College Your Way: Higher Education the Disney Way

5/31/14 Edit: This essay is rough. I played with a new form with the hyperlinks. I’m trying to figure out a more sustainable blog style because I don’t churn out enough academic work to update regularly for the 12 or so people who habitually read this blog (and the other twelve students who happen upon it accidentally while writing papers). I don’t think this format works particularly well for me, but it was a good experiment.

I’m heading off to Cornell College in Iowa a couple months. I’m thrilled with my decision, but I have your standard set of student worries; I’m worried about controlling the amount of loans I’ll need; I’m worried I haven’t really earned all the accolades I received at community college. “C’s get degrees” as the old adage goes, but, they do not maintain scholarships.

Additionally, my alma mater switched from billing per credit hour to billing per contact hour. Some courses saw a 200% increase in cost. I’m planning a protest at the next board meeting. The administration and the board failed to adequately inform current students of these charges. Actual face time with a professor is now privileged. This change did not result in faculty actually being paid more, which to me that just sounds like the admin now owns access to the faculty and can charge a premium for it. Welcome to the future.  

I just want to sit in a circle and talk about books. Then I want to teach people how to sit in circles and talk about books. Why is this so expensive? 

We stand in gowns and motar boards preparing to graduate from the nearest four-year institution of higher education we never attended. I’m not convinced that our home auditorium is too small so much as it would be too depressing to graduate from community college at a community college. So, instead we walk across the stage in Miller Auditorium on Western Michigan University's campus. We hear the cheers of our families, and watch the waving arms of at least one hundred goofy moms trying to get her kid’s attention long enough to blind him with an iphone flash. None of these pictures will be any good. Monday morning we will compare images of indistinguishable, black blurs crossing the stage and say with certainty “that’s me!” Our professors look wizardly in their puffy armed graduation robes and capes. They wave and holler and we pass to get our degrees but the rest of the time they look stoic and academic--which is to say very bored.

I walk across that stage beaming to receive my empty tube--in lieu of a degree a cheery yet stern memo states that our actual degrees will be mailed two months after the semester ends, pending a final audit. When the fruits of our labor do arrive in the mail they will serve as little else than expensive wall decor. What does one do with half a liberal arts degree, exactly? But, at this moment, in this auditorium, amid the cheers, we know we are different. We are changed. We are completing our community college monomyth.

There is little time to contemplate our internal transformation as we are shuffled off to have a professional photo taken. This photo will be sold back to us at a later date. In the green room we were given cards in which to write our names and identifying information and told to hang on to both that card and one simply featuring our name. The second card is to be given to the administrator who would read our names onstage. The first is merely for the photographer. 

A month later I am still being reminded I can purchase my photo for a limited time with a regular or deluxe finish! I wonder if they can put my image in a snow globe with little motar board confetti falling over it. I might actually invest in that as a reminder I now belong to the world of post college ennui in the age of comodification, where graduation is just another consumable event; a degree is just another consumable item.

Consider the other pictures taken that day: my mom packed up my three sisters, the youngest of whom is two, in a van and drove nine hours to take her blurry cell phone pictures and upload them to Facebook. The best picture she took happened before the ceremony and I have a sour "aw ma" look on my face, one of my professors is having this picture framed for her desk. A friend and I shared a laugh in the faculty offices when she regaled us with the comedy of errors of her aunt's photography, which failed to capture anything except her niece's shoes on stage. I took a single unclear picture from my seat in the audience adrift in a sea of caps. These pictures are priceless and entirely unfit for the mantle.

Some families save their whole lives for a chance to send their children to college even if they never had the chance to attend themselves. Many students take on massive amounts of debt to obtain a degree which may not pay for itself. This struggle is not particularly aesthetically pleasing so every step of the way is carefully crafted and marketed from your first Pre-school level ACT prep book to your last guide to “careers for college grads.” What happened to the magic? I want so badly to clap my hands and revive "learning for learning's sake" instead for a reward that looks good on the mantle. I want to make memories that haven’t been crafted and marketed to me. I don’t want inflated grades because they will "foster good will" and prompt me to  give to the alumni association.

I toured a couple private liberal arts colleges during my final semester of my 2-year degree in search of the real magic of higher education. I thought if genuine learning was alive anywhere, it would be the liberal arts schools. Each one boasted a unique, zoonique, or [u]nique academic experience. Behind these unique spellings I found what I was looking for; education happened very much without fanfare and in more of a traditional than unique way. In small classes students sat in a circle talking about literature as if it mattered. I found the same spirit of a liberal education fostered in my favorite community college courses. It felt like the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas: we learned without open laptops, we learned without Google, we learned without podcasts, ipads or Moodle. We learned in the way that students learned best, we learned without asking "will this be on the test?"
But, even here in the safe academic cloister of a liberal arts school, every so often a marketing buzzword slipped in. My tour guide proclaimed this was the real deal, the school was committed to giving me the “liberal arts experience." I hate that word, it tries to comodify serendipity. Think theme parks where everything down to the cricket sounds in the evening are manufactured to create a mood. Remember the exuberant male voice who narrated over every old Disney VHS tape reminding you to "Experience the Magic" of other films available on VHS? 
I propose Disney just step into into the higher education game already. Creating the Disney experience for students is already the focus of several higher ed seminars. Why don’t we cut out the middle man? Why be like Disney when students could have a Disney brand education? Experience the magic of higher ed! Disney already has a so-called Disney University to train cast members and they aren't a bad place to intern but, this is short-sighted. I envision an expansion to a fully functioning Disney U: College your way! From your first time checking in to your movie themed dorm to the day you cross the stage in a motar board with mouse ears, you too can feel the magic of a higher education. The whole higher education experience.

Don’t scoff, one of the biggest problems in higher education is the uncertainty of students. We want to know “is this degree worth it?” this is a question seldom asked by Disney guests who shell out millions of dollars every year. Disney cast members are trained to make every moment as magical as possible, to present a unique experience. A growing number of faculty positions request “good customer service” among the “soft skills” they seek in applicants. Faculty could benefit from the course in Disney Traditions given to new cast members. Here university faculty members could learn about the role they play in your higher education story. As my community college was fond of saying via expensive billboards on the highway "its all about you."
 Billing per hour for exclusive access to characters is something community colleges are trying to break into and something in which Disney excels. 19 community colleges in Michigan now bill per hour based on contact with faculty and lab equipment. At $91 an hour for access to a professor why can’t my biology class be taught by Captain Hook and include a Mickey shaped pancake?

Colleges and universities love pricey amenities for students such as pools, gyms, and Student Service Centers. Even in a budgetary crisis these services are seldom cut. Colleges like the New College in Florida are revolutionary for offering a no-frills education. They don’t have sports or excessive student services but, on average students come out with little or no debt. This model doesn't sound sexy and flashy and won’t look very good on a billboard so, why not go the other way and offer students all the amenities of a Disney resort? I'm thinking an on campus spa would be just thing to loosen up before finals.

Sure some educational and Disney purists will object, but think of the students! Millennials love Disney and we’re going into massive amounts of debt anyway. Shouldn't we be allowed to ride Dumbo once before entering the real world? Isn't Disney the ultimate symbol of the middle class existence we desire? Or is the true meaning of getting a higher education something not found in a store? Could the true value of higher ed be just a little bit more?