2001 Introduction: This article was published in Perkins Press, a small international “thorn in the side” type of publication that made waves in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts until its demise in the fall of 1994. The following is the verbatim article as it appeared in the final edition of Perkins Press. At the time I wrote “Welcome Back Students,” I was involved in a bitter negotiation with the economic obstacles of the “real world” as private college students swarmed all around me. JR

Welcome Back Students
Now Get Your Degree And Get The Fuck Out

Disclaimer: If I were to note every happy exception to the generalities outlined within, this article would lose much of its edge. However, I do want to note that this dissection of area students does not apply to the University of Massachusetts. UMass students have their own set of hang-ups, but they tend to be of a different nature than those outlined here.

I treat the average college student the way I would a very smarmy tourist - I’m glad you’re having a great trip, but would you please get tested for contagious diseases before we come in contact? Whether the student is based at Mount Holyoke, Smith, Amherst, or Hampshire (as I was), the contagion is pretty much the same: entitlement, political righteousness and intellectual virtuosity passed along as knowledge.

Valley students tend to pride themselves on the relative superiority of their own institutions over the other four, so they will resent this categorical lumping. But bitter rivalries and five college stereotypes notwithstanding, the same basic set of faulty assumptions pampers education at all four private schools. An unexamined college life is not worth living (at least not to anyone but yourself and whoever you’re getting off), and few college students ever actively question the two foundations on which their education is built: economic privilege and intellectual self-importance.

The second concept has received less serious analysis than the first, perhaps because academics don’t like to criticize themselves. In Western educational models, there is a priority placed on intellectual learning. A well-stocked mind is considered the basis for advancement in education - in general, the more books you have read and the more intellectual knowledge you have accrued, the better you will fare. Thus the saying “knowledge is power.” But knowledge in and of itself is not actually power. The true power of graduating from a college like Smith or Amherst is best measured in terms of prestige and future professional contacts (not to mention access to graduate schools, especially if these schools are professionally-oriented like business, law, or medicine).

The intellect holds a less central place in a true education than most professors would like to admit. If knowledge is power, then how do you explain the student who can ably summarize the chemical and psychological roots of depression but who doesn’t know how to cope with his/her own eating disorder? What does one make of the politically-sophisticated male student who mistreats or abuses his lover? And what about the many respected professors who have been brought up on sexual harassment charges?

Clearly, knowledge alone is not enough. Knowledge applied with action comes much closer to “true” education (and is also much more difficult), but this is a lesson that the average college student is not expected to learn. The Academic Bottom Line dictates that there is no difference between the student who studies the politics of hunger from the isolation of the classroom and the student who devotes additional out of class time to a homeless shelter. If anything, such a commitment interferes with the need to succeed academically. And the few students who do take on this kind of work usually don’t have the additional burden of a part-time job. Working students who wish they could add a hands-on component to their education often find themselves scooping ice cream to pay for tuition instead, with no humanitarian awards awaiting them at graduation, and no one to pat them on the back for their social compassion - another courtesy largely squandered on the rich.

I say “squandered” because I believe that education without struggle has no inherent value. Working your way through school might hamper your overall academic performance, thus your class standing, thus your professional future, but I’d argue that the average working student leaves school with a much better education than the well-financed student at the top of the class. The working student has learned the real lesson: higher education is mired in privilege, and privilege IS power. Outside of that closed classroom, you must fight to get inside - you must fight just to have the time to study.

In the working world, you pay as you go, and every act of artistic creation exacts a financial toll - every book you read has a personal and financial sacrifice attached to it. Yes, college students suffer too, what with the oft-cited “developmental challenges of the college years” to contend with, but the college student’s difficulties are again similar to the tourist’s. A tourist might throw up in the toilet when the yacht hits hard waves, but this kind of elite cultural exposure, puke or not, has no basis of comparison with the poverty-stricken experience of the native residents, the ones with the bloated stomachs who never seem to show up in the vacation photos. The same goes for students. You may study hard, but the worker who cleans up after you has it harder. If you don’t agree, perhaps you’d like to give away your free access to health services to a needier person in the community. Or perhaps you’d like to take me to a free dinner at your dorm this week.

Being blinded by privilege creates ignorance. Very little that’s taught in a college classroom does anything to combat that ignorance - therefore, most college students, despite their intellectual prowess and impressive SAT scores, are not really all that smart. Unless they risk a departure from well-trod social and professional paths, there is little hope that they will ever overcome this stumbling block. They are like rats in a maze of their own liking, and they may well be perfectly content, but because they do not realize they are in a maze and because they do not know their way out, I consider them to be stupid.

The economic structure of the private college fosters a set of assumptions that most students never take a look at. This structure is actually fairly complex, but for a student it all boils down to this: someone wipes your ass so that you can study. Although some students have a heavier economic burden than others, all students have greater access to education than the vast reserve of full-time workers (office, custodial, food service), whose combined labor provides for the student’s so-called “education.”

The unlisted course all students take is called “Entitlement 101.” You won’t find it listed in any course guide, and the lesson plan is painfully simple: others work while you and I indulge our intellects. This is a basic education in power for the workers, who actually learn more from this course than the students, who are too preoccupied with their intellectual accomplishments to switch gears into self-examination. Call the course “How my degree creates misery for others,” (if you’re Republican, insert “jobs” for “misery”), or call it “Would you like fries with that BA?” - no one wants to take it and no one wants to teach it. It’s offered at all four schools regardless.

Most college students will go on to successful professional careers, which they will perceive as a validation of all their knowledge and hard work. But while hard work and talent never hurt anyone, the real value of an education is in its lifelong connections to the professional world. These connections create the opportunities that hard work gets too much credit for. A degree is a credential: admission to the ranks of the privileged is not often permitted without it. But I have no quarrel with the honest assessment of what a degree is worth and why a student might want one (being poor and disenfranchised, contrary to romantic belief, is rarely the best route for either the artist or the businessperson). I DO take offense at the social climbers who confuse access to economic opportunity (translation: obtaining a BA) with “getting an education.” The second goal is not necessarily attained by accomplishing the first, and, contrary to the heady way that students conduct themselves, a BA does not automatically make a person more enlightened or worthy of respect.

It would be nice to say that this article was written out of a general concern for education, and on some level that is true, but the truth is that college students goaded me into it. Since I graduated from Hampshire three years ago, I’ve been on the receiving end of collegiate crassness one too many times. As a student, I was by no means immune to the same syndromes I am criticizing, although a heavy workload of humiliating campus jobs certainly kept my pretensions in check. But after graduating, the simple fact of not having enough money to leave the area sent this article into motion.

I’ll spare you a lengthy biography. The point is that I was roundly criticized by many students for being a “slacker,” hanging around at the college after I graduated, etc. That I was actually an employee of the college, and not just hanging out, never occurred to them, at least not before they made their remarks. These are the same students who look the other way and tell their friends “I hope I never sell out” when they see me in my professional attire around town. Ironically, most of these elitist cruelties are uttered by the same self-appointed social change agents who lecture their peers about avoiding the various “isms.”

These students (and their numbers are legion around here) talk of changing society while passing political judgment on people who actually have their asses out on the line and are showing a bit of wear and tear. They delight in pointing out the political contradictions of those around them - the same exact contradictions that they will discover within themselves once they are required to put food on the post-graduation table. These minor social indignities don’t really matter to me anymore - they mattered a lot more right around the time I graduated, when I found that all the dreams my friends and I shared about changing the world were impotent in the face of my economic fate - but they are never appreciated.

My wealthier friends did not have to do the things that I did after graduation, and the economic differences that created dynamic conversations in college now created an awful, bitter divide. I was forced into a serious questioning process over the meaning of friendship. I also feared that the hard-won self-confidence of my college years would not be strong enough for this grave new world (it wasn’t).

I never realized that there was such a violent conflict between personal ideals and financial obligation. The liberal arts cover that once shielded me from economic reality came right off, and with it went an innocence (some would say arrogance) I had about life. When I found myself bagging groceries for my former faculty members, neither of us seemed to know how to ease the embarrassment. I suppose they were embarrassed that nothing in their courses had prepared us for this moment, and I was embarrassed by my compulsive desire to somehow redeem myself in their eyes.

These anecdotes established a new phase in my education. Oddly, no institution on earth would consider giving me a degree for what I’ve learned in the last three years. But if true knowledge is the power to realize your creative goals in the midst of personal duress, then college was summer camp, and THIS is school. For the students reading this, some of you can relate and I hope this has helped. The rest of you are too pissed off at me to study, so go learn something instead.