College is not but has become a business

Hunter Rawlings, president of the Association of American Universities and a former president of Cornell University and the University of Iowa, explains why college should not be a business. When one buys something at a store, he simply has to pay for it with dollars and cents. When one goes to college the payment is more than dollars and cents. The student has to work to acquire and education. The student 'pays' for his/her education by making decisions: courses to take (and not take), the amount of work to do, the intellectual curiosity the student exhibits, participating in class, his focus and determination. 

Rawlings concludes:

To create what is, for most of us, that “new sensation,” you need a professor who provokes and a student who stops slumbering. It is the responsibility of colleges and universities to place students in environments that provide these opportunities. It is the responsibility of students to seize them. Genuine education is not a commodity, it is the awakening of a human being.