Consumerism Among Students

Professor Deborah Miller Fox, a humanities professor at Anderson University writes poignantly on the topic of what has become a “business relationship” between students and faculty. Fox argues that, “the real currency with which students acquire knowledge and/or professional skill is their time and attention to the task of learning, not their money”, which furthers the point that should money be eliminated from the equation, students might seek to further themselves in a much more intellectual manner. However, professors are also somewhat to blame for the situation of the perpetuation of consumerism amongst students. Fox writes that, “if students don’t want to pay a premium price for premium intellectual goods, then they shouldn’t expect to …show more content…
He says that he is often “cited for my relaxed and tolerant ways (that happens, too), that my sense of humor and capacity to connect the arcana of the subject matter with current culture will come in for some praise” which only enables the consumerist culture prevailing in his classroom, at his university, and across the nation. As professors have begun to give into this consumerism, as noted by Fox, nothing short of completely enablement and a circular model has been produced. More leniency towards students brining with the self-centered consumerist mindset, has created more consumerism by way of opportunity for peers, and the cycle continues until culturally normative standards are created, which professors must then live and abide by, as students are given the power of the reviews, mentioned by Edmundson. He notes that, “we professors talk a lot about subversion, which generally means subverting the views of people who never hear us talk or read our work. But to subvert the views of our students, our customers, that would be something else again.” In this case, the subversion alluded to by Edmundson would be the aforementioned …show more content…
This type of dynamic shift would not only affect culture on college campuses, but in high school, and elementary school, as well. If colleges were to hand down an executive order, for all teachers and professors to immediately stop bending to the will of the consumer, and teach the material as it to be taught, a radical shift in the way Americans approach education would occur. Eliminating the privatization aspect in education would only negatively affect a single party: the massive student loan industry, one that has lobbied hard to create the current system, and can very much be attributed a substantial amount of the blame for the current state of education in this country. That is, as both Edmundson and Fox agree, that students, professors, and institutions have created a self-enabling culture where students are forced early on, given hardly any opportunity for exploration into personal strengths, to select a major that will be most key in repayment of the massive student debt accrued while studying at the very same institution. This elimination would directly correlate to a substantial increase in the number of classes taken by students, their level of difficulty, and ultimately what they elect to do with their lives, given the removal of the financial factor in their education,