The Whole Hog: University Challenge
There are numerous reasons why people do or don’t go to college – but for those who choose the third level route , it’s important to enjoy the experience to the full.
The Hot Press Newsdesk, 10 Sep 2012
If one wonders why so many go to college, shouldn’t one also ponder why so many don’t? Is it that they can’t afford to? Or is it that what’s on offer doesn’t suit? Or even, that what young people from unskilled or semi-skilled backgrounds encounter in college is an unwelcoming academic ethos and a deeply embedded class system, an environment where social caché is as important as learning ability? If your face or accent or don’t fit, you’re out.
Ireland is a socially reproductive society and it reproduces itself through the education system. The points system has degenerated into a competition and competitions have winners and losers. Some people know how to win and they’re in.
But surely there should be more to it than personal competitive advantage?
Well, there is. Going to college is a key chapter in an Irish person’s growth and development. There’s the elation of new experience and fulfilment, there’s new friendships, shared experiences, new horizons and personal change. Shedding the skin of adolescence, you grow. The strictures of school are unbound. It isn’t the real world – no college campus can be – but it’s your world!
True, in most colleges the learning is organised in steady bite-sized chunks. Students are kept busy. Nonetheless, college gives you the freedom to think for yourself, to form and advance opinions, to participate in intellectual life, to discover something to say and how to say it.
This is the premise of President Higgins’ “Being Young and Irish” initiative and every student registering during these weeks should feel empowered to script a submission, brief or long via president.ie. It’s your duty to think!
But there’s also the community life of a college, the societies and sports clubs, the gigs and partie School is controlled and predictable. College is entirely different in structure and scale. For example, UCD has 38 schools and a population of over 24,000. That’s as big as a mid-size town – though, of course, a college has an entirely different age profile from a town. And that’s central to the buzz.
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