How to refuse good money even if you get lousy customers?

If you read me a couple of blogs ago, I was writing about the peace I have made with my sense of being incomplete for not having chosen an academic route. I remember, years ago, I was asked, "Why not just complete a few more units and get a degree in Australia?"

The allure of overseas or local universities has never appealed to me. It's not a superficial rebellion against authority; it's just that I've always known that the sort of knowledge I want to gain, the sort of insights and discussions, must be worth the price and time I'm paying. I've just never found any incentive great enough or the idea of something tantalizing enough for me to want to risk the time, money and effort pursuing that.

Fast-forward 10 years and universities everywhere, especially Australian and non-ivy league American universities, apart from Malaysian ones, are riddled with scandals of tampered passing marks, doctored results, plagiarism, etc. Anyone who's been keeping up will know the full monty - otherwise, consider this a course assignment to read up on education crisis in the past decade. I've always suspected that a good number of Malaysians who are applying for jobs with 'degrees from overseas' actually got theirs from paper mills, coz it is simply not possible, based on their (lack of) eloquence, vocabulary and research/writing skills, critical thinking and ability to think maturely nor solve problems efficiently that they are 'graduates'. And now we know that a good number find their way home with a doctored degree or transferred to 'colleges' with lower academic requirements in order to get that piece of paper.

I say the problem is three-fold : Parents who think degrees guarantee a good life without ever understanding the merits of what an education was supposed to provide (I'd have to write another blog specifically dedicated to my belief of what education is supposed to do for the student) are at fault. Yes, it was an honest ambition, but it is a symptom of the destructive ambitions of human beings (had I already written a blog about what I think is wrong with ambition?. Speculations like that created false demand that, needless to say, exceeds supply. When funding and hiring (or keeping your job as an academic) depended upon the number of enrollments and passing rate, academics are served a dish they have to swallow, however unpalatable it is.

I had a conversation like this with an academic friend when I told her how a former student of mine, had, out of a sense of moral obligation to the sort of ethics I preach, asked for my permission to plagiarise. I said I cannot believe a top student, a clever one too, would consider plagiarising! My friend then tells me of one episode where she argued with a student over the legitimacy of his work - he argued it was his original work and she opened up a book where she had highlighted the whole chunk he had tried to pass off as his own. This was in Australia.

It's happening all over the world - this blind ambition of 'wanting my child to go to university' - what sort of a romantic dream is that? So what happens? First, we have students who would have otherwise taken a different route in life, force-fed into an education system that purges them out on a conveyor belt that carries them en route to universities. The social pressure from parents keep them under-pressure to stay on a course not best suited for their souls.

And when these fees-paying students backed up by either their parents' hard-earned savings or their mortgages and bank loans, arrive at the door of universities and colleges around the world - what happens? Universities don't pay for themselves and their research and lecturers didn't slave that many years earning their academic mettle just to live like a pauper. The money has to come from somewhere - and who can turn good money away - even if it comes from bad students?

If I were an academic, I'd of course blame A-level teachers. And if I were an A-level teacher, I'd blame the whole gamut of high school teachers. And if I were a high school teacher, I'd blame primary school teachers, who in turn, blame the government and parents.

Wouldn't it be really, really simple to just stare a bull in the eye and take it by the horn? When you go down the rabbit hole - even students themselves pin the blame on parents.

Interview with the parent :

Why do you put so much pressure on your children and create this chain-reaction?

Parent : It's not me! What if they can't get a good paying job? Nowadays, everyone has a degree! No degree cannot get a job!

So what happens when everyone has a degree?

Let's just go to the root of the problem : Greed; which is cultured from Fear, which is rooted in Ignorance. (also known as lack of awareness.)

Human beings are greedy. They've always wanted more. What was this line I heard in a movie or came across in a book once : "Humans have an insatiable hunger for things, like hungry ghosts, never enough, and they will destroy everything and yet not be able to fulfill their cravings and lusts and desires."

They want more money, more status, more prestige. More than any other person they can compare themselves to, and if they are forced to concede defeat, at least not less than the other person.

Getting a 'degree' is just another way to legitamise their greed, their ambition for more. YES - that is it! TO LEGITIMISE (this time, I spelled it correctly) their greed, ignorance and sheer stupidity. It is simply another pattern of Man's destructive nature in his lust for ambition and greed. It is that greed which has eroded the excellence of thinking, the credibility of academia and coming down further, schooling, learning, etc. Everything that we could've excelled at, in the end, gets destroyed by this insatiable greed. Nature is destroyed, creativity is manipulated to create more illussions, technology becomes weapons of mass destruction....etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Now look what they've done. Once upon a time, humans created an ingenious method of proliferating knowledge and ideas through exchanges that can be reviewed by peers and where checks-and-balances are in place to legitimise the ideas and thoughts that would most benefit mankind and society. This method created a genuine proliferation of value for society by maximising the intellectual capacities of the most able, creative and sharp minds in a society. Going to university, or school, really meant something.

Let's stop the stupidity. Let's just pull out all the clogs. It's really not that hard. I did not have to sit under a banyan tree for one score and a decade to be able to arrive at this. Let's simply not let greed, fear and ignorance rule over us and call all the shots and be Masters of our destiny. Who or what is this imaginary power over us that makes us conform, feel like we have to, or would be left out? That is the collective power of Illussion - and illussion that everyone makes real by subscribing to it and conforming to one another.