Jessica Franklin talks about  the transition from being a student to teaching students.

A video series collaboration between four undergraduate buy viagra online students: After Office Hours.

Videography & Editing by Anqi Shen.

By:Rob Hardy

The latest issue of Macleans magazine came right on the heels of festivities welcoming frosh and returning students back to university campuses across the country. Making it the cover story for its September 10 issue, “The Broken Generation” looks at the fallout of accumulating social and economic pressures along both sides of the border. As it examines how the youth of today have internalized the crises facing them, it explores both depression and suicide with candor. What further makes this story notable is that its detective work also included a stop right here at McMaster.

First of all, Macleans should be applauded for digging deep. As a youngster, you might have begrudgingly been exposed to this magazine in doctors’ offices when no other options were on hand.  As a mature adult, however, Macleans really is one of the most trustworthy publications in Canada, and is about as hard-hitting as the mainstream media gets. This article stays true to such mantra, deftly illustrating both the hope of overcoming mental illness while discussing why the generation currently in their twenties are in such a quandary.

That being said, I did have some problems with the way this feature story was framed. For one thing, it seems to freely use the word “student” as a synonym for youth in general, whereas I would suggest that these problems are largely typical of young people regardless of whether they are or ever were specifically enrolled in higher education. Since easily more than half of Canada's young adults have at one point been college or university students, finding our way in the world seems to be the larger theme in question here.

Therefore, though some state that they’re worried about their grades, that in itself is not an existential academic crisis, specific, of course, to the studies undertaken. Grades focus on numeric categorization relative to others with whom they are competing.  One student talks of stressing over marks in order to get into teachers college, and others talk of “improving academic performance,” both of which highlight a scramble to beat out their peers in a game of musical chairs, all the while evidently lacking a passion for both the academic work itself, as well as a higher discovery of self-purpose.

What the article does not cover, however, is where these students find themselves after overcoming their depression fueled by this academic struggle. Since we are told that the more ambitious youth of today, as cited herein, are mostly suffering not from some sort of inferiority complex but from a genuine hopelessness due to a bleak future, then it should be clear that the cause of their malaise still exists. Saddled with student debt, an increasingly tight job market and a general lack of opportunities befitting grads entering the workforce, the situation is indeed depressing, yet something that one should not take personally.

Our universities have definitely reached a saturation point in turning out graduates because even though most decent employment opportunities (and some less so) require a degree, the job market has not caught up with creating this kind of job for everyone holding a BA. Therefore, the pressure increases as everyone scrambles to build a resumé with various experiences, which are also competitive, as even unpaid internships are not possible for everyone seeking one.

We have to look at the bigger picture here. Is the student who is sweating over their grades rather than the content of their reading lists, really going to be happy even if they get their spot in teachers college? Is the scarcity sweeping over the job market not going to matter to them so long as “they got theirs”? Do they think material fulfillment will somehow shield them from seeing and caring about those who didn't make it, even though said student could easily have also missed their chance? Or do we actually really not want to confront these questions because they are too uncomfortable?

The Macleans feature might invite some comparison to the student strikes in Quebec, where peers mobilized as a group to defend their interests in a more active way as they, too, saw their way of life changing before their eyes. One must understand that a resumé exists to demonstrate our ability to do a job, not as something that needs to justify our right to even hold one and earn a living. Consider this: it is more necessary than ever to gain control of your life, purge all that is extraneous and find a way to battle your way to the top without forgetting all those in our communities who are getting caught up in (or under) unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies and other economic calamities coming at us from all sides.  Though this is not a solution either, by fostering the right attitude, with support if need be, we can bravely face life and hope to persevere against its uncertainties, whatever they may be.

The arch on campus signifies an era of education that is not really comparable with the effort we put forward today.

Rob Hardy

Silhouette Staff

Discussion about the institution that is a university becomes quite complex, and many opinions exist. As I researched and interviewed a large number of faculty and staff, it is clearly a contentious issue, especially since the concept has markedly altered a great deal. Nevertheless, what follows is my own take after a fair effort to look at the big picture, and an attempt to challenge some of my more dogmatic views.

First off, it is important to take a step back to examine how this institution came into being. The word ‘academia’ harkens back to Ancient Greece, where philosophers expounded on many interconnected topics dealing with the big questions of life that ultimately inform our moral choices on a daily level. Works by Plato and Aristotle have survived for over two thousand years, and were one of the cornerstones of what became the first universities in Europe.

‘University’ comes from universitas magistrorum et scholarium, meaning a union of masters and students. The University of Bologna seems to be the longest running university still in existence, as its first school began in 1088. The universities of the medieval era were monastic institutions where Latin was the universal language of lecturing, and they were centred on a standard curriculum. The Trivium contained the basic education, involving grammar, rhetoric and logic (dialectics), and prepared students for the Quadrivium, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Specialization in a specific field still involved some mastery of subjects that we today may be inclined to mistakenly view as irrelevant. One may conjecture this was to ensure that scholars were of a certain calibre, and able to draw from different disciplines in their work. It is from this European tradition from which Harvard University was partially modelled; as the oldest university in America, founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1636, it influenced later Ivy League colleges.

One can see that our ideas have greatly changed, though this is only evident if we look beyond what we’ve been told. The university today is no longer really a provider of moral guidance. One can hope we take Plato to heart, but our concerns in this hyper-economy involve viewing our post-secondary careers simply as a means to an end, not something that may throw unwelcome wrenches into our plans as we discover things about ourselves that may be inconvenient.

The increased enrolment in university is also indicative of the recognition that a degree is a status symbol. There are actually significant differences between concepts like education, intelligence and knowledge, but our society narrowly accepts that a degree must indicate a higher rung on the ladder. That someone may have coasted through their courses is not immediately evident, nor is the independently learned scholar who dropped out viewed with much respect if their consumption of literature equates to a Masters level but is not “proven” and achieved by passing through the system. This opens up questions of class, where even an earned degree is of little worth if you are not climbing the prescribed path of your profession in a socially acceptable way and “doing something with it.”

Today, education is being pushed as a necessity regardless of the fact that the job market cannot even accommodate every worker seeking a job, let alone jobs requiring a degree. Thus, the case for limited enrolment. The opportunity to pursue higher education needs to be more thoroughly determined prior to granting admission. Those seeking employment opportunities also have the option of enrolling in skills-specific college programs rather than pursuing scholarship that requires an aptitude and interest that may be inherently lacking.

With the policy of No Child Left Behind, however, the testing ground for academic rigour is no longer the high school, as grading curves become inflated. This has only led to a woefully unprepared freshman class whose presence drops the standard for many others.

During my first undergraduate program at UofT fifteen years ago, for instance, professors were not as forthcoming about what may be on the final examination as they are today: failure was a real possibility. Though I think McMaster is an outstanding school in every sense, I do feel that the narrow passageways going through MUSC have gotten a bit too crowded. But this then also touches upon the University’s current need to financially survive.

A book published last year, Academically Adrift, offers a very bleak picture of education in America, where too many first-year students enticed to experience college life wind up dropping out, indebted. Two recent articles in the New York Times surmise that we have betrayed intellectual culture, and I tend to agree. As someone who has seen every single Woody Allen film, my idea of the intellectual is somewhat informed by his account of professionals in Manhattan during the 1970s and ‘80s, as they discussed complex issues, waiting in line for tickets to a Kurosawa film. This was before the era of American Pie and its successors shaped a revamped vision of Animal House as the new theme for college campuses across North America.

Not all are partying, however. Some are barely getting by as they work and try to pass their courses. Others are multitasking, involved in clubs and sports, and interning for free. Though one may achieve a stellar resume, it’s clear that our education is also getting co-opted by higher societal demands. Without the freedom to delve further beyond the syllabus into at least the few subjects that truly interest us, how well-rounded are we really? When else will we get a chance to be students and be valued for that if not while in university?

For both the slackers and the serious, it’s clear that the less time we spend on actual academics, the less the degree we earn is ultimately worth.

Julia Redmond

The Silhouette

‘Tis the season for visits to campus from eager high-school seniors.

Last Thursday, annual Canadian university rankings were released to inform their decisions. The Globe and Mail’s Canadian University Report and Maclean’s University Rankings offer up a fresh batch of statistics, placing McMaster relatively high in many categories.

McMaster maintained its sixth-place standing in the Medical Doctoral category from Maclean’s rankings.

The publication makes such comparisons by using fourteen numerical indicators from each institution, using such data as the amount of research money, number of student and faculty awards, and number of library holdings.

In The Globe and Mail rankings, which assign grades to each school based on a survey of over 30,000 undergraduate students, McMaster averaged out around a B+ in multiple measures of student satisfaction. The University scored particularly well in student-faculty interaction, teaching style, campus atmosphere, recreation and athletics, and buildings and facilities among other large universities.

Not surprisingly, McMaster received a lower grade than all others (C-) in ease of course registration.

Dr. Peter Smith, VP Academic, is pleased with the University’s performance. “McMaster generally does well in all of [the rankings], which is rewarding,” he said in an interview. “It shows that McMaster is pretty good at everything it does.”

People should be wary of taking the rankings too seriously, though. As University president Patrick Deane explained, the rankings “provide a snapshot of one moment in time.”

Their methodology, he noted, is not consistent. Maclean’s focuses more on the reputation and financial aspects of schools, while the Globe and Mail looks to students for input. This can lead to discrepancies between the results.

For example, the Maclean’s University Report, now in its 21^st edition, recently had to reorganize its categories, which are determined based on range of program offerings and funding.

Determining how universities should be compared is a complex process, and leaves room for debate.

“I don’t think any one of the rankings sums up the state of the University,” Deane said. “But as a group they do provide an interesting perspective on how we’re doing.”

All of this comes in the wake of the release of the Times Higher Education Report, released in early October, which placed McMaster 65^th on its list of the world’s 100 best universities. McMaster was one of five Canadian universities to make the list.

“I’m always very proud of that,” said Deane of McMaster’s rank. “It actually suggests an institution that is very powerful for its size.”