The gift of education bestowed upon man is not only a fundamental notion, but the institution itself should be one where scholars thrive and learn more about their passions in order to become better-educated citizens for future generations. However, in the last 30 years, the idea of college and universities in the United States has sadly deviated from this path and has become nothing more than a greedy corporation making pure profit off of the already tired and helpless students and their families. What turned our powerful and proud higher education system into a pit to lure desperate and hopeful youth into despising the system?
Up until the mid-1960s, most public universities in America were tuition free, guiding the hungry and driven Baby Boomer Generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) to engage in more opportunities and really achieve their ultimate reality of the “American Dream." These students wanted to attend college not because they absolutely needed it to have a career, but to acquire precious knowledge they deemed to be valuable, which was compelled by their utmost passion and excitement for what they wanted to learn. However, a good percentage of the Millennials who are currently in the American university system do not have the same desire their generational counterparts had. In today's world being a college student, to many, is just another check off of their list of things to accomplish in order to obtain a semi-decent job later on. Having a college degree is a requirement for most “serious" and lucrative careers, but a lot of Americans cannot even afford the expensive books that go along with the extraneous tuition costs that even public universities demand.
Loans are the biggest problem accompanying this education crisis, even people from wealthier backgrounds are scraping together whatever they can to send their children to even mid-grade schools. In the last couple of years, student loans surpassed the $1.2 trillion mark, with over 2/3 of graduated students and their families being the unfortunate borrowers to a never-ending circle of debt. This unnecessary stress is put on those students, most of whom do not even care about getting an education, and are just wasting their time and money that could be spent elsewhere, instead of on a degree that may or may not secure them a job after graduation.
The corporate structure system of the American university is perhaps the biggest destroyer of creativity and dedication in the quest for knowledge. They fail to get to the core of what students are trying to achieve, which is to become a part of a great institution that wants to see them succeed, not just selfishly take money to help pay administrator's over $200,000 salary. The slow death of the United States higher-education system seems to be due to the fact that money is a stronger love than helping our future generations succeed.
