College has always been a place for students to expand their minds. It’s not a selective tryout for life.

At one time, people didn’t worry so much about getting a job after college and instead focused on getting an education.

Now, one of the first things people do when they come to college is pick a major, heading down the path to getting a certain job after college is finished.

There has been a transfer of wealth in this country, said history associate professor Rosemary Feurer. While the amount of middle-class jobs seems to be shrinking, the number of service sector jobs are increasing, as is the number of people attending college.

“A lot of people who do get degrees here are frankly deceived,” Feurer said. “In 2004, the occupational composition of jobs required that 27.7 percent of the work-force have a college degree or more ... so most of the jobs out there require only a little more than one fourth of us to have college degrees. Yet more than 50 percent of people want to go to college.”

But it’s good to have aspirations.

I received some good advice in high school: “Do what you want to. The ones with the biggest dreams have more power than the ones with all the facts.”

People hold power in holding up their dreams. It gives them the want, the drive and the dedication it may take to achieve it.

That may be exactly what it takes to succeed in certain fields.

Giving students a D or F in a required pre-requisite class for the program could either get the student to come back motivated to retake the class and do well in it, or it could discourage them and make them decide that college is not the place for them to be.

This isn’t anything new to the college scene.

“All professional degrees have a way of weeding people out,” Feurer said. “College is now a way to reproduce the middle class.”

Those students who leave may not get the job they once could have if they stayed in college, which can open the door to someone else.

Professors shouldn’t play “professional natural selection.” Purposely making a class tough just to “strengthen a school” or chase after national ratings should not be the goal.

Those catches already exist.

The pursuit of knowledge, research, teaching and preparing students for the “real world” outside the college walls should be the point. General education requirements for example are kind of like the bridge between high school and students’ majors. It serves the purpose of leaving students more well-rounded in their education than they were before.

College is still a place to learn, grow and graduate.

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