University life... Is it alienating students from their real lives?

Students at Carnegie Mellon University spend most of their time at campus studying. They aim for better grades, better degree and a better job in the future. But if we were to look deeply at their lives, they have less social lives than they use to have before university. Most of CMU students spend around 12 hours a day on campus studying!

We are living in a Capitalist world!
Their hard wok and the long hours of studying is an illustration of capitalism. Students work hard to get the best grades and to be at the top, which makes college environment a competitive environment. Furthermore, some courses are designed to create this competitive environment for the students. Some professors limit the number of student who will get A in the course to a small present of the class. No matter what the student’s grade was, only top 20% for instance will get an A. this environment have made students compete against each other rather that just being friends and partners.

Karl Marx theory of alienation has described this situation where men are disconnected from other men. Competitive environments are established to get as much value as possible from the students. But at the same time it is disconnecting students from their peers as it makes them work against each other. His theory of alienation as he claims is a result of capitalism. On a talk with Sara BA Junior she said, “Almost all business related courses are competitive,” which shows that they are living in a capitalist environment.

Alienation from family
Due to the long hours CMUQ-ers spend at the university studying they barely see their families, not only on weekdays but also on weekends. Hassan Salatt, a BA sophomore said that he goes to CMU even on weekends. He prefers to study there rather than at home because he works efficiently there. It is the fact that every one is looking for the efficiency on everything we do prove that we are in a capitalist world.

Alienation from the product
In the process of working hard to get the optimal and higher grade possible almost all students tend to restrict their work to what the professor would like to see on it. They don’t work on the things they find interesting rather than they work on what their audience (professor) wants to see. This is actually disconnecting the student from the work he produces.

Can the alienation theory holds up in all situations?
Although the alienation theory is true in most of working places, but in universities where students are allowed to do independent studies, the alienation theory can’t be true! Because in independent studies, students are allowed to choose a topic of their own with the professor they wish to work with. Their work is almost always about a topic that interests them not what their professors ask them to do.

It is true that university students are disconnecting themselves from family friends by the long hours they spend studying and it is all results of our capitalist environment. However, their work is not always alienated from them. In fact they can work on any topic they want on an independent study.