The college degree you're working so hard to get doesn't mean jack. Last week, I mentioned a professor at New Mexico University, Marcus Ross, a paleontologist who believes dinosaurs walked the earth more than 65 million years ago but is also a Young Earth creationist. Yeah, doctorates don't mean a damn thing anymore.
When having a doctorate in paleontology no longer requires us to understand the basic constraints of time, how are we supposed to respect any graduate degree?
Here's another tidbit: Your degree from UF is essentially the equivalent of one from Liberty University, which was started by evangelist Jerry Falwell and claims to have 6,000-year-old dinosaur bones dated by its professional staff.
As I said before, your degree doesn't mean a damn thing. When a university can be accredited while claiming to have 6,000-year-old bones of animals that went extinct nearly 65 million years ago, I have a hard time putting much stock in my degree.
In the quest for greater education for everyone, we've squandered the most important intellectual resource our nation had: smart people. By pushing more and more people into colleges, we've increased the overall intelligence of average Americans and destroyed the potential learning of the American intellectual elite.
We've taken exam after exam, but I'm not sure the last time I was asked to analyze subject matter and come up with a conclusion of my own. Sure, it has happened a few times in the last three years, but, for the most part, college has been a bigger, more expensive version of high school. We go to class, listen to the professor tell us what conclusions we're supposed to make and then write them in a Blue Book. It's nothing I couldn't have handled when I was 16.
Universities claim to have standards, and they turn down students to maintain them. The only problem is they base this on capacity and resources, not intelligence or potential.
Whether UF accepted you had less to do with your SAT scores and more to do with the number of dorm room openings. Smarter people got first pick, but if the university had enough housing, staff and classrooms, any lead-eating moron with a rich mommy and daddy would be let in. The university is about business first and school second; it will never turn down a $2,000 check.
Universities in this country have spent large amounts of money that resemble presidential campaign figures to convince the world that having a degree makes people smarter. It certainly puts them in a lot more debt. Does it make them smarter or more capable? No.
It doesn't matter how much money people spend on their education. Everyone has a mental limit. There is only one difference between learning at Stanford University or your public library: Stanford costs more, and your public library won't land you as many undeserved jobs when you're done.
I think universities should stop feeding us the lie, "You can't put a price on an education."
Start being honest. Instead, they should say, "Give us your money. We'll give you four years of drinking, sex and a meaningless piece of paper employers will love!"
Wes Hunt is a history senior. His column appears on Tuesdays.
