Not everybody's experience is the same, but my research has shown that most college students are being scammed - and they know it.
I want to know if this scenario sounds familiar to you.
You're taking a class. It's probably required for your major or for your school's gen-ed requirements, so there's really no getting out of it. You get into the class and the professor spends the entire 50 or 75 minutes talking about... well, anything other than what they probably should be talking about. They go off on tangents, or they spend a very long time talking about the research that they did when they were in their PhD program in 1985 or whatever. They're definitely not spending the majority of their team teaching you the subject you signed up to learn.
So, you turn to the textbook. The textbook that probably cost you anywhere between $50 and $500, depending on whether you rent, buy, obtain a digital copy, or otherwise. You spend hours and days reading it, studying it, taking notes, highlighting, and making flashcards. When all is said and done, you've essentially taught yourself the entire course. No thanks to the professor who's retirement fund you're shoveling your money into.
Interesting.
Let's ponder another scenario.
It's the beginning of the semester. You need a parking pass for your car, otherwise the campus police are going to have a field day ticketing (or worse, towing) you. You jump through the hoops and the bill for that little sticker comes to $450. An arm and a leg later, now you can park. When you arrive on campus, you go through multiple parking lots and garages, desperately searching for a space... but there are none.
Huh.
You're probably thinking, "But Becca. Yeah, these things suck, but they're necessary evils because I NEED a degree to get a good job."
True... but did you ever stop to think about WHY that is?
If you're teaching yourself subjects from a textbook (and maybe some other sources, like CrashCourse or SparkNotes) why are you paying for the classroom? The professor? The parking? Any of it at all?
What is stopping us from, say, purchasing a set list of textbooks for a given profession or degree, going through and learning the material on our own time (like we do anyways), then taking a sort of aptitude test that determines our competence? And if we pass, we get our degree or are able to enter into our chosen field?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is very simple - it's all money.
Society has conditioned us to believe that we need universities, campuses, classrooms, and people with PhDs to teach us what we need to know in order to enter the workforce. The reality is that we don't.
Things like parking, meal plans, and other fees are just icing on the cake. At it's very core, college is an elaborate society-driven scam to keep the middle class with their heads JUST BARELY above water and to keep the poor right down at the bottom of the sea floor. Can't pay thousands for a piece of paper? Guess it's McDonalds, slinging drugs, or the gas station for you.
This article probably won't change the world. It may not even change your mind. But I hope that it at least gives you something to think about.
If you could save all that money, still learn everything you had to learn, and still get the job and the career that you want... why wouldn't you?
And more importantly, why isn't that what we're doing? Is it because we really need these professors to 'teach' us in order to get a good job (AKA read to us off PowerPoints)? Or is it because colleges, universities, and the government really need our money, and that's what we've been conditioned to believe?
Think about that the next time your professor starts using class time that you paid for to talk about the weather, sports, themselves, or any other variation of nothing.
