Why Students Attend University

William Deresiewicz claims that in the neoliberal world we live in, the market mentality drives students to attend universities purely to obtain higher paying careers, rather than to expand knowledge. This article describes how students are most interested in practicing majors corresponding with the highest salary jobs: “the most popular majors are the practical, or … the commercial ones: economics, biology, engineering, and computer science.” Today, parents invest in college with hopes to make larger investments back, due to that fact that an individual’s worth in society is based on their wealth. Students no longer attend college to question and reflect on the world, but rather to rise on the social ladder. Deresiewicz believes “college is …show more content…
Deresiewicz assumes “no one’s really interested in science, and no one’s really interested in math: interested in funding them, interested in having their kids … pursue careers in them.” He is assuming that students are only interested in high paying fields. Because students attend college to learn for the enjoyment of learning and bettering the world, there are prospering students in these math and science fields studying regardless of the potential funding. If students were to base their majors off of which field was funded most heavily, then those specific under funded fields would be nonexistent and our society would lack those skills. Deresiewicz advertises the main function of college, which is to get an education that will help prepare an individual for entering the work force and secure future employment. College has multiple other purposes that Deresiewicz ignores. He forgets about the additional functions of college, which include exploring, researching, getting involved, meeting new people, and becoming an independent individual. When Deresiewicz reports “college… has three potential purposes: the commercial (preparing to start a career), the cognitive (learning stuff, or better, learning how to think), and the moral,” he implies that “only the commercial purpose now survives as a recognized value.” Because he implies students only attend college for the money they will potentially make, he disregards the ideas of learning and researching to better the world. In addition, when he states “students don’t much care about the things [professors are] trying to teach them,” he is assuming that in general, all students lack interest in learning. This assumption is false because numerous students participate in research outside of class to expand their knowledge and experiences. Students would not invest hours of time on a research project