Sisyphean University

In the Age of Information, there is no longer a barrier to access knowledge that would necessitate the attendance of University. In fact, there are more barriers to access knowledge within the ivied walls of these institutions than without.

To cite my own anecdotal evidence, I found myself bound to the bureaucratic shackles of course credits and prerequisites. I had limited electoral ability when choosing topics of study — not to mention the implicit limitations set by the fact that if I were to choose a topic of interest that I had no prior experience or tangible skill in, my GPA would face substantial risk. My undergraduate years were gaslit — I was nominally encouraged to expand my mind and try new things but penalized whenever I tried.

Furthermore, the paradox of the patronizing professor allowed for students to be simultaneously underestimated and overworked. That is to say that students are condescendingly underestimated in their ability to think independently and tediously overworked with minutiae.

Our time is filled with Sisyphean tasks that do nothing to foster deep reflection or the true contesting of ideas. Rather, after four long years, the only real skill learned is how to conduct a cost-benefit analysis for each assignment — calculating the basal effort needed to complete the requirements with respect to the percentage it bears toward the final grade of the course.

It is the tedium of inconsequential schoolwork that thwarts genuine higher education. Science was not founded upon the principles of memorization and regurgitation, but on the principles of investigation and experimentation. Theories and ideas are living things, meant to be questioned and debated — but at University, they are merely embalmed within stagnant lectures and locked away in their respective textbook tomb.

The modern University is as intellectually superficial as the falsum Latine encircling its seal. All you really get after four years in the vain receipt of an overpriced education framed as a diploma.