"Education is more than credentials. It's the opportunity to be a part of a community that cares about ideas and make meaningful relationships with peers and mentors."
That may be the case for small colleges with high tutors-to-student ratios, but it's not the reality in many of the behemoth colleges / universities that feed warm bodies into jobs.
I've seen first hand classes with hundreds and hundreds of students, where everything worked like an assembly line. Standardized tests with zero feedback, mentors were student TAs, a class or two above you, and they had been assigned to tens of students themselves - while correcting hundreds of homework / problem sets on the side.
When you go to school like that, it can quickly feel like you're just another name on a list, with some avg. grade on the side.
And it's only going to get worse with the ever-rising number of enrolled students.
