A recently released study, titled Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, has ignited various responses within academia. The study reveals that 45 percent of students "did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning" in the first 2 years of college. The study asserts that universities more concerned with enrolling more students and maintaining high graduation rates than with preserving the quality of the education they provide. The authors claim that universities have dumbed-down their curricula so as to allow students to pass through their college years more easily. University professors, researchers and administrators have been particularly outspoken regarding the study's accusation. To explore this subject, the New York Times featured sociology professor Gaye Tuchman from the University of Connecticut in its "Room for Debate" section. The basic point of her commentary is that the systemization of universities is reflective of a larger economic machine that caters to students who are primarily concerned with finding jobs after college and repaying debt. Tuchman writes that throughout the course of her teaching career she has had to shorten reading assignments and the lengths of the essays she assigns in order to keep up with her students' lack of interest.

As a student, I resent the idea of college students as fundamentally uninterested in school. For one, just because students prioritize employment does not mean we view college as a waste of time. I don't know why this dichotomy exists between academia and the career world. They don't have to be mutually exclusive-there must be a way to stimulate interest in theory and also provide students with career exploration and training. The release of Academically Adrift should inspire professors like Tuchman to get creative, not pessimistic.

This issue seems to be linked to the relatively new phenomenon of universities that are beginning to view students as "customers" and themselves as providers of an economic service. This opinion has been voiced numerous times in the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Universities that run like corporations, churning out students who come for a degree and then move on without much concern for fostering a productive and meaningful academic experience, perpetuate this attitude of career-centricity in students.

I believe that Brandeis students do not represent the norm of American college students in this sense. Most of us are not here because we are rigidly career-oriented. We chose to attend a rigorous university with a sophisticated academic climate because we want to enjoy our classes and form close relationships with professors. Still, even here it is not uncommon to hear an occasional disgruntled "why do I have to know this?" in response to a highbrow and highly theoretical assigned reading. Students are, for the most part, grounded in the real world, and I don't think we should have to apologize for our concern for securing future employment.

Instead of catering to students by making classes easier, universities can give them what they want by allowing college to become a more integrated route into the working world. Brandeis already offers students plenty of chances to explore career options. Internship and job shadowing opportunities are practically thrown at us in every Hiatt Career Center e-mail. Research opportunities are available in both the social and hard sciences.

To counter the trend of disinterest among students, American universities could extend these opportunities to career-focused students by offering internships at the start of freshman year. Champlain College in Burlington, Vt., offers a program like this-students can choose to delve directly into studies tied to their desired careers by taking classes for their majors in their first semester of college. No doubt some Brandeis students could benefit from such a program.

Still, there will always be those students who will want to breeze through college by taking as many easy classes as possible, while maintaining a respectable grade point average and graduate ready to hunt down a job. For these students, universities can do little besides try to make their time at college worthwhile. If professors give up on students just because they are focused on finding jobs, then college courses truly lose their value.