A response to knowledge no more: are students creating the university or vice versa?

Photo by Elliot Brown via Flickr

Luis Santana/Opinion Director

Diego Saldana-Rojas wrote an article saying that students no longer come to universities in pursuit of knowledge. No longer do students come to find answers to universal questions, instead they come to party and to meet people. That a college degree is becoming like high school diploma: Just another thing we need to achieve until we can make it into the job market.

I pose another question: Are the students morphing the universities into this environment? Are the universities allowing themselves to become more of a social hub and less of an academia because students aren’t caring? Is the host allowing itself to be changed by the guest?

Have we set knowledge on a shelf meant only for the things under the category of “if I have time for that,”? Do we not know that knowledge of the world is better than the club scene?

Another question is why are we settling for less? Why are we not being the students we should be? Why are we not craving intelligence like we crave the party life? Are we not seeking knowledge because we think that it won’t help us? Are we under the idea that all we need is job experience and nothing more?

If we are under these impressions, we are wrong.

Universities should be not only a step towards getting a degree, but a way of attaining knowledge. A way of exploring not only yourself, but others; meeting people in your classes who have different viewpoints and challenging those viewpoints with intelligent discussion. It should be a place where you constantly learn things you didn’t know before. A way of seeing the universe through diverse viewpoints and finding where you stand in the scheme of things.

I understand most people won’t agree with me. I understand most see universities as simply a clock-in clock-out environment, just another stone on the path towards a career where they can earn enough money to drive a BMW, drink Starbucks and have a fancy business dinner until they have to retire. This sort of life is meant for some people, even craved. But let me propose that you use universities as a search for enlightenment. Let me ask that you go to your library, and check out books on things you’ve never read. That you take classes on things that you don’t know. That a thirst for knowledge fill you as equally as your thirst for water.

I would ask that when you attain this knowledge, you commence in dispensing it in others. Not in a pompous sort of way, but in the same way that you would share a lantern with someone who is in darkness. That each of you would teach the other something you didn’t know about previously, and you both become wiser for it.