Higher education in America are forms of schooling such as Undergrad, Graduate School, Law School, or Medical School. Each of these higher education schools gets a large amount of money just for funding, in 2018, institutions received 1.068 trillion from non-federal and federal funding sources which are 2.5% of the United States GDP. Of that money how much did the students receive? At Xavier specifically, the school recieved over $20 million dollars in donations and students have not seen close to half of that so far. College is a money bowl, and sometimes it feels like the professors or the administrators don’t care about the students and only what money they can put into their pockets. When people in high power positions are money hungry and don’t care about the education or well-being of their students that is where an issue comes in and it might start to feel like a dystopia for the students. A lot of people make the claim that “college is a scam”, and I believe that comes from the cost of tuition and student loans alone. Yes, attending college can help one progress further in life and maybe get a higher paying job but at what cost? To always have to pay off their debt which they can’t keep up with even when their “high paying” job? This could make someone question if there is a rainbow at the end of the debt storm.
At the University that I attend specifically, the Xavier University of Louisiana, the school is rated #1 for the least happy university campuses in America for two consecutive years. One could say that alone could explain a dystopia in Higher Education, based on the happiness of the students. I think a person has to look at their reasoning for attending college as well because if someone is going to college just to appease their parents or to fulfill expectations then that would not be the institutions’ fault but the individuals’ which could very much contribute to the unhappiness of a student. But for those who are there for the right reasons, who genuinely want education to better themselves and are still unhappy, that is disappointing and points closer to higher education in America being dystopian.
