Application
Marx’s theory of alienation has been applied even in modern colleges. In colleges and universities, there are accumulating debts for the students. The money given to students is like a vehicle that depreciates with time. These debts are accumulating with interests that must be repaid at the end of graduation. Paying back the loans over a long period and out of low income can rule out possibilities of making other financial investments. Students leave these schools in worse financial shape than they were before they enrolled. This makes them financially alienated and they suffer alienation from the society. This debt reliance created tameness among students and thwarted progression of consciousness students, a critical forerunner to the unavoidable class, conflict Marx theory.
The current awareness economy produces an exciting problem. Not training or teaching its own students, as future workers, would serve the vital purpose of capitalists: the greater profits. But, if students owned the means of acquiring necessary skills at a comparatively low monetary burden and skills themselves, than they would be given power to negotiate for better wages, which, on the other hand, threaten these profits. If, however, the cost of obtaining the qualifications to qualify for employment burdened student’s financial security that they cannot afford the danger of auctioning their skills to a greater bid, capitalists can retain labor price control. For example, a student who in average has a loan debt of $25,000 whose repayment starts immediately after graduation contrary to after a grace period of six months which was previously the norm, there is a powerful reason to accept the first employment offered to him or her at whichever wage is being offered. Debt usually functions the same way in the academic economy as it does in the manufacturing industrial economy. The only variation is the way in which this debt is designed organizationally. It is now the purview of the public sector instead of the capitalist owner but all the same, students are borrowing against their upcoming earnings and sabotaging the crucial means accessible to them to abstract control over their future employments and lives. The heavy debt burdens take off the luster of achievements from the college. The student is left in a debtor’s prison. This conflicts Marx’s theory.
A student after graduation is not even sure of getting a job yet the small they get is chased up by the government to repay the accumulated loan debts. His/her life is controlled by another and, therefore, alienated from products and activity because one is forced by economic conditions other than unchangeable human conditions. The students feel alienated by people and society in search of jobs in which they have graduated for. Low wages are likely to follow in the name of low work experience. This according to Marx is exploitation. Employers are advised to deduct these loans from the just employed students. This demoralizes the young labors and feels self-alienated. These students are of higher skills and could auction his skills for higher wages with a new employer.
The expansion of the population in college students have contributed to the increased contingent work in the United States. Most of casual workers in the United States are college graduates. Many students graduate as compared to the number of available jobs of their skills. This leads the in casual work. This is a negative relationship. However many college populations have also led to availability of cheap labor and hence increased production. However the level of poverty have increased due to this rise of poor paying and flooded contingent work. These skilled but temporary workers cannot, on the other hand, devote their loyalty and lives to the employer. The capitalist economy is more focused on increasing profits. The higher education is also in collaboration with these capitalists to exploit students by admitting and expanding college population and consequently lowering the amount of debts. These have alienated poor students that rely on this loan for survival in colleges in terms of books and other materials. It is a higher education in collaboration with capitalists that recommend the curriculum and the students have no control or say in it. This according to Marx is self-alienation.
