someone anyway. Many people think that community colleges are sub-standard. They hire local people with Masters Degrees, while universities hire professors with PhDs who are conducting research. This may be true, but as I mentioned previously, most of my first two years consisted of attending lecture hall classes with 200 plus people. We never got to know our professors, and they were more interested in doing their research anyway. They mostly taught because our tuition paid for their salaries.
With the help of technology, we can bring lectures by the best professors (via media) to community college classrooms. Those students wanting to learn from a Harvard professor, can do so. There can be facilitators with Master’s Degrees manning the classrooms, while the content is given via media. This could be the best of both worlds. A student can learn cheaply during the first 2 years, while still being able to have the “college experience” during their final two-plus years. However, even more can be done to improve on this process. Not everyone wants to learn within the liberal arts, so why not make that an option. The most academically inclined students can take liberal arts (gen ed) classes by Ivy league professors via media broadcast, while other less interested students can have a more technology-focused beginning college years. They can do real-world projects to gain important skills, much like prior generations learned by doing on-the-job. These students can advance to a university after a two-year degree or they can stop there — their choice. This can help eliminate the grade inflation that is quickly decreasing the value of a college education, especially within the liberal arts.
With the help of technology, we can allow everyone to have the college experience without breaking the bank. It is time for a change to our university focused right-of-passage to adulthood. With media productions provided to serious students who can effectively learn this way, and with technology-focused alternatives provided for those who aren’t as academically focused, we can bring costs down and still allow for everyone who wants it to have the college experience.
