The erosion of higher education’s role as a pathway to empowerment
This essay approaches the transformation of higher education in American life from a path to empowerment and social mobility to a system that often silences student voices, encourages financial exploitation, and loses integrity due to corporate involvement. It draws on Adam Conover's "America HATES College Students" to build up the argument that increasing tuition, censorship of student protests, and curricula set within a framework of elite interests serve to undermine critical thinking and democratic engagement. Essays like this critically scrutinize systemic problems within educational institutions; as such, they serve to raise awareness of socio-economic and political forces that could influence the manner in which students resist authority in society. This essay is appropriate for students who are doing policy discussions, education reforms, and the promotion of accessible independent education.
November 15, 2024
* The sample essays are for browsing purposes only and are not to be submitted as original work to avoid issues with plagiarism.
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The Erosion of Higher Education’s Role as a Pathway to Empowerment
Name
Institution
Course
Professor
Date
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The Erosion of Higher Education’s Role as a Pathway to Empowerment
For decades, Americans saw college as a path to success and intellectual fulfillment.
For so many students of the modern era, that ideal could not be further from their reality.
They are saddled with debt, censored for articulation of critical viewpoints, and ultimately
leave campus wondering what exactly they have paid for. Rather, the American education
system started to treat students as customers and a source of finance rather than teaching
them critical thinking and contributing to society, further defeating its very mission and
furthering a cycle of disenfranchisement. Although college is marketed as a vital step toward
a better future, today’s higher education system in America often hinders the empowerment
of students by financially exploiting them, restricting their right to protest, and allowing
corporate interests to compromise the integrity of educational institutions.
The financial cost of higher education has skyrocketed in recent decades, leaving
graduates with debts that can take years, if not decades, to repay. The era of affordable
education that followed World War II was short-lived. Policies like the GI Bill democratized
education, opening pathways for working-class Americans to attend college without incurring
crippling debt (Shermer 63). However, beginning in the 1980s, fees and tuition began to rise
sharply. Conover (2024) notes, “Before Reagan, tuition at a University of California campus
like Berkeley was free,” adding that today, students face annual costs of $20,000 or more
(18:15). Thus, by placing this burden on students, universities have created a barrier to
mobility, ensuring that only those willing to take on significant debt can access higher
education (Shermer 63). It is a model that makes universities rich and students poor, while it
transforms what should be an empowerment through college into a lifetime liability that
replaces learning for its own sake with training for a job.
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Beyond that, other universities go to the extent of silencing the voices of outspoken
students concerned with critical social and political issues, sometimes with disastrous
consequences. There are various studies that have examined how various universities
responded to student protests about their institutions' financial relationships with industries
considered odious (Shermer, 2021). Students from leading schools like Columbia University
and UCLA have demonstrated against their colleges investing in companies involved with
violence and oppression (Shermer, 2021). The reaction from universities, though, is mostly
suppression of such concerns. Conover (2024) explains that UCLA even resorted to sending
police who “shot students with rubber bullets and arrested 300 of them,” actions taken against
students whose protests were largely peaceful (7:02). Thus, by treating student activism as a
threat, universities erode their longstanding commitment to free expression and critical
inquiry. This contradiction reveals another controversy (Conover, 2024) . In this case,
universities celebrate their student activists of yore, at least the anti-Vietnam variety, even as
they crack down on students using the same methods of protest today to challenge
institutional power.
The state of high education in the United States is the manifestation of the corporate
interests that have invaded the institutions through their heavy investments. As Conover
(2024) mentions, strong corporate and political interests have actively worked during the past
couple of decades to reinvent universities in order to serve a conservative, profit-driven
agenda instead of a democratic, socially aware one. As noted in Conover (2024) review of the
1971 “Powell Memo,” corporations have systematically encouraged universities to hire
business-friendly professors and offer curricula that align with the interests of wealthy donors
(19:00). This influence affects the academic freedom of students and faculty alike, leading to
the suppression of viewpoints that challenge corporate dominance or critique government
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policies. In effect, universities become a mouthpiece for elite interests, prioritizing
partnerships and financial stability over the empowerment of their students.
Also, the broader erosion of educational integrity has substantial social implications,
as it prevents universities from fulfilling their role as incubators of democratic thought.
Colleges were once places where students could safely question authority and explore
alternative ideologies (Shermer, 2021). Now, the limitations imposed on student expression
and the financial burdens placed on them mean that fewer young adults are empowered to
think critically about the world around them (Shermer, 2021). Conover points out that
education, by design, “helps you see the world differently and helps you understand the
systems in which you live” (14:01). When universities limit access to this understanding by
restricting curricula or silencing dissent, they deprive society of informed, critically thinking
citizens.
Lastly, this suppression does not just harm students individually; it damages the
foundation of democracy by reducing the diversity of voices in public discourse. A
functioning democracy relies on citizens who are informed and capable of holding their
leaders accountable (Côté and Pickard 75). In this case, by undermining education’s
transformative potential, universities fail not only their students but society at large. Students
graduate either silenced by censorship or hampered by debt, unable or unwilling to challenge
existing power structures (Côté and Pickard 77). This creates a self-sustaining cycle whereby
the few, often at the helm of privileges and perhaps affording to be educated without much
economic hardship, are best positioned to mold and shape the political and economic
environment.
In conclusion, higher education in the United States has been reduced from a public
enterprise that should help students develop into truly independent young adults to a virtual
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playground that fosters economic inequality and stupefies any serious pursuit of intellect.
Economic stress, censorship, and corporate intrusion have combined to fundamentally alter
the job of colleges and universities and transform them into willing co-conspirators in the
very structures of power that they should question. The promise of higher education as a
means for empowerment and social mobility has remained, to this day, largely unfulfilled; in
its place, the institution seems to be more focused on the financial bottom line than on
fostering independent thought. If universities are ever to fulfill their stated purpose, they must
break with corporate influence, return to affordability, and create spaces that protect the free
expression so central to a lively, democratic society.
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References
Conover, A. (2024, August 30). America HATES College Students. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlAb_8bDHjE
Côté, J. E., & Pickard, S. (2022). Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Higher Education.
Routledge.
Shermer, E. T. (2021). What’s Really New about the Neoliberal University? The Business of
American Education Has Always Been Business. Labor, 18(4), 62–86.
https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-9361779
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November 15, 2024
24/7 custom essay writing by real academic writers
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Academic level:
Undergraduate 1-2
Type of paper:
Essay
Discipline:
Social work and human services
Citation:
APA
Pages:
3 (998 words)
* The sample essays are for browsing purposes only and are not to be submitted as original work to avoid issues with plagiarism.
