Nah, students never "cared" about learning. The ones who brought up the averages did. College may have been about prestige, but the system is rarely that hone

Nah, students never "cared" about learning. The ones who brought up the averages did. College may have been about prestige, but the system is rarely that honest about itself. Most of the people involved in maintaining the system -- teachers, professors, and students, certainly, and also many parents -- believed in the romantic image of college, and the ones who didn't believe, pretended. William James said that whatever you attend to becomes your reality, and thanks to everybody attending so closely to the myth of college as an educational experience, that's what it turned out to be in reality as well.