College Feels Transactional to Many Students. Who — or What — Is to Blame?

There was a time when Maiya Villanueva was excited about learning. She loved every subject she studied in high school and imagined becoming a lawyer or entering medicine. Her parents never went to college, but they made sure education was her first priority. “They wanted for me to always have a better situation than what we were in,” said Villanueva, a native of Fort Myers, Fla. Excitement is hard for her to muster these days. Her dream school was Florida State University, but Villanueva pursued an associate degree, partly to save money, before moving on to Florida Gulf Coast University, where she is majoring in business administration and management — which seemed her most practical career path. Along the way she has studied under a few caring and dynamic professors. But for the most part her coursework feels repetitive. She’s worried that she is not learning real-world business skills. College has come to feel like a chore. We are unable to fully display the content of this page. Thi

There was a time when Maiya Villanueva was excited about learning. She loved every subject she studied in high school and imagined becoming a lawyer or entering medicine. Her parents never went to college, but they made sure education was her first priority. “They wanted for me to always have a better situation than what we were in,” said Villanueva, a native of Fort Myers, Fla. Excitement is hard for her to muster these days. Her dream school was Florida State University, but Villanueva pursued an associate degree, partly to save money, before moving on to Florida Gulf Coast University, where