From a student’s point of view, academia is beginning to feel like the new oil. Everyone is drilling into it, everyone is making money from it, yet the people at the center of it, the students and teachers are barely seeing the benefits.
School has become ridiculously expensive. Tuition keeps rising, and on top of that are registration fees, departmental dues, laboratory fees, ICT fees, library fees, and sometimes even fees whose purpose no one can clearly explain. Textbooks are no better; a single recommended book can cost as much as a month’s feeding allowance. Handouts that used to be shared freely are now sold at prices that feel exploitative.
Even basic academic necessities like printing, data, and stationery now feel like luxury items. For students, learning has slowly shifted from a right or a service to a privilege you pay heavily for.
Ironically, while students are stretched thin financially, teachers are still underpaid. Lecturers who carry the weight of teaching, mentoring, grading, researching, and sometimes even counseling students are often owed salaries, poorly motivated, and overwhelmed.
Many of them work in conditions that do not reflect the importance of their role in shaping minds and the future of society. It is confusing, and honestly frustrating, to see the people who do the actual work of education struggle while the cost of education keeps skyrocketing.
Yet somehow, management always seems to have money. New administrative buildings spring up, official cars are purchased, conferences are attended, and bureaucratic structures continue to expand. There is a visible imbalance in priorities. Funds appear to flow smoothly at the top, while classrooms remain overcrowded, laboratories under-equipped, hostels inadequate, and lecturers undervalued.
From the student’s seat, it feels like education has been commercialized, with profit and prestige taking precedence over learning and welfare.
Academia, like oil, is being extracted aggressively.
Students are the consumers, teachers are the laborers, and management controls the pipeline. The promise of education as a tool for empowerment and social mobility is slowly being overshadowed by financial strain and institutional greed.
If this continues, academia risks losing its soul. Education should not be about who can afford to survive the system, but about who is willing to learn, teach, and grow. Until priorities change, many students will continue to ask the same painful question: if academia is the new oil, then who is really benefiting from it?
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