I am currently taking a course at JCU called Marxism and Critical Theory. For my class, we had to read chapter two from Marc Bousquet's How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation. There were several points that Bousquet brought up that I found interesting, but what really intrigued me was this idea of higher learning versus higher training.

Presently, you are looked down upon if you graduate high school and do not go straight to college the following fall. People constantly inform you of the importance of getting a degree in order to get a job and be successful in life. What they do not mention is the expense of college. They encourage going to medical, law and graduate school, but do not mention that you will be drowning in debt by the time you finish your twenty plus years of schooling.

So, if we are spending all of this money on school, the question is are we really learning? According to Bousquet, we receive higher training, not higher learning. When I read this statement, I found myself agreeing and even reading it to my friends to hear their opinions.

We go to school and find ourselves feverishly writing down every word the professor says and taking down every note possible. Then, after a full day of classes, we go home and do homework for hours upon hours. Not to mention when there are tests and quizzes, we make flashcards, read our notes and textbooks and work with our peers to understand concepts we do not comprehend. Yet, after all our hard work, once the tests are over we find ourselves unable to recall most of the information we had “learned” earlier in the course. This is not because we are bad students, but rather because we are receiving higher training and not higher learning.

All school is for us is the transfer of information. The professor transfers information to the student who responds by answering test questions, which is transferring the information back to the professor in order to end the transaction. That is the system.

I am not complaining or saying that school is useless, but I do think it worth mentioning that students are not retaining information because we are constantly being bombarded with and being tested on new information. We are just being trained to memorize information in order to pass a test or pass a class but not to retain the information to use in our lives.

I hope that this can change in the future. I love when I am able to walk away from a class and I am able to articulate and discuss ideas which I could not intelligently do before the class. There is no better feeling in the world than feeling that your education has paid off! So, I hope that professors and students can work together to make sure that students fully comprehend the material, instead of moving forward while students are confused just to make sure that the syllabus is being followed and all the information that is required is transferred to the students.