University Essay

My Idea of Ideal University

Since long ago I have been thinking about good and bad features of modern higher education, and tried to imagine how the ideal higher educational institution, the ideal university should look like. Here I shall share some thoughts concerning this subject.

Ideal university, in my opinion, is primarily a place for studying. It may sound obvious, but in fact it is very important idea – the universities in their present condition have turned into places where students are engaged in all kind of personal and social activities except for studying. Well, maybe not except, but there is really way too much attention paid to things like socialization, extracurricular activities, clubs, sporting events and so on and so forth. They should be reduced to a minimum. A higher educational institution is a place to obtain information, not communicate.

Students, if they have to be teamed up into groups, should be grouped according to their knowledge and abilities – weak with the weak, strong with the strong, in order to ensure that every one of them can compete with those who are of roughly the same level.

And, what is most important, the curriculum. The modern curriculum of any direction shows the signs of trying to include things that have no connection with what the student is supposed to be learning. Separately these inclusions don’t occupy much time, but together they eat up a good deal of time and effort every student spends to get his degree. Because of the fact that about 90% of what is…