Fascinating article. I fear that this person’s experience is all too common in ram-packed and dumbed down British universities today. Still, it seems so sad that someone would look back on his/her student days with regret or unhappiness, doesn’t it?
I must say that it is very far from my own (now quite distant) student days. I wasn’t there for the whole “student experience” thing; I was deadly serious about the course - and I loved every single minute of it!
Of course, one had the irrepressible arrogance of youth. When a lemon-sucking administrator in the German Dept told me (an ab initio student) that they had once, some years ago, had an ab initio student who actually managed to graduate with a 2.1, I wasn’t in the least little bit phased. Never mind about 2.1, I was absolutely determined to get a First (And I freaking well did too! Yeah, I know that they pretty much hand out 2.1’s and Firsts like cookies now - even at Russell Group Universities. But this was many moons ago!)
One thing is for sure: if you study a modern language at university it can hardly be said that you don’t learn anything, can it? If nothing else, the extra year studying or working abroad means that anyone who is even remotely serious will end up with significant functional competence in a foreign language. And I guess that’s still worth something, even in the grey English-only world that globalists are struggling to create.
So maybe the author of this article should’ve studied languages?
Things are what you make of them. In America, I must agree traditional 4-year to bachelor universities are a money making scam. I have various degrees and they are only useful when someone respects the paper. As far as imparting real, working knowledege I need for the world, well, the traditional schooling was not “spot on”. As far as the social atmosphere, that is something that would have been greatly enhanced had I known how to reallly study a language. My french classes were a waste, we all knew it, even the teacher knew it, but that was just "how they do it."If I had really started learning a language it would have opened up a whole new culture early in life for me to experience.
Going to college: Where’s the motivation? I’m surrounded by everyone that wants to make it big in a cutthroat atmosphere (these people are usually functioning alcoholics and addicted to Adderall) or people stress themselves out to come to the market filled with unpaid internships and jobs that make only $12/hour when the cost of an apartment is like $1000/month. It just doesn’t seem worth it anymore unless you got a degree in engineering or a Nursing degree.
I wouldn’t redo college or my program other than networking more and studying abroad.
From my observation, jobs are plentiful in my field in urban areas (which is expected for college grads) but the cost of living is ridiculous, but in rural areas, it’s the exact opposite. That was at least my motivation of graduating college, was to be able to get out of backwoods America.
