College life 2009 compared to communist Poland

It is crazy to think how lucky we are in today's society. Most students plan on attending college after they graduate high school, whether it is a community college, technical school, 2 year college, or 4 year university. And even with the rising price of college tuition, many students still get the opportunity to go to college with the help of financial aid, college loans, scholarships, and most of all, parents. In communist Poland, you didn't get to choose if you wanted to attend college or not. You were chosen by the government, and this privilege was based on your social background, and your family's occupations and social status. What I find really interesting is that in today's society we see that many people who come from wealthy families have the most opportunities because of their family's wealth. Yet in Poland the students who were chosen to attend university did not come from a family of money, but usually from a family of workers like peasant farmers; and the less land you owned the better chance you had at being picked to attend university. The children of independent professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, had no chance of ever being chosen to go to college. Enrollment procedures at universities gave priority to the children of workers, regardless of the students' actual abilities or knowledge.

Another huge difference I noticed between mt student experiences now and the ones students endured in communist Poland was that students were unable to choose their program of study, which is basically what college is about today, doing something that you enjoy. The few students who were actually chosen to attend university didn't even have the option to choose what they wanted to study or learn about. The government selected the students they wanted to attend school and then put the students in fields where Poland was in need of workers. And most of the selected subjects were ones that helped the communists' strategy for "consolidating the power of the party." So basically the only reason students were allowed to attend university was so that the communist party could gain from it; the communists got new minds into their party by taking away the students' basic freedoms such as freedom of choice. And even with the limited number of subjects that students were forced to study, textbooks were still lacking and the only thing students were able to rely on were lecture notes. Today students can take classes online, use a tape recorder to tape lectures, watch lectures online and on television, and get the lecture on power point slides. We have countless options as to how we can take classes nowadays and the materials that professors use for each class. Back in communist Poland, teachers were limited solely to lectures and if they were lucky some students in the class had textbooks.

Students back then had to learn to deal with the regime's bureaucracy and how to survive in a system that was constantly changing and not for their benefit. We are so lucky that we live in a society where college has now become the norm, and we get to attend universities where we are supplied with textbooks and other materials to help us succeed in our classes. We even get involved in programs that help us find jobs and careers during school (internships) and after graduation; students in Poland weren't guaranteed jobs and most of the time they couldn't find a job anymore despite the fact that they were one of the few students lucky enough to get chosen to attend university. I think it is just insane how much education has changed in a little over 50 years.