April 24 2002

Dear Editor,

Students seem to resist measures that might deny them access to the University
as much as efforts to improve learning. The axis of the debates on tuition and 
alcohol policies is skewed. The confusion arises by a failure to realize that 
the coveted "college experience" is a myth. One does not need to be in college
or even live in a college town to drink a lot of beer. One can do volunteer 
work, make new friends, play sports and join clubs without paying tuition. 
Instead of chattering about the so called college experience students concerned
with their futures need to think hard about the meaning of a college education.

If you are not studying five hours a day, you are not getting a college 
education. If your studies consist of memorizing material you do not understand
and will soon forget, you are not getting a college education. If you are not 
studying a foreign language, you are not becoming an educated person. If you 
cannot do high school math (e.g., solve x/3 + x/5 =1 for x; find the volume 
and surface area of a cube two inches on each edge), you cannot benefit
from a college education. If you are being examined with multiple choice tests,
you are not attending an institution of higher learning. If your advisers 
suggest courses to "help your GPA," you are being screwed by the system and 
yourself.

In the 1980s, literary scholar and social critic Paul Fussell wrote: "One of 
the saddest social groups today consists of that 30 percent that during the 
1950s and 1960s struggled to 'go to college' and thought they'd done that, 
only to find their prolehood [lower class status] still unredeemed, and not 
merely intellectually, artistically, and socially, but economically as well." 
Today this figure is about 50 percent. 

There is nothing wrong with vocational training, but it should not be 
confounded with higher education. If SIU students want the State to underwrite 
their efforts to become educated they must convince the general public this is 
a viable investment. This then is the crux of the debate. 

Michael Sullivan
Assoc. Prof. 
Mathematics

P.S.: Source of Fussell quote is "Class: A Guide through the American Status 
System," Paul Fussell, First Touchstone edition, New York, 1992. See pages 
133-4.