Being a student – what it means – what it includes

What does being a student at university entail? What does it mean? What is it for? Some like the noted educationalist, Sir Ken Robinson, concur that the tertiary education of a country is the means by which university teachers are found. However, that view seems to restrict the outcomes of graduation.

Surely, going to university is something more than just producing people to fill slots – vacant positions in commerce and industry or education. Surely, going to university is about something more than ingesting facts and an outpouring of those facts in final examinations.

Surely, going to university has something to do with making students think for themselves. In my day, going to university meant not just finding the answers to questions, but, more importantly, finding out more questions to ask. It is by formulating and asking questions that students come to realize the full implication of their time spent studying for a degree.

A healthier society, a more successful company, a more thorough piece of legislation, a more conclusive report, and a more inclusive piece of research – all are achieved by means of the ability to formulate questions.

But studying at university is also the first chance most young people get to leave home, to live away from their nearest and dearest, and stand on their own two feet. It is about taking responsibility for their own lives, and it is about learning how to live with others. It is an integral part of the forming of a civilized society, in which everybody comes to respect each other’s rights as citizens of that society.

It is a sort of social experiment. If it doesn’t work out, a student can always journey in from home every day. Students who do that, who live at home and go in as day students, miss out on the full import of a university education; they miss having to integrate into campus society, they miss taking part in everything that goes on after classes finish at five, and they miss the vital opportunity to enter an adult world, and that is arguably the most vital part of any education.
Robert L. Fielding