Kyle Boddy dot com

One of my favorite books is Generation X Goes to College, by Peter Sacks. In it, the author details his years of teaching at a community college in the mid-1990's and complains about grade inflation, the influx of students who expect to do little work and still receive B's, and the degradation of academic standards on campuses nationwide. I largely credit this book with my conversion to classic liberalism, but having recently re-read it, I can't help but draw certain economic conclusions based on the material in the book and what I have personally witnessed as a student.

Sacks talks about the rapidly-changing environment in the classroom, often using the word 'consumerism' to describe the students' point of view. He accurately points out that the student has increasing leverage at the college level because they feel like they deserve it for what they pay in tuition. Sacks goes on to chastise this line of thought. However, are the students wrong? I don't think so. Long-time readers of my blog know that I am fond of saying that 'college is the only place where you pay money to get told what to do,' and I think more and more people are starting to realize the absurdity of that statement. Of course, you are paying money to eventually get a degree that will increase your employability and/or standing within the community, but the road to that degree involves your money going to a group of people who essentially determine whether or not you will get that degree. Sure, we can talk about 'learning,' but few people actually attend college to learn, and many of them are lifelong students or simply audit the classes. (The fact that I have learned a great deal in college does not invalidate the previous sentence; I did not attend college with learning as the primary objective. I would be willing to bet that a significant majority of students would answer in the same manner.)

As someone who wants to eventually teach, I realize that this is a pitfall in society. However, if you really think about it, such a viewpoint amongst students is inevitable. With the real cost of tuition outpacing almost all investment vehicles over the past fifty years and the media's insistence that you must attend college - lest you be a failure - young people everywhere are beginning to question the validity of forking over their hard-earned money and not having much say in the guidelines that academic institutions set.

Unlike Sacks, I do not see this as a 'dumbing down' of society. I see it as an inevitable economic truth. We would not expect consumers of produce to be blind to the selection and/or quality of tomatoes at the local grocer; why then should we expect the student to blindly accept the college's rules when the college requires the student's tuition to stay operational?