This is what students should be doing: engaging and enacting change.

Universities have become boring. Where once they were markers of social change, alternative ways of thinking and challenges to the status quo, they are now only extended, expensive workforce preparation sites.

During the decades of radical social change in the early postwar period, universities and their students were at the forefront of many movements directly affecting the communities in which they lived. Students in the U.S. were at the forefront of the Vietnam protests and the civil rights struggle, and young women the world over fought for gender equality.

Over time this spirit has dulled within the once-raucous halls of universities. It’s time to bring it back. Recently students have reacted to the university’s TransformUS initiative. Students said they wanted to have their voices heard and to have their opinions taken seriously. The university listened. This is a clear example of just how much power and influence students can have — as long as they’re willing to step up and take it.

Saskatoon is also the birthplace of the recent Idle No More movement — which has now become a Canada-wide phenomenon with international support. U of S students have supported the movement and added their voices to the cause.

This is the way it should be. Students should not sit by while there are issues either within the university or outside it that need addressing. Universities are not only centres for job preparation; they need to be centres for change and progress.

The notion that one should attend university to learn for the sake of learning rather than to find a career is becoming obsolete. Now, the main goal of universities is to make students more desirable in potential employers’ eyes.

This isn’t all that a higher education should entail. A university should broaden students’ minds and open them up to new ways of thinking about themselves and the world.

The journey from the first day of classes to the first degree is not a solitary one. Four or more years spent in the company of only textbooks will not make a student into an engaged citizen. Interactions with other students, professors and the wider community help to shape one’s university experience.

Learning cannot be contained within the walls of the university or those who wander its halls. To make their experience at school really count, students should interact with their surrounding communities.

Universities regularly provide opportunities for protest and community action but they are rarely a mandatory part of the educational experience. While a humanities student has to take a few science courses and engineers are required to take a rhetorics class, no one is expected to participate in the kind of community-building that provides students real experience outside the university’s walls.

A university education isn’t just about students getting degrees and finding work afterward — it is also about what those students do for the community with the knowledge they have gained.

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Photo: Washington Area Spark/Flickr