A Response to Michael Moffatt’s

"College Life: Undergraduate Culture and Higher Education"

Students today think college is a broadening experience that involves much more than academics.  This is what Michael Moffatt, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, discovered after conducting an anthropological study of college life.  Moffatt examined and observed Rutgers students by living in the dormitories for two years.  Then he reported his findings in the Journal of Higher Education in an article entitled “College Life: Undergraduate Culture and Higher Education.”  Moffatt wrote this article to show administrators and professors how students view college.  He pointed out that students saw college as more than a center for higher academic learning; instead, they viewed their college years as a time when they learned how to balance work and play.  The students claimed that they learned just as much outside the classroom as they learned inside.  College was also valuable because it exposed them to a diversity of people (Moffatt 44-46, 60).  On the whole, my views on college are similar to those of the Rutgers University students whom Moffatt studied.

I agree that in order to succeed in college, one has to learn how to balance work and play.  Each day, I try to alternate studying with relaxing. . . . [paragraph continues].

Like the students of Moffatt’s study, I am learning just as much outside the classroom as inside. . . . [paragraph continues].

Another factor that has made college a “broadening experience” for me is the diversity of the student body.  Since I’ve come to college, I’ve met people from Turkey, Puerto Rico, South America, Hong Kong, and cities all over the United States. . . . [paragraph continues].

I can identify with the Rutgers University students in Moffatt’s study.  Like them, I think that college has expanded my horizons, forced me to learn how to balance work and play, taught me more about life outside the classroom than inside, and prepared me for the real world by exposing me to a wide variety of people.

Original Essay: Reading and Writing in the Academic Community (1994): 90-91.