Professors’ outlook on college students Shamus Khan suggests in his blog, College is Only Good for Helping Rich People Get Richer, that college students nowadays do not learn anything while attending college. He stereotypes all college students based on a study [Babcock and Mark’s Study] that compares the sixties and current day. The study is said to be fifty percent of the student population but what about the other fifty percent? Yes, fifty percent is a big number but I can’t help but wonder is Khan really basing his idea off facts or is this merely his suggestive out-look on the new generation?
Khan argues that colleges make false claims to be helping students “develop skills and capacities—human capital—essential to a modern marketplace.” He even has the audacity to argue that college students only go to college to “enjoy” ourselves for four years. He says, “The truth is that students hardly work in college, and they learn almost nothing while they’re there. College is a place where already advanced youths spend four years enjoying themselves, and upon completion receive considerable rewards for having done nothing almost.” I have friends that stay up till three in the morning studying and doing homework; that’s not nothing they are working hard to get a good education and make the most of the money they spend on their education. Khan backs up his whole argument based on the study of Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks that show that the amount of time college student has dropped from “twenty-four hours a week in 1961 to about fourteen hours per week in 2003.” He says that the decreased studying time has increased the leisure time. As a college first semester freshman I can’t help but feel insulted and degraded.
Based on my life, I spend about sixteen hours a week studying and doing homework. When I’m not studying, most of the time I’m at work. I work between twenty to thirty hours a week; the rest of the time I try to catch up on sleep. To be completely honest there are times when I get lazy and don’t study and there are times I end up on facebook while I study but it doesn’t mean I’m not learning anything. I study a lot more now than I did in high school. I could breeze right through high school without really studying or putting a lot of effort into my work but when college rolled around and it was a rude awakening. I honestly don’t have time for leisure except maybe a couple of hours on the weekends. Khan stereotypes college students as party animals, drinking, and playing beer pong, but I think Khan has seen too many movies. Who says the time not spent on studying is spent on partying? I for one strongly disagree with his stereotypical idea. I’m sure to an extent the amount of leisure time for most college students has increased but I also think we learn things from our leisure time. College student go out and learn to socialize.
In society today, socializing is a key element in having any successful career. I am a shy person I’m not good at talking to new people or being in an unfamiliar environment surrounded by people I don’t know. It makes me uncomfortable, but when I got into college I realized I needed to socialize more and get comfortable with my surroundings. I’m still shy but when I do go out I try to meet new people. Our generation is bombarded by the media that it’s cool to go out party and drink, so some of us are going to follow the crowd. Khan has to also realize that the media has drastically changed from the sixties till now. What’s “cool” has changed. We see so much sex, drugs, and violence in the media; college partying is almost encouraged media. Unfortunately some college students do party through their whole college career but most don’t and Khan shouldn’t stereotype all college students. For most college students we go out on a Friday night to blow off steam from our stressful college lives and we learn to mingle and speak to strangers which in some cases can