Are Students Learning or Just Competing for Grades?

Education, they say, is one of the best legacies you can give; however, education doesn't end in the four walls of a classroom.

As a student back in my university days, the competition was fierce, with everyone trying to maintain their individual grades. This made a lot of students pay others to get assignments done.

Others paid those who had gone ahead to organize tutorials just for them to pass exams, which I also did, and other times I met with my colleagues, whom I knew understood certain courses better than I, to get tutorials.

I still remember how I and a few of my friends would gather at a particular fellowship building and teach ourselves day and night before our final exams.

All this was done to pass exams, but the sad reality is even most of the people that graduated with a first class don't even remember some of those things anymore, and it's not even a year since we graduated.

The thing is most of the lecturers repeat the same thing year in and year out with different sets of students with different mental capabilities, different conditions from home, and other factors.

I had a friend complain once about the fact that most of the lecturers still applied old teaching methods for a generation that learns things differently.

Some of the students graduate and don't even know the practical applications of the things they are taught in school, and this is the reason why a lot of companies still have to take in these graduates and train them in order to be able to apply the knowledge in the field.

Also, the fact that a lot of companies are looking for students with high grades has also made it a very competitive world out there, so students go as far as bribing lecturers, offering their bodies, and doing all sorts of things to get the grades, and this corruption is making institutions produce graduates who can't even defend their results.

The way I see it, if there could be an educational reform through which the career part of a student can be clearly charted, it would make lots of sense. Because most students get into school accepting courses they didn't apply for, and it makes them struggle through trying to keep up.

Learning should be made fun such that students can apply what they have learned in school in real-life situations.

The truth is school will always be competitive until there is a significant mindset shift that no matter your grade, you can be relevant because we have seen people who didn't do well in school but have done well for themselves, and a whole generation now looks up to them because it's not about the grade but what you can produce after you get that grade.

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