The Marrow of Modern Day Academia

Disclaimer: I don’t want to offend any educators or students, as I myself have grown up within the system. I went to a University, taught and even studied education.  I merely have some questions and thoughts as I consider graduate school and other life options. Please feel free to provide constructive feedback if you disagree or have any answers. 

“This as the system’s great flaw, and it enraged us. A pure meritocracy, we’d discovered, can only promote; it can’t legitimize. It can confer success but can’t grant knighthood. For that it needs class beyond itself: the high-born genealogical peerage that aptitude testing was created to overthrow” -Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever by Walter Kirn

At a quarter-life crossroads, I’m mired in a transitional period of confusion and incertitude about the direction I should go.  I just completed the book entitled Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever by Walter Kirn, and the book helped bring some my long-lasting,  lurking questions  about higher-education to the surface. I am HUGE believer in the value of education; I just wonder about the system we have created.

Throughout my undergraduate experience these questions seemed to linger:

     
1.  What are current universities in the USA  actually teaching?
      a  Is it just a ploy to delay people from entering  the saturated  work force or a test of patience/discipline for the fortunate?

b.      What motivates the majority of my generation to pursue a life in academia?
2.    What is the cost? (in currency AND  mental health)
3.       Where does it all lead? (Does having a degree or 2 mean that the holder is intelligent?)
4. Does it reinforce our class system like the opening quote suggests, as does the usage of the phrase  ivory tower? (should all education be free?)
5. With the rise of technology and access to information are formal institutions necessary to be educated? Does it make the degree more/less valuable and/or put more pressure on the academic institutions to demonstrate a high performing citizen after graduation?  (autodidact-a person who has learned a subject without the benefit of a teacher or formal education; a self-taught person.)

The older I get the more it seems like a Bachelor’s degree is no longer an option and is becoming a baseline requirement.  Increasingly it seems as though having a Masters and even a Doctorate degree are becoming the baseline pre-requisites to compete, though the power of luck and social-networking shouldn’t be forgotten as they are major part of the equation.

“     When I was a student at The University of Texas (UT), I often felt like I was just a number in a large bureaucratic machine and the only way to succeed was to figure out the system and jump through the hoops with patience. It was all based on some standardized tests and whether you were lucky enough to get a chance at a higher education. While I despised that at times, it gave me a purpose, validation and some amount of self-worth.  Though, it did NOT teach me wisdom, world experience, or coping mechanisms for life like a small part of me expected… and it even allowed some of my once sharp skills in Math (and other subjects) to atrophy without use.  I don’t regret any of it, but I do often question what exactly I learned, what do others learn and how do people end-up as students. Whatever I gained and/or lost in the process remains elusive.

 Kirn explains very clearly what an Ivy League education teaches to those who aren’t motivated, life-long learners and just want to make it out alive:

I couldn’t quote anyone, reliably. I’d honed other skills: for flattering those in power without appearing to, for rating artistic reputations according to academic fashions, for matching my intonations and vocabulary to the backgrounds of my listeners, for placing certain words in smirking quotation marks and rolling my eyes when someone spoke too earnestly about some ‘classic’ or ‘masterpiece,’ for veering left when the conventional wisdom went right and then doubling back if it looked like it was changing. Flexibility, irony, self-consciousness, contrarianism. They’d gotten me through Princeton [. . .] I’d found out a lot since I’d aced the SATs, about the system, about myself and about the new class that the system had created, which I was now part of, for better or for worse. The class that runs things.  

Many falsely surmise that degree holders (especially Ivy League Degree holders) are AUTOMATICALLY very smart, since it has become such a huge status symbol in current day society.  Without a doubt, there are students within the system that authentically learn because they love learning AND/OR are determined to master a skill (for a job and/or money); however, from my observations I would argue that they are the exception. Of course, there are many exceptions who graduate from Universities that aren’t uninspired students and aren’t purely motivated to learn the academic system so that they can graduate as swiftly as possible.

Maybe, if status, competition, self-advancement, the need for validation and recognition were less emphasized, perhaps higher-education institutions could inspire the majority of graduates to become life-long learners that seek out lessons all around them. It could be revolutionary for the state of our society, if we could adopt more heuristic teaching methods in place of so much rote memorization that only a specific type of learner excels at. 

 I admit that I care about my status to a degree. I also openly  admit that I want  to self-advance, and to reach my potential  but above all I want to lose myself in knowledge and authentic education, but I’m not sure where that will lead me.  It could lead me to be a self-effacing woman in the corner of a library, during her spare time or to be in a high-priced institution full-time.

Intrinsically Inescapable Inquiries  Increase, Infinitely!

 Am I just diluting myself and my craven passivity?
Am I actually DREADFUL of failure and/or pursuing the wrong degree, and that’s why I have yet to pursue Grad school?

Regardless if I decide to pursue a life in academia or elsewhere, the system is going to need dedicated, passionate educators to toil from INSIDE of the current system, if we want to keep improving society and maintain  the quality along with the reputation of higher-education in the USA as some of the best in the world.

 Should I take on such an enormous task of trying to improve our educational system? Or am I too sensitive, cynical and filled with too many tough questions to ever survive in such a system? Should I choose a life of errant daring, a life in academia   or something in between that I have yet to figure out?

 ..but  AT LEAST alliteration avails as I prefer pondering, provocative probing & profuse passion to pretense of positivity or  “consensual certitude” or awful,  abiding, apathy anytime. 

“Pause in your knowing to be known. Quit pushing—let yourself be pulled. Stop searching, frantic child and be found” - Walter Kirn