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Englisch

University of California Riverside

2013 Brett

Willi H. ©

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We Sell Our Life to Money, and We Do It in College

The Effects of College on Students

 

Our whole society seems to revolve around the concept that success means having more money – nothing else. Nowadays, people are going to college just because of the statistical promise that by doing so, they will be happier, because they will be earning more money than if they do not go to college. We are ruled by this false concept that money equals success, and that one cannot really be considered successful without it. The reason we are being ruled by this concept is because we have made it our purpose to work in order to get more money. The definition of success according to the Google search engine is “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose”. Therefore, all of us who think that success means getting rich are making the grave mistake of making our main purpose in life the sad task of collecting money. This is a result of excessive Capitalism – American Capitalism. We live in a society structured as a social hierarchy, in which the rich are at the top, and the poor at the very bottom; this gives the thought to people that to be successful, or better, they need to climb up as much as possible – and if this thought does not come to all Americans naturally, we are repeatedly reminded of this aim by the ever-growing media. By presenting a faulty perception of success, American Capitalism has also been able to over-esteem college in such a way that may hinder people who are not meant to go to college.

 

How does it present a faulty perception of success?

Success may mean a lot of things depending on the person, but the definition that people keep giving it is: getting rich. In many ways, this is the definition that keeps getting shoved and drilled into our heads. We hear this through music, television shows, movies, and other media. We also hear some form of this idea in school by our teachers and counselors, in our homes by our parents, and everywhere else by our friends that already have this idea established in their minds. This idea comes in so many forms and through so many mediums that it is impossible to avoid and extremely difficult to dismiss it as untrue.

For example, in all of popular hip hop we hear artists brag about how wealthy they are and how much worse it is to not be rich. A perfect example of this would be It’s all about the Benjamins where Diddy (Puff Daddy) says, "Five carats on my hands with the cuts / And swim in European figures / F**k being a broke n***a". This song ranked 32 in VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop in 2008 (VH1). Another example of a popular hip-hop artist that helps define success as getting rich is Drake in Successful where his chorus by Trey Songz isI want the money/Money and the cars/Cars and the clothes/I just wanna be/Successful.” These two very popular artists are heard by many people, especially young adults, all over America. However these are only two examples of songs that define success for us as getting rich. Hip hop songs in general are very popular and played regularly on local and internet radios, regularly downloaded, and played on YouTube over a million times – saying the same thing: Success is getting rich.

Television and movies are not as bad when it comes to delivering this kind of message, but they do show it often. I have watched countless shows and dramas, and the characters that are always on the spotlight are the ones with the huge houses, nice cars, and expensive suits. It’s not a problem that they are rich, but that they are always viewed as the only successful characters by the rest of the characters in the show, even if their money is completely inherited. This sends a message that it does not matter whether the money was earned through work or not, as long as the individual has money – then he or she is automatically considered successful.

Seldom does television or radio, or any other type of media encourage any other definition to success that becoming wealthy, and since people are heavily exposed to the media, they cannot help but become influenced by it in many different ways, including their goal. However it is not only the media affecting our goals – it is also the hierarchy inside Capitalism in itself that defines success this way.

We live in a society that is openly divided into three general social classes: The working class, the middle class, and the upper class. Each class is trying to reach the top for better living conditions, more power, etc… However, just by having social classes, the idea that one is “better” than the other comes naturally. One may begin to question: If one is better, why is it better? How are the social classes different? The main obvious difference between the three classes is money. The upper has the most money than the middle class, the middle class has better living conditions than the lower class, and the working class has the least resources to spend. And if we attribute “better” to “more successful” then another natural thought that may “pop up” into people’s heads is, “they are better because they have more money”, which can then be transformed into “I can be more successful if I earn more money”. Now my argument is not that people should not strive to get more money; my argument is that this thought of successful has an excessive relation to money to a point where the only thing people think of as success is money. Once this is established as success, then the generations after that also think it is the case, until we completely measure one’s success by the amount of money that one earns. This is the case now, and this is impacting young adults to prepare for life by thinking “how am I going to get rich when I grow up?” This allows young adults to depart into a life without intrinsic pleasure as Crawford describes it.

 

“...an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, and interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling. A similar effect may account for the familiar fact that when someone turns his hobby into a business, he often loses pleasure in it. Likewise, an intellectual who pursues an academic career gets professionalized, and this may lead him to stop thinking. This line of reasoning suggests that the kind of appreciative attention where one remains focused on what one is doing can arise only in leisure activities. Such a conclusion would put pleasurable absorption beyond the ken of any activity that is undertaken for the sake of making money, because although money is undoubtedly good, it is not intrinsically so.” (Crawford)

 

In this case, by making our main goal into making as much money as possible, we are actually taking away pleasure from our own lives. If we do that, then we may be as rich as Bill Gates, but would we really be successful?

 

How does this over-esteem college?

Going to college has become a national fad, a rite of passage, millions hope, into the world of hefty salaries and McMansions (Reeves).

I come from a high school whose mission is “to prepare all of our graduating students to succeed in college and beyond”. Every Friday our whole school would gather and sit together in the Multi-Purpose Room to talk get motivated to do better the following week. Although most of the time money and riches was not used as motivation, it did come up a few times. “You can’t get rich if you do not work hard” I remember hearing a couple of times. Of course I considered this to be true, but since when was it our main focus to become rich? “If you succeed in school, you have the opportunity to succeed in life”. Does this mean that if we do not succeed in school, we do not have the opportunity to succeed in life? Many times our counselors would come into our classrooms during Advisory period to try to motivate us to work hard in school. The incentive that has stuck to me the most, probably because of its repetition was “according to statistics, people who graduate from college earn a higher wage than people who inly graduate from high school”. This is also the incentive that I remember having the most reactions and positive discussions from my peers. Money is not a bad thing – it opens doors to many things that may be otherwise be closed; however, when money is the main incentive for getting high school students excited about college, we might need to think a little about what is going on.

Ever since I came to University of California Riverside, I have noticed my friends have used their self-proclaimed fact that they’ll be rich after college as an excuse to do their work. Especially these last few days - the end of week ten and the beginning of finals week – when they do not want to work any longer, they keep saying out loud that it’s worth it because they will get a job that will make them rich. I am always glad to see them work but their incentive somewhat disturbs me; it is mostly because I do not think that anyone’s reason for coming to a university should be because they were promised a higher paying job – instead of studying for four years to earn qualifications for a job that they may enjoy. It just sounds absurd to think of college as a financial solution for the future.

Overall, college is being sold to young teenage high school students, and even grown adults, as a pathway to an easy wealthy life – when in fact it is not. Although statistics do show that college graduates earn twice as much in their working years (Goldman), going to college is not an easy route to “success” as people tend to make it sound. Due to the “success” that is promised by college, many parents expect nothing less than graduating college from their children – making all high schools change their role from purely educating students to mentally preparing them for a future they are almost forced to take.

 

How does over-esteeming college hinder individuals who are not meant to go to college?

 

Firstly, we already know that only about half of the people that go to college do not actually complete it within six years (Waldron). So that means that about half of the people that went to college -  whether they were pressured to, wanted to, or forced to – did not graduate and ended up paying without getting their degree. This is a way in which going to college may hinder an individual economically. Also, since there is a huge emphasis on succeeding by graduating from college, the people that end up dropping out leave with a mentality that they cannot be successful in anything else.

Secondly, we are able to say that college is not a promise to a “successful” future. Although many argue that college is a prerequisite to being part of the middle class, a job is sometimes not available to fir the degree; some college graduates end up taking jobs that are often given to high school graduates, making little more money but having college debts and some lost earnings accrued while unsuccessfully pursing a degree (Vedder). This is because the number of new college graduates far exceeds the growth in the number of technical, managerial, and professional jobs where graduates traditionally have gravitated. As a consequence, we have a new phenomenon: underemployed college graduates doing jobs historically performed by those with much less education. We have, for example, more than 100,000 janitors with college degrees, and 16,000 degree-holding parking lot attendants (Vedder).

Thirdly, some people may be happier doing manual labor, which often does not require a degree yet holds the title of a cognitively rich job. An example of someone like this would be Matthew Crawford. He got his PhD and ended up getting a high paying “thinking job”, but ended up trading it and its perks in order to a motorcycle mechanic (Crawford).

 

Conclusion

All in all, if one’s goal in life is to get rich, then having more money would be one’s definition of success. However my belief is that money is not the basis of success, and should not be held that way by our capitalist society. Although it seems inevitable to see success as anything other than becoming a doctor or a lawyer because they make a great living, we should reconsider our life’s true aim and live outside of the excessive greed that happens in America. If we can understand that money is not our goal, then we will also be able to view college as what it is – an opportunity to new doors and an academic adventure – something much more profound than a path to the money bags. Also, if people start seeing college this way, then many people can save their time from sitting in classrooms for four years without liking it – and prepare in some other way for what they are really passionate for. I would like to repeat that my argument is not that making money a goal is bad, nor am I arguing that attending college is a waste of people’s time; I am arguing that making money should not be anyone’s ultimate goal, and that people should not go to college just because of the false promise that they will earn more because they went to college.

"What is success? To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate the beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch Or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; This is to have succeeded."


 

Works Cited

Canne, Kayla. "Employers Value Experience over Grades, Data Suggests." The Daily Free Press [Boston University] 07 Mar. 2013: n. pag. Print.

 

Crawford, Matthew B. Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. N.p.: Penguin, 2010. Print.

 

Goldman, Jordan. "Go To College, Make More Money." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 18 July 2002. Web. 08 Dec. 2013. <

 

"How People Choose 'career Paths'" How People Choose 'career Paths' Stanford University News Service, 28 May 1991. Web. 07 Dec. 2013.

 

Reeves, Thomas. "College Isn't for Everybody and It's a Scandal That We Think It Is." History News Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013. <

 

Vedder, Richard. "Why College Isn't for Everyone." BusinessWeek. N.p., 9 Apr. 2012. Web. 8 Dec. 2013. <

 

"VH1′s 100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs Ever." Reality TV VH1 Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2013. <

 

Waldron, Travis. "Study: Nearly Half Of America’s College Students Drop Out Before Receiving A Degree." ThinkProgress RSS. N.p., 28 Mar. 2012. Web. 08 Dec. 2013. <

 


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