Is university overrated?

By: Alex Recio

Nowadays most people think going to university is the surest way to attain success. According to recent data published by Statistics Canada, the percentage of people who have a university degree has doubled since 1990. Today, about 70 percent of people between the ages of 25 and 44 are post-secondary graduates. These figures almost speak for themselves and point to the conclusion that Canadians are better educated than they have ever been before.

When I was in Grade 12, not going to university just didn’t seem like a viable option. My parents always made sure that I knew the importance of receiving a good education and staying in school. Now that I have been at McMaster for almost two years, I can’t help but wonder if they were wrong.

Universities are supposed to foster discovery. They are places where people go to gain knowledge, expand their horizons and prepare for the future. McMaster offers many opportunities to its students that enable them to meet these goals. In spite of this, I highly doubt that anyone feels actually ready to face the real world after having been here for four years.

The process of getting a degree seems to mostly involve checking a certain number of prerequisites off a list. At least once a semester, you are bound to take a class that you have absolutely no interest in. Going to lectures is agonizing, but you limp through to the end by memorizing the necessary information and regurgitating it on the test. Two days later you have managed to erase all of the course’s contents from your brain.

Unfortunately, this story also applies to the classes that you enjoy and repeats itself endlessly until you receive a diploma. During the school year most of us live from deadline to deadline, relying on caffeine, Gino’s pizza and Wikipedia to get the job done. All of this begs the question: is university overrated?

The environment that it creates is most certainly not always conducive to good learning. Most of the time, it simply confines students in a classroom and rewards them with a piece of paper that can be hung on the wall for having an ability to mindlessly reiterate random facts.

Once Welcome Week ends, it does not take us long to realize that university is far from the transformative and enriching experience that all the brochures claim it is. On many days the entire thing seems like a complete waste of time. In my opinion, the main problem is that students don’t feel like they have a choice in the matter, unless being a Subway sandwich artist is an appealing prospect.

We are just funneled into a system that has been “proven” to work. Life is short and the truth is we blindly give our best years to educational institutions that claim to give us the tools needed for success, but do no such thing in reality. We must re-evaluate the idea of post-secondary education as a whole and carefully consider if it is really the best way to teach people how they can confront the challenges of everyday life. The numbers don’t lie and Canadians are definitely staying in school longer than they used to. We need to reconsider whether this trend should continue.