the commodification of education (or my metaphysical crisis part two-thousand and eight)

I have been meeting a lot of very smart, motivated people lately. People with advanced degrees. People who say they know what they are doing.
There was a time when I was thinking about going back to grad school. I was thinking either of getting a second masters in a humanities field to be an academic librarian, or getting a PhD to be a professor. In the end I decided that it wasn’t worth it financially, but all this talk lately has gotten me thinking and defending my decision.
For one, I can’t imagine settling on a subject specialty to study for the rest of my life. That would be excruciating. I would always be thinking that I picked the wrong thing. I am interested in so many things, so many places, and my interests grow and change so much. I love being a generalist. Hell, my B.A. is in General Studies for crying out loud. And you can’t really be a professor of generalities. Nor do you get to move around a lot.
The other thing is a concern of mine that has grown over the last two years, increasingly so since I started working in the Office of Admissions. Every day I see a hundred different files. Files full of resumes, college entrance essays, scholarship essays, recommendation letters, personal statements. Pages and pages of embossed card stock with watermarks and full color photos.
This whole system disgusts me. The fact that we encourage and expect seventeen year olds to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives! And to proclaim it to us in competition for money and access to education. They are so eager to please us, to be validated. And we take complete advantage of them. It’s horrible. It’s entirely the wrong way to raise and inspire generations. This whole culture of competition means that learning isn’t the goal. Winning becomes the goal. Being the best, the smartest. Not the most well-rounded. And all the essays are the same. I am so great, this is why. All the recommendation letters are the same. So and so is a wonderful student, here is why.
Even public institutions of higher education are highly funded by corporate interests. This is a system which works to commodify education. And shouldn’t everyone have a right to an education? Does learning have to be this formal process where knowledge is traded for money??? What about people teaching people and learning from each other? Why are we herding every kid onto the college track? Does everyone need, or will use, a college education? Will everyone be able to afford to pay for that college education based on the job they do get once they finish?
I just can’t work in support of this system. A system which works to make teenagers fear being left behind. Which encourages competition and anxiety. Where winning is the only goal. Go to college, spend all this money, take out huge loans. Then what? Get a moderately crappy job where you invariably do busy office work and your brain proceeds to atrophy. They don’t tell you that in the view books. They don’t mention all the kids who go back to waiting tables and living with relatives because they can’t afford to live on their own. The kids who go to grad school to avoid paying student loans, only to be stuck with even bigger debts later.
And don’t get me started on graduates of masters and doctoral programs. I have heard so many horror stories in higher education publications from out of work professors, professors working part-time as adjuncts at multiple community colleges just to get by. No representation, no benefits, no job security. But what were they told when they entered their graduate program? “Oh, look at how the profession is graying! There will be so many jobs opening in the next few years! We need so many new graduate students!” What you don’t realize until after you’re already inside the Venus flytrap is that these proclamations are made by the schools themselves to “sell” their programs. They make money by putting butts in the seats.
The truth is, a lot of professions are graying but no one can afford to retire. If they do retire, their job will inevitably be de-professionalized, split up into several part-time positions with no benefits, or eliminated altogether.
When you look around you and everyone is saying “Do this! Do this!” You have to stop and ask why? What’s in it for them? What happens if I make my own path? That’s what I’m interested in, this “other.” The “what happens if I don’t?” And I know this is why I’m behind others my age in certain respects. No nice house, no long term partner, no babies, no 401K. I always get distracted. Bored. I always want to go somewhere else, learn something else. Experience something new and completely foreign. So far I think it’s worth it.