Why go to university?

No clue

There are a shocking number of students in university who would be stunned by the idea that one needs a reason to be there. For them, there are things in life you just don't question. At some stage, you finish grade eight, and the next year a bus comes and takes you to high school. You don't ask why, you just go. And in many cases, the transition to university is managed just as smoothly by parents, friends, and surrounding people who always assumed it would happen. You don't ask why, you just fill out your applications, maybe sign the loan documents, and go. I'm really not kidding.

Now, the unfortunate part about this is probably none of these people would think to read a book about what's wrong with university or how they can get more out of it. If you know people like this, hit them over the head with a copy of this book, and maybe they'll think about it. Or better yet, just ask them the same questions I'm asking you right now. “Why did you come to university? What are you looking to get out of this?” That might be the most important thing anyone says to them all year.

Just like anything else in life, it's possible to surf though university with a minimum amount of effort and attention. Some choose to focus instead on pastimes and hobbies, relationships and family, because it's so much more interesting and keeps the rest bearable.

As the quality of surrounding students improves (as it does in later years), it gets harder to scrape by with this minimal effort, but some people seem to manage. Others flunk out. But life doesn't end with graduation, and a degree in hand -- even for those who achieve it on autopilot -- won't tell you what to do next. So the sooner you work out where you want to go, the sooner you can start steering in that direction, rather than hope you end up there by accident.

Which is right?

No function of university is necessarily better or worse than any of the others. They all respond to various needs in society. And no student is in university for the “right” reason to the exclusion of all others, though some might be there for poor reasons. Let's take it for granted that all the things universities are doing today occur because there is some need for them. People want to learn, find jobs, take some time to straighten out their lives, prove their competence; they all deserve a place to do that. But it obviously doesn't need to be the same place. Yet that's what we've got, and we call it a modern university.

If university feels screwed up because it's trying to do too many things at once for too many kinds of people with different reasons for being there, that's a problem. In my opinion, it's the problem. Just remember your fellow students aren't the root cause of any frustration you may feel. Blaming the people around you, just because they've got attitudes, goals, and intentions that don't fit well with yours, is a dead-end path. We've all been ill-served by a system that throws us together in the same blender with the vague expectation things will just sort themselves out. But at least it's something we can cope with. It just takes some extra effort to think about what we each want and figure out how to get it, instead of getting a whole lot of what the next student wants, which is probably something entirely different.

Page 4 of 4

<hr>
<img src="http://old.canadianliving.com/upload/CanadianLiving/pool/univc79771.gif" align=left>Excerpted from What's Wrong With University: And How to Make it Work for You Anyway, by Jeff Rybak.  Copyright 2007 by Jeff Rybak. All rights reserved. Published by ECW Press.