Editor’s Note: The Daily Emerald welcomes Guest Viewpoints or Letters to the Editor from the University of Oregon and Eugene community. 

This letter reflects the opinions of its writer, David Mitrovčan Morgan, and not of The Emerald as an organization.

In the early 20th century as America’s middle class expanded, its perception of college shifted. Once a rare privilege for the elite, college became a gateway to upward mobility and respect. By mid-century, this belief had taken root. The American Dream — once defined by freedom and self-determination — grew increasingly tied to formal education. With the GI Bill and the Higher Education Act of 1965, that belief became institutionalized.

What began as a push to broaden opportunity soon hardened into a pipeline, a necessary stamp for social legitimacy. Slowly, higher education stopped being a path to economic advancement and became the path. College conquered the American Dream.

As a result, for too many, higher education was reduced to a transaction — a credential for employment. The pursuit of knowledge became secondary, and we forgot why we learn. Students were taught that the Dream followed a script: get the grades, the degree, the job and you’ll be happy.

That narrative seeped backward. Elementary, middle and high school became a prelude to college, which was itself just a prelude to a job. But learning isn’t a prelude to life — it is life: joyful, essential and deeply human. Awkward discussions, late nights grappling with a concept, the struggle to shape a thought — these aren’t chores. They teach us to reason, reflect and make sense of the world. 

Moreover, critical thinking doesn’t only emerge from a one-size-fits-all classroom. It grows wherever people are pushed to wrestle with consequences, apply judgment and adapt — whether in class, rewiring a circuit, raising a child or farming. There are many paths to becoming ourselves.

This shift had consequences. It didn’t just marginalize valuable routes — trades, community colleges and the labor force — it transformed learning itself. When education becomes something to endure rather than savor, students disengage. Every assignment begins to feel like busy work, just another hoop to jump through.

Then, large language models arrived, not as villains but as blinding mirrors. AI can perform many academic tasks, and students, understandably, are using it. It’s not from laziness but because we failed to show them why the work matters. The tragedy isn’t that ChatGPT can write a passable essay. It’s that we’ve stumbled into an education system so hollow that students don’t see the value in writing one themselves.

I grew up far far away from these United States, in Serbia, but even there, I’d heard of the American Dream — a promise of agency, of shaping your own future. When I moved here at 12, however, I fell into the pipeline without realizing it: get the grades and go to college so I’ll get the job. Naturally, I felt discontent. 

Fortunately, as a trustee, I’ve had the opportunity to engage with faculty and administrators at the University of Oregon in ways most students don’t. I saw how deeply they believed in education. 

Through this community’s passion, I relearned what school had un-taught me: education isn’t a stepping stone but practice to ask better questions, spark richer conversations and appreciate being human.

The crisis in higher education is real, and its causes are complex, but a thought may point to an antidote. When we turn education into a race to a job, we forget why it mattered in the first place. When we collapse the American Dream into a degree, we suffocate it under the weight of a single story. 

This has to change. We must begin with increased government investment in a more accessible education system: apprenticeships, trades, training programs and yes, college too. We need to give people genuine agency to choose their own path and the support they need to thrive in it.

But funding alone won’t fix it. We must also rekindle the joy of learning and underscore its worth doing for its own sake. We, as students, must be taught, told and shown how simply wonderful of a thing learning is, so we can internalize it. 

That is how we begin the long, hard work of rebuilding an American Dream that is not a pipeline, but a promise of endless possibility.

David Mitrovčan Morgan is a student member on the Board of Trustees. He is a junior majoring in Data Science and Economics.

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