Dear college students, you probably know that paying to go to school also means you pay for a lot of frivolous things. For example, Louisiana State University recently built a lazy river as part of an $85 million recreation center. You also pay for a lot of clubs you might not care about. Your school might have say a muggle Quidditch team. NYU students even founded a zombie defense league.
But what does that do to help educate students? That may sound trivial, but have you ever thought about the fact that you’re paying for your school’s more political clubs too? You might be conservative, libertarian, or you might not know what you think about politics, but you’re still paying for your school’s feminist student collective socialist club and others. That’s all paid for via student fees surcharges on your tuition bill used to fund clubs and other campus organizations. Explicitly partisan groups like college Republicans and Democrats are excluded, but other politically motivated groups aren’t–like the Public Interest Research Group, which was founded by Ralph Nader to promote progressive causes.
How do you feel about paying groups to fight for causes you don’t agree with or causes that you might even fight against? Take the University of Minnesota’s five campus school system. Students there pay a total of $35 million in student fees which comes to between $336-837 per student per semester. Some of that money is used to fund organizations, clubs, or causes that many students are ideologically or religiously opposed to. If you assume every other state public university system brings in a similar amount, that’s $1.75 billion a year nationwide.
Some lawmakers have started to take notice, but with little success. In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker introduced a budget proposal that would allow students to opt out of such student fees, but the state legislature turned him down. In Minnesota, State Rep. Drew Christensen introduced a bill that would have done the same; unfortunately it was opposed by students who didn’t want to lose their club’s special funding.
None of this changes unless students get active and stand up to their schools. Fight it on campus, fight it in your statehouse, and fight for your right to use your money how you see fit.
I feel quite okay with that. There’s an infinite number of good angles. First we must dismantle the idea that we are “fighting” – having opposite views is completely normal, and it’s healhty for society which wants to rule itself by democratic measures. No one is omnipotent and only by clash of ideas we can choose the best ones. I can see how you could feel offended by some ideas other than your own, as I’m just a mere human myself as well, but that’s also good, contrary to popular belief. All in all, having adversaries is helpful and keeps your views challenged and mind sharp.
Secondly, I can see how you can feel offended if you feel your side is not getting “enough” from that budget - but that’s the case for either your university council case or, in more drastic circumstances, for judicial system. Scrapping away all funding seems very much extreme as there are many important fields which need funding which would never be obtained if you’d ask ordinary students do they prefer to pay for it or new Netflix show. Zombie clubs are - for some funny, for some painful to watch - a bit pathological side effects but I strongly believe good causes outweigh jokes. And you can always challenge joke clubs in front of your budget council.
Third point is: if you feel there are some clubs doing what you dislike, you should be perfectly okay to run your own club to their dislike. Both initiatives will operate under the same law and, if used wisely, can only broaden the horizons of pupils in both groups.
My final thought is that I much more prefer a style of education that Seneca proposed by being very hospitable to Epicurus even though those two schools of philosophy where “fighting” with each other.
The thing is, fighting is good. Those enemies can’t hurt you, the biggest fear they can do is just chsnnng your mind - and that’s not bad. We all change our opinions all the time. That’s called learning and universities, with many clubs which you like and even more which you may dislike, were built just for that.
Challenge joke clubs, smile at the “enemy” -having your opinions challenged is not such a bad fight to have in a place of learning.
(Disclaimer: I also dislike ~70% of orgs mentioned by OP in the article.)
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Don't you think it would be better if colleges were transparent about where your tuition dollars went beforehand? For example, let's just say you wanted to go to college to--oh, I don't know--become educated in a particular study, and you really were not interested in any extracurricular activities or organizations funded by your tuition. Why are you even still paying for these things?
It's not necessarily an issue that you disagree with these other groups or are offended by their positions, but that you simply are not ever going to utilize or engage in them. Shouldn't you, as a consumer, have the option to opt out of paying for these things? Especially the things you explicitly do not support.
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100% agree on transparency.
My other thoughts are very similar - it’s just that I see traditional universities as one entity, and what you describe here as a completely new offering, related to the Internet and specialisation of knowledge workforce.
University always reminded me of “ a whole” in Latin, it always was a place to get my views challenged on as many levels as possible, without limiting myself to one particular field of study. I’d suspect to be pushed outside of my comfort zone and discipline almost by definition. You “educate” yourself, that is “change from within” yourself as a whole human.
I see MOOCs and specialised IRL courses as a place to learn one and only one thing without all that other “university” approach. Get exactly what you pay with all expectations met and no thinking boundaries crossed into unexpected disciplines. That’s what I do when I need some specific skill set, not a general thinking revamp.
So yeah, I agree and disagree. I want traditional universities and I want new form of education with bits you can choose 100% yourself, dollar to dollar.
So far looking at MOOCs, I’d say we are on a good track.
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