I have a really sad story for you this time. There once was this country. And in this little country, the people complained a lot and its politicians were hungry for power. So, the politicians got together and asked, “How can we pretend to educate these people?” One politician stood and said, “I know! We’ll offer them ‘free education’ and then pressure the population to go into higher education to inevitably devalue education!” The other politicians looked at each other, nodded and agreed to this little compromise.

Maybe one day, when I’m old and decrepit I’ll have a real story for you but I hope this one sufficed. The American education system and societal values are innately flawed and corrupt for several reasons. Let’s take a look at the world we live in today. In the United States, more and more High School seniors are receiving college acceptance letters. There are several problems with this.

The more people see education as a right rather than a skill in this country, the lower the value of education will be. For example, if everyone in this country had a college degree (which is becoming the case today), the value of the college degree within itself becomes depreciated and ultimately valueless. Why? Because everyone has one. No longer does an employer look at the diploma or transcript and notice that you stand out from the rest of the herd.

But what does this do to the value of your education? If more and more students begin attending higher education, colleges and universities begin to act like assembly lines. No longer does the university focus on the quality of one’s education, but rather the quantity of the education. No longer are you, the student, getting a quality lesson when you are stuffed into a lecture hall. In fact, the banking method of teaching is perhaps the least effective way of ensuring a student actually learns the material. Instead, students walk into a lecture hall, listen to a lesson, and become nothing more than a student ID number to the professor. Does this really qualify the student as an academic? After all, why do people go to college to begin with?

People have different answers to this question. Some say that people go to college for job experience. Others say that people go to college to live away from home. Perhaps they go to get a different taste of life, learn something new for fun, or maybe they go because of parental pressure. But is this really the culture that we have developed into? We essentially have successfully taken something as sacred as academia and prostituted the idea to the point where everyone, no matter how intelligent or dimwitted, can obtain this education and receive a diploma for simply sitting through a lecture and answering a couple of questions on a ScanTron sheet correctly.

A center of learning has been transformed into a Ford assembly line where intelligence need not apply. If people want job experience, what ever happened to actually getting a job? If people want a different taste of life, what ever happened to travel? If people want to learn something new for fun, what ever happened to our local libraries? If students feel pressured into going to school, they need to understand this and this only. Not everyone is meant for academia.

I have noticed that the value of my education has decreased exponentially the longer I stay in college. There are too many students here who take classes because it seems this is what society has dictated. These are students who quite honestly do not care about the material they are learning and are in school simply for the fact that they need a diploma to show their employer or a transcript to show law schools that they were able to twiddle their thumbs for four years. You know college education has been devalued when you’re able to substitute college credits at the High School level. Ever heard of “Advanced Placement”? Apparently, our society thinks that High School students are capable of college level work. I feel that college level work is “college level” work for a reason. It no longer becomes “college level” when those who are not in college are capable of such work. And hence, the value of college education has decreased.

When students show up to classes (or don’t for that matter but are enrolled anyway) and slow down my class discussions, it truly takes away from the academic experience from those who are sitting in class and actually want to learn. There are too many “A’s” being given out to students who tried their hardest but also truly don’t care about the subject material. Way too often do I hear “Leave me alone. I just want to finish this paper so I can pass,” or, “Can you help me out? I really need an A.” No – you don’t want to just pass because this isn’t the mentality or reputation a university should have when its students operate this way. No – you don’t really need an A if you are essentially admitting that you are not capable of doing the work. Again, this truly slows the progress of the class for those who are actually interested in the material, are actually good at the material and want to learn more, or those who are planning on taking this material into graduate school.

Since when does having a Political Science or History Degree qualify me to go to Law School? Why do so many students have the common misconception that Political Science immediately equates to Law School? Shouldn’t practicing law need certain preparation that goes beyond just knowing theories and policymaking? Of course it does. And I don’t want to hear “Political Science makes you think analytically,” because, no, it doesn’t when your papers are graded over a rubric versus the individual quality of your work because there are so many goddamn students lurking around my university searching for whatever class to fill “this and that” requirement.

Students today are more worried about finishing because they have to instead of actually learning something. And it seems that those who actually do the work end up getting the same grade as those who just want to get by. Again, the value of my education has truly been depreciated.

What America needs to understand these days is that a college degree does not naturally equate to “smart” as if the power of some god naturally endows those with a degree with some unforeseen power. It doesn’t. And as a result, a college degree is no longer sufficient enough for an individual to go places in life. What’s next, the depreciation of a Graduate School degree? Are we all going to become PhD’s or lawyers too?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone who chooses vocational school over college or university. And in most cases, those who end up choosing vocational school have better experience at what they will be doing in their future careers than most college graduates do. And in even more cases, vocational school doesn’t take the bajillion and seven years to finish like college and graduate school need, which naturally means more time in the workplace and more money faster. Ever notice how most college graduates don’t know how to fix a car? Do their own plumbing? Electrical work? Housekeeping?

It ultimately barrels to societal values. And at the rate this society is going, we’re valuing a piece of paper over work experience or real skill. Leave academia to the academics. Young people need to find their skill and exploit it before they start exploiting the wrong skills at my expense.