BCM212 Task 3

Upon receiving feedback from my last assessment task, I thought very hard about what I am curious about my topic. I thought about the value of asking a bunch of university student’s who are in the same boat as me why they think university is worth it and realised that I wasn’t going to get anywhere and get any answers that I care about, so, I decided to research the idea of university and redirected all of my research to asking the question why is university worth and why is it not worth it? Because we are only using people in this subject as recipients to our qualitative research, I would only be interviewing people in the same circumstances as me. Therefore, because of the similarity of our circumstances, I thought it would make more sense to narrow in our own experiences as university students and how we identify ourselves in the society at large.

There are plenty of simple definitions for universities. The Cambridge English dictionary defines the university as: 

“A place of higher education usually for people who have finished twelve years of schooling and where they can obtain more knowledge and skills, and get a degree to recognise this”.

This was amusing to me because my research into the worth of university shows me that university means so much more than this definition. For a non- university student reading this definition of university, it could be the very thing that makes them decide it’s not ‘worth’ it. This Cambridge English Dictionary definition is one of the first search results that came up on google when I typed in ‘university definition.’

My point is because higher education has taught me that firstly, just viewing one source and coming to a conclusion is not good enough and that doing a google search and pressing the first result is not going to give you accurate and relevant information, I can conclude that this definition is not enough to satisfy an educated answer to a question fully. 

Therefore I continued to research the value and history of universities and came across an academic article called The meaning, idea and history of university/higher education Africa. Although the article is talking about university in Africa and not Australia, it covers key points of what higher education means to society. In this article, it acknowledges that it’s not straight forward to define university and it can be very grey. It acknowledges that universities exist to train people vocationally, but so does TAFE, so how do you distinguish the real difference of what university means. What I found interesting in this article, however, was that they quoted scholars in history and their definitions of higher education.

There are a few examples of past scholars interpretation of higher education that are by Confucious and Jawaharlal Nehru.  

“Education is a process of integrating individuals into society, and that knowledge should be acquired for the sake of harmony in society”.

-Confucious (quoted by Alemu, 2018, p. 212) 

“Stands for humanism, for tolerance, for progress, for the adventure of ideas and the search for truth. It stands for the onward march of humans towards ever-higher objectives. If universities discharge their duties adequately, then all is well with the nation and the

people.”

– Jawaharlal Nehru (quoted by Alemu, 2018, p. 213)

The idea’s of what university is outlined by Confucious and Jawaharlal Nehru, encapsulates the broader meaning of being educated. It show’s that scholarly people throughout history understand that the more educated a society is, the more prosperous they are in many ways. 

However, In Ken Robinson’s ted talk, he outlines that ‘Understandably, school systems are very largely based on conformity and don’t allow for diverse ways of thinking” (Robsinson, 2013). These days primary and high school’s are very largely based on conformity and everyone having the ‘right answer’ which limits teachers and students and goes against the notion of academic freedom. In university, you get the opportunity to explore your own idea’s you’re interested in and take those skills of research into your life. Why that is such a valuable thing is because anybody can have an opinion, however, the ones that are usually listened to above all are those who can create well researched, unbiased and cohesive arguments for why they have individual opinions. 

Lastly, I interviewed two students from the university. I chose only to interview two students because I wanted to be able to go into depth with the recipients of my interviews. Because the interviewees are quite young, I concluded that this would be the most successful type of discussion as it would be more comfortable for them to speak openly than just being asked close-ended questions. I used open-ended questions through the interview. 

What I found from my interview was that both student’s agreed that high school education differs significantly from university education in the way that university is a lot more self-taught and allows for a lot more diversity. Both of them found that instead of assignments being about coming to class with the right answer, in university assignments are about having an opinion and having the facts to back it up.  

However, what I found in my interviews was that both students had very different ideas of what they think going to university should be about. Interviewee 1 very much saw university as a gateway to a successful career, whereas in interviewee 2 saw it as a differentiator of social class. Both interviewees saw university as an aid for their success when asked the question is university ‘worth’ it, but recipients said yes because it’s an investment. 

What surprised me throughout the interviews was that even when asked about the value of university on a holistic level, both interviewees understood why more educated people better society as a whole however did not agree that university is worth it for everyone. Both interviewees were very strong in their beliefs that a lot more people should be doing vocational training through TAFE and apprenticeships. 

Furthermore, learning should never be measured by worth. However, many people value different things, as shown in my interviews. Although more educated people results in a better society, embracing diversity is also a massive contributor to a thriving community. Many people are good at different things, and embracing that is also very important. On an individual level, when my peers and I were asked if going to university is worth it, the answer was yes. Yes because it’s an investment for ourselves and our future in society.