A Broken System: One Student's Perspective on Modern Higher Education
A Broken System
As a 40+ year-old student who returned to school with the sincere goal of furthering my education and expanding my career, I find today’s education system both offensive and comical.
Offensive, because it insults the very idea of what education is supposed to be.
Comical, because what passes for "earning a degree" in many institutions today is little more than a hollow performance.
Over the past several years, my return to academia has taught me more about our broken educational system than I ever expected. What I’ve witnessed isn’t just disappointing, it’s alarming in many ways.
Many students from the younger generation have grown comfortable floating by on the efforts of others. Group projects often feel less like collaboration and more like exploitation with a handful of committed individuals carrying the weight while the rest disengage or vanish until the final submission. When you dare to ask for real participation, you're met with resistance, attitude, or outright hostility, as if you've violated some unspoken rule that effort is optional for some.
Entitlement
There is a deep-rooted sense of entitlement that pervades the classroom. It is unlike anything I have ever seen. The focus isn't on learning, growth, or mastery of a subject, it’s on simply passing, often with minimal input or accountability. Grades are expected, not earned. And when expectations are challenged, the response is rarely introspection; it's more often defensiveness.
Successful Business Owner
As a successful business owner, I’ve managed teams, built companies from nothing, and hired employees based on merit, drive, and work ethic. I can say with confidence that many of the students I’ve encountered in my classes are individuals I would never consider hiring. Not because they’re young or inexperienced, that’s to be expected, but because they lack the basic drive, attitude, work-ethic and integrity that most workplaces demand.
A diploma that means less and less with every passing year.
And yet, these same individuals are walking away with degrees, as if they’ve genuinely earned them. That’s the most interesting part. Our educational institutions are complicit in this failure, handing out credentials without requiring real competence or even work ethic. They are producing graduates who are ill-prepared, unmotivated, and in many cases, unsuccessful functioning in a professional setting.
What’s worse is how institutions actively enable this mediocrity. Professors are pressured to pass students regardless of performance, evaluations are based more on how “liked” a teacher or student is, rather than how effectively they challenge students or perform. The rigorous standards are sacrificed in the name of retention and graduation rates.
The result? A diploma that means less and less with every passing year.
The Classroom
Many classes have been reduced to a string of groupwork and points that require little more than showing up and breathing. I’ve witnessed students blatantly not doing any of the work or outsource assignments without consequence, while those of us who take the work seriously are left questioning the value of our efforts and sometime worse degraded by those that didn’t even participate.
We’ve confused customer service with education. Students are treated like consumers, paying customers who must be kept happy. The result is a dynamic where educators are discouraged from challenging their students, and where academic discomfort an essential part of learning is treated as something to be avoided rather than embraced. It is easier to say nothing about those that do not contribute and avoid the inevitable conflict. Growth happens when we’re pushed beyond our comfort zones. But in today’s classrooms, discomfort is often met with complaints and criticism, not curiosity.
Education should be transformative.
Education should be transformative. It should challenge us, shape us, and prepare us for the real world. But instead, too often, it’s become a box to check, a watered-down experience that rewards mediocrity and punishes initiative and creativity.
Who it's really serving
It’s time we take a long, hard look at what our education system has become and who it’s really serving. Because at the current pace, we are not cultivating thinkers, problem-solvers, or leaders of the next generation, we are mass-producing paper-holding placeholders.
If we don’t shift the focus back to intellectual rigor, personal responsibility, and real-world application, we’ll continue to churn out generations of graduates who are equipped with credentials, but not capability.
Real change will require courage from educators, administrators, and students alike. But without it, we risk losing not only the value of a degree, but the very meaning of education itself.
By: Lily Karen
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