University is considered the culmination of cultures and characters, a clash of vastly different ways of life, beliefs, and values. Yet, regarding the exchange between social classes, third-level education builds barriers rather than promoting interaction.
At its essence, academic knowledge is only accessible in exchange for money, entirely excluding sectors of society unable to finance such fees.
However, social struggles and class differences don’t go unnoticed in academic circles:
Widely discussed throughout lecture halls and seminars, scholars and academics certainly realise class struggle, as they go on to publish their findings in academically adequate terms, accessible through paywalls, that they discuss over the heads of the affected. Consequently, it is the lower classes that are neither granted access to findings nor included in discussions they generate.
The academic system is elitist. Plausibly, even the term elitist is: Scholars are trained to use academic jargon, or rather words that drape a veil over discourses and result in a sense of intellectual superiority. Discussions therefore shift from substance to semantics, ignoring that labels often carry multiple, contested definitions and, moreover, exclude anyone from the conversation who is not operating on the same linguistic level.
Caught up in trying to fathom class struggle, academics and scholars fail to realise that those most affected are rarely active participants in discussions. Hence, the underrepresentation of the lower class in universities becomes an out-of-sight, out-of-mind phenomenon. Physically absent from campuses and lecture halls, the lower-class perspective is hardly ever part of discussions and attempted solutions.
Scholarly findings are neatly wrapped in academic jargon and sealed by a degree, implying that real-life experiences are not held to the same value in society as academic knowledge. As a result, inequality exists throughout various sectors of society, such as the conferral of authority, credibility, and representation.
Third-level education is effectively part of a mechanism that undermines the experiences, opinions, and demands of lower classes and fuels a vicious circle of wealth determining education level, which then determines social status, as social order and class division are upheld. Not only is the removal of obstacles regarding higher-level education imperative, but also the dismantling of traditional notions of what constitutes culture and intellect.
