Higher Education: Fast Food or Exquisite Buffet?

Student Graduates College in Only Two Semesters

I came across this post on one of my favorite blogs of late, and I was quite shocked. The attitude was so different to when I was at school, and I don’t know what has changed.

A sample is this:

• The article reports that David took 23 units his first semester and 37 his second semester, averaging 30 units per semester (there’s no mention of how many units he took during summer school). I took 31, 39, and 37 units in my three semesters, averaging 36 units per semester. That translates to about two extra classes per semester compared to David. I wish I’d thought of taking more AP classes in high school, since that would have allowed me to lighten my college schedule considerably and maybe even graduate in two semesters as David did. I just didn’t have the ambition in high school to do what David did. He deserves major credit (OK, bad pun) for his foresight.

It seems that College, instead of being a place to mature, to learn from people, to find one’s direction in life, to… has become something of a race to complete as much as possible in as short a time as possible by

1. pretaking early classes
2. working too hard
3. getting as many courses crammed into as short a time as possible

I can’t believe this because I spent four years at University (I believe I was very lucky), and each year to me presented different challenges, and each year I felt like a different person. To my mind, attending University was like going to a fine restaurant, not a fast food restaurant, where there was a large buffet of delicious food, each had to be sampled slowly, carefully. Is our education system now becoming just a giant hamburger machine for most students as a way to generate money, train the workforce, and keep them out of trouble for a year or two… Yikes!

Kenneth