The Culture of Entitlement and the Decline of Higher Education

Do we really need fifty percent of the population with university degrees? One hundred? Do we want journalism majors flipping burgers, and commerce majors sweeping floors? This seems to be the situation that our current trajectory is taking us. Every year, we are cheapening those pieces of paper that we earn at the end of our university education by reinforcing the myth that a degree will automatically produce prosperity. Well it won't. I don't think ill-equipped or ill-motivated students being thrust upon an education that may or may not want in the first place would find the success they think they would receive.

Economics 101, supply and demand. The supply of degree holders in the population far outstrips the work that actually require such an education. For example, for office administration, a job that twenty years ago, only required a high school diploma now requires a degree on a de facto basis. Has that job suddenly gained a significant literary aspect? Is deriving complex mathematical theories become part of the job description? Do we have to write a report on the systems of social control in a typical office document? Is Psychology 101 required to type at 60 words per minute? Employers, taking advantage of the glut of university-educated people are increasingly hiring university graduates because they can, believing that piece of paper they have will make them better workers when in fact having that piece of paper may mean that they are good students, may be next to meaningless in the real world. On the other side, people who don't have that piece of paper are often left in the cold, who are often more capable than those who have a degree. This trajectory we are on are taking us to a world where university is treated as just another step in the educational system, like the step from elementary to high school. While people think this world is already here, the transition has not yet been fully realized.

What am I saying? I think we need to bring university education back to where it was before, being for the intellectual elite, and put a greater emphasis on vocational and practical learning. Society must admit is that a university education is not for the majority, and make other choices valid avenues for a successful and prosperous living (which they are but people are all too often afraid to admit). There must be a clear shift in society where those who are good at or like a vocation or trade are encouraged to take that path rather than be brainwashed by society or forced by their parents to be doctors or lawyers. Unfortunately, in society, the word 'genius' is no longer used as something to describe people who are innately drawn to mechanics, or someone who just gets the interconnections of nature. In short, we greatly undervalue non-academic knowledge while grossly overvaluing academic knowledge. In a good knowledge economy, a priori and a posteriori must both be valued equally.

Being part of the most coddled generation in history, I am ashamed at the fact that the culture of entitlement has become so widespread within it. When we fail, there are no real consequences, our parents will somehow bail us out, being mortally afraid of allowing their children to learn the lessons of life. My generation is constantly told that we are entitled to anything we want without real consequences or chance of failure. To apply this to the decline of higher education, my generation has been deluded, thinking that a university education is a right rather than a privilege, and the educational system has certainly been complicit at pumping this delusion into the impressionable heads of young people. University education is a privilege because it is the most academic stream of higher education. However, people should know that academia is not for everyone, and since every person is unique and have their own needs, not everyone is destined for the same fate. And if you are not destined for a university education, then you are simply not entitled to one. Unfortunately, there are too many of the aimless that end up in university, especially in my program of engineering, who unfortunately are only in it for the money (the absolute worst reason to be in it). The passionless in engineering that may fall through the cracks may ferment disaster, not realizing that what they do actually has an effect on real human lives.

A balanced society must be founded on a balanced knowledge base with a balanced skill set. Being balanced in everything is the sign of health and prosperity for pretty much anything. Being lopsided is only a recipe for disaster, but we as a society continue to insist that the ship is being steered in the right direction while in actuality it is teetering on one side, taking on volumes of water and sinking slowly but surely. Remember, specialization is for insects.