Classes at UMBC: for a 3-4 credit course, you can expect to pay $1200-1600 (part-time students), plus any fees, especially the cost of your textbook- anywhere from $50 to $300 per class. What are we paying for? To learn something, right? Obviously from the professor, the class, the lecture, etc. or we would have just paid for the book, I'm guessing.

Wrong. This past semester, perhaps due to the fact that I'll be graduating soon and my motivation has gone downhill, I have been attending my classes less and less frequently (aka showing up only for test days). Based on the fact that the course itself costs about 5 times more than the textbook, it might be expected that my test scores would be declining rapidly. However, by solely reading my textbooks (not bothering reading powerpoints, study guides, homework assignments, why bother?), I have steadily been receiving test grades ranging from 93-100%.

So what am I getting out of this deal? I pay over a thousand dollars to learn what I could have learned from a hundred dollar book. And, because I see no point in attending class, I receive horrendous "participation" grades, and I likely will not be passing these courses. Then I'll get to take them again if I want my diploma, the REAL thing the college knows that I want, and is making me pay for.

So really, what I want to know is: Why am I here? What am I doing here? Can anyone explain this to me? Is it just training for the rest of my like- I should just shut up and do what I'm told, and jump through hoops, like everyone else? At this point the whole idea of a diploma is just sad; if I were an employer, I wouldn't want to hire someone so passive that they could sit somewhere for four years, numbing their brain, just to get a piece of paper that is inherently meaningless! Is anyone else as upset about this as I am?