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In recent decades, a shift has occurred within
the structure of the American university system. This change, however,
did not come as the direct result of educational reform; instead,
the nation’s higher learning facilities adapted their ethos
to fit society’s new model of the university as a business
enterprise. Once heralded as a high-brow institute of knowledge,
the university has since been absorbed by the ubiquitous commerce
industry. Many contemporary scholars have critiqued the university
for adopting business-like procedures and focusing their policy-making
decisions on economic considerations. The new university weighs
not only which administrative choices are best for their students,
but also which are the most cost-efficient. While many critical
analyses of such university funding and
administration issues are visible,
the flipside of this educational problem is often overlooked. The
university functions as a business with monetary considerations,
and concurrently, students at these institutions assume the role
of customers. Young adults attending college view their university
education not as a valuable opportunity to gain knowledge, but rather
as a purchase. Undergraduates invest tuition money to attend classes
and, in turn, expect to receive a degree that will then precipitate
a financially successful career. Since the university has morphed
into a business enterprise, the student’s love of learning
has been overturned by a desire for money-making. According
to a survey
of university students cited in the LA Times, the number one
priority of entering college freshman is earning money after graduation.
Young men and women enrolled in the contemporary university curriculum
often express attitudes of apathy toward the academic material presented
because they view their college classes as a capital investment
instead of a window to knowledge. In turn, students exhibiting this
prevalent attitude of educational ambivalence and economic emphasis
become individual customers, who remain aloof from their university
system.
This lack of student motivation characteristic
to the new university is illustrated in an online
guide for instructors at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. The section of this advice manual for instructors entitled
“Teaching Undergraduates: Student Attitudes” depicts
the majority of contemporary university students as overly casual,
disinterested, and unenthusiastic. The site explains how American
college coeds may often arrive late to class and then leave early;
while they are in lecture, students can be seen eating, drinking,
and chatting. “Teaching Undergraduates” identifies the
most debilitating element of the students’ learning process
as the general attitude of apathy, which has washed over university
campuses not only in beach-side Santa Barbara, but also nation-wide.
As the guide warns, “students may show little motivation for
the course other than the motivation to receive a passing grade.”
Undergraduates have an interest in absorbing class material only
so that they may complete their required courses and ultimately
receive a degree. This indifferent attitude is demonstrated by the
typical college study style of cramming; students memorize necessary
class information the night before an exam and then this knowledge
fades away soon after it has been regurgitated onto the test pages.
For the normal university undergrad, learning functions more as
a temporary obstacle to reach the real goal of graduating and advancing
a career than as a motivating force to discover new knowledge. Furthermore,
this callous attitude toward the learning process appears to be
at the root of other unfortunate student
issues such as cheating, which bypasses knowledge acquisition
all together.
While the UCSB teaching guide does illuminate
the common condition of apathy affecting American university students,
this online resource offers excuses for the undergraduates’
lackadaisical attitudes and actions. The site explains that many
students have lax attendance records because they have obligations
outside of the classroom, such as work or family. Although this
reasoning might be accurate in some cases, it represents a minority
of college students and gives the benefit of the doubt to the lazy
undergrad who wanders into class twenty minutes late and leaves
before the professor finishes speaking. “Teaching Undergraduates”
further explains that students lack enthusiasm about their general
education coursework because such varied and broad subject matter
does not pertain to their major field. In addition, the typical
eighteen to twenty-two year old university student is young and
thus lacks the clear future goals that would drive him or her to
learn class material. However, even a student with a focused educational
aim of, for example, becoming a doctor would be motivated to learn
pertinent information to fulfill the ultimate end of attending medical
school and entering into the profession, not to enjoy learning for
the sake of knowledge acquisition. While an attitude of apathy and
disregard for the act of learning by no means represents every single
student currently enrolled in the country’s universities,
this mind-set is increasingly becoming the norm. The UCSB website,
then, treats the issue with a narrow and forgiving stance. Since
this guide is intended for university teaching faculty, the manual
portrays the problem of educational indifference so that the predicament
may seem justifiable and surmountable. If teachers saw student apathy
as a situation that they can neither fix nor understand, then they
too would approach educational curricula with unconcern.
A more thorough and widely applicable analysis
of contemporary student attitudes toward the university system can
be found in the online article “Pedagogy
and Students” by Rob Roy Kelly. Here, Kelly not only identifies
the same phenomenon of undergraduate apathy that is described in
the UCSB site, but also links this shift in student attitude to
the recent businessization of American universities. In this article,
Kelly points out that “Between the 1940s and 1990s, there
have been significant shifts in student attitudes toward education
and teachers,” and these changing outlooks have, in turn,
shaped contemporary student motivation and behavior. Kelly believes
that the new undergraduate mind-set places unrealistic demands on
teachers because students expect the incentive for learning to come
from their instructors instead of from themselves. As a result of
these expectations, university students lack the self-motivation
to learn. Kelly’s web article describes “student perception
of teachers as shifting from authority figures to service persons.”
Undergraduates no longer see their instructors
as respected intellectuals and mentors but instead as servers obliged
to hand them educational inspiration and career opening diplomas.
If a student does not feel stimulated by his or her coursework or
does not receive passing grades, then these shortcomings are labeled
as teaching deficiencies instead of student failures. This shift
of blame is often evidenced in student
evaluations, which commonly berate professors and TAs who give
low grades to their students.
As Kelly explains, “Students believe that
if they pay tuition, they should be able to do what, how and when
they want, and it is the teacher’s responsibility to assist
them in the task.” Here, Kelly perceptively points to the
business transaction of receiving a university education; students
purchase their place in a college class and then feel entitled to
a bachelor’s degree in return. Undergrads become customers
at a university-company where they may buy their ticket to a high-income
career. The new student-customers invests money in this system with
the hopes of gaining a profit after graduation. However, the actual
learning process and acquisition knowledge, once central to the
university education, now gets shoved aside. Rob Roy Kelly writes,
“Students tend to view education as grades and a diploma rather
than what they learn. Most students do not understand what education
is, the educational process, or their role in the process.”
College undergraduates believe that they receive an education merely
by enrolling in classes and forget that a real scholar is one who
seeks new information and understanding with interest and enthusiasm.
In the past, society valued education with high regard and viewed
this process of seasoned intellectuals passing their knowledge onto
younger minds as imperative to the advancement of the community
at large. However, since the university has become identified and
treated as a business by politicians and industrial leaders, “education”
is a commodity which can be bought and sold. Kelly’s article
declares that students should realize that “education is not
something given to them but something they must obtain by aggressively
availing themselves of every opportunity.” While this prescription
certainly represents an educational ideal, it does not reflect a
current reality. Contemporary university students, whether consciously
or not, see themselves as consumer- investors and, resultantly,
remain largely apathetic toward an education of true learning and
thinking. This debilitating economic model of the university system
is echoed in several other scholarly writings, notably including
Paul Trout’s “Student
Anti-Intellectualism and the Dumbing Down of the University,”
which suggests that the students are not only apathetic but also
resistant to their higher education.
The prevalent attitude of educational indifference
and economic entitlement amongst American undergraduates places
these students as individual customers seeking benefits for themselves.
Students, by and large, are no longer motivated members of their
academic community, nor are they innovative scholars seeking to
make important advances for their greater society. According to
a Clarion
University survey, nearly half of undergraduates do not feel
a part of a community at their university, and over one-third do
not understand their role in the education process. They have become
autonomous investors, trading tuition money for later financial
security. This perspective, though obviously flawed, has become
ingrained into the commerce-oriented consciousness of contemporary
America. Consequently, a change in these educational ethos must
come not only from university reforms but from a revaluation of
societal values.
More thoughts on university student
attitudes and apathy:
“Where’s the Outrage? Student Apathy
is the Result of Corporate Influence”
http://www.thehoya.com/viewpoint/012299/view4.5.htm
“Apathy: A Question of Generation”
http://www.cavalierdaily.com:2001/Archives/1997/march/6/edjeffs.asp
“Student Apathy: Why Even Bother?”
http://www.nutimesroman.neu.edu/v1i2/soapbox_main.html
“Trends: Social Indifference Leads to
Student Apathy”
http://www.star.so.swt.edu/03/02/18/ent1.html
“University of Regina: Report on the Survey
of Student Attitudes and Experiences”
http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/report98.htm
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