Ashley Perea
English 1a
Ms. Monique Williams
19 December, 2013
Revolution
or a Never Ending Passivity?
We
ask these questions all the time: “Why is college tuition so
expensive?”, “What happened to student loans actually helping
college students?”, “How am I supposed afford living with this
amount of debt?”, and “Why is my degree and hard work in college
not ensuring me a secure job?”. The current college education
system has been manipulated by corporations and the universities
themselves to achieve a great amount of selfish financial gains. This
system was originally made to further enlighten the American people
and to prepare them for a professional career. However, under the
current economic state of America having a college degree does not
set you apart from anyone else. The college degree is a piece of
paper that is given to you after you have achieved several years of
hard work and hundred thousand dollars of debt. I will cite Travis
Smiley and Cornel West's book, The Rich and The Rest of Us, The video
“College conspiracy” by the NIA, and Eve Ensler in her interview
for Mind shift from Gaiam TV. This essay will explain why a college
education is still very important, how Corporate America worked hand
in hand with colleges to corrupt the current system, and how
enlightenment and ending the consumeristic and passive lifestyle will
help achieve change in our current education system.
The
college education system today is no longer helping students make
their dreams come true. It is now forcing students to conform to a
harsh reality. From an early age we are told by society and our
authority figures that a college education is necessary to live
comfortably in todays world. One aspect of this notion is true, it is
very hard to get employed without a college degree. The high
unemployment and college graduate rate has made a college degree a
norm and a requirement for employment. Travis Smiley and Cornel West
state in their book, The Rich and The Rest Of Us, what the presumed
scenario is, “Everybody knows you can't be successful in these
modern times without a college education. So you enroll in college,
perhaps you attend a land-grant state college or a prestigious
private university. Perhaps you graduated with honors. Debt might
have been pouring out of your ears, but still, you make it. With
expectations of a fantastic job that matches your fantastic skills,
you’ll handle the debt later” (47). However, the degree does not
set you apart from the majority of the people seeking employment.
Samuel,
a college graduate, was living lavishly with his family in until he
got laid off of his full time job "due to downsizing".
After six years of employment and being part of the higher middle
class Samuel finally realized the reality of things with his
business, "“Major accounts just disappeared. My clients were
struggling through the Great Recession like everyone else,” Samuel
said. “The phones stopped ringing. No one could afford my services.
Bills started piling up quickly”"(45). Samuel story
shows that a college degree does not set you
apart from the rest of the population struggling with this recession.
The high unemployment rate does not guarantee you a stable job.
Although this does not sound appealing to those drowning in college
debt, it is still very necessary to get a college education because
those without a college degree are the first employees to be laid off
and the last appliers to be employed.
The education
system is no longer helping the American people from the corporate
vultures. Instead colleges are going hand in hand with Corporate
America in hopes of destroying the American Dream because of selfish
greed. The cost it takes to achieve a college education is so
ridiculous that parents today start their kid's college funds as soon
as their child is born. Even with their eighteen years of savings,
nothing will prepare them for the amount of money they will spend
within their child's 4 years of college education. In the video
“college conspiracy” by the NIA, the narrator states, “ tuition
rates have gone up 29% within 5 years...text books tripled in pricing
over the past decade...colleges charge about 200 dollars for every
text book that has no resale value because they publish a slightly
revised version with a new name every year...corporations and college
bookstores are collaborating together to make custom text books so
that students cannot save money by buying their books online.”
These facts show that colleges can care less about the hundred
thousand dollars of debt a student has. Their only concern is their
own financial gains to put in a new football field or gym onto their
campus, so that they can impress families and future students to
enroll into their school and ensure themselves future financial
gains. If colleges truly cared about the future of their students
then they would put in this extra money to lower tuitions and text
book pricing, improve the quality of educations by lowering class
sizes, and giving out grants to students instead of loans. The
American people are victims of an unfair system that feeds off of the
fact that a college education is necessary.
The solution to
this problem is beyond the college education system. Over the years
we have been taught to behave according to a capitalistic ideology.
The American society has been taught that consuming materialistic
things will make us happy and while we have been conforming to this
lifestyle our basic needs have been stripped away from us, one of
them being our right to an education. Americans are aware of this
unjust system but they refuse to revolt against authorities because
living passively is the only lifestyle they know. Eve Ensler stated
that the only way to reach a transition of lifestyle for a better
future is to “Get rid of the consumerism thing and begin to see
ourselves as artists and creators of our destiny. Much of why this is
happening is the creation of this passive culture.” This Passive
culture can only be destroyed if we realize that true happiness will
never occur with the purchasing of the newest technology. The power
of the elites is so strong that the statement “true happiness comes
with enlightenment” is completely ignored. Our common sense still
makes us search for further enlightenment but our passivity allows us
to conform and seek this enlightenment under a corrupt college
education system with outrageous tuition prices. It is time to put
passivity aside. The American people need to intelligently and
strategically revolt for our basic rights, but first we need to put
this consumerist lifestyle behind us.
It is evident that
our basic rights are being taken away from us by the elites. Years
and years of taught passivity and consumerisam has forced us to live
under a selfish system. The education system has been manipulated
because is still very important in todays world. If one does not have
a college education then they are put to the bottom of the list of
employment. The demand of an extended education is so great that
elites have raised prices for a college education as if it where a
business instead of a basic right. These prices have been stretched
so far that the a college education no longer serve the purpose it
used to serve. A diploma used to be a symbol of a professional job
with good pay and a great economic future, but now the diploma
symbolizes great debt, unrecognized hard work, and a future of
unstable socio-economics. The solution to mending this unfair system
is to free ourselves from this consumeristic lifestyle, enlighten
ourselves, and revolt intelligently against our current selfish
government. The passivity of the American people has reached its
height. Could it be that this extreme passivity will refuse change?
If this solution spreads like wildfire then we might be in the midst
of a new era, but that depends on every individual person. So what
will it be: Revolution or a never ending passivity to an unjust
system?
