Creativity is the main driving factor behind today’s invitation, but is college killing creativity? College may be killing the creativity of this new generation. College may be educating students in a way that dampens and suppresses students’ creativity by locking them into a linear style of thinking. Creativity is the creation of new ideas and innovations. Researchers from the University of Mostar made it clear when they wrote, “Many official European Union documents identified creativity as a major driving force towards knowledge creation and social and economic advancement through the development of a knowledge Society” (Gaspar and Mabic p.599).Limiting or discouraging creativity in any way can influence the future success of the population. If you look back on the world’s biggest innovators,  many of them did not have a high level of education; instead, instead They spent their time innovating and creating new ideas instead of doing meaningless assignments with little to no aspect of creativity. People such as Elon Musk have even recognized that there is a problem in today’s society with the difficulty of measuring the creativity and innovation of a person. He gave a fantastic example when he said, “if Nikola Tesla applied to Tesla would we even give him an interview? I don’t think we would”.Employers end up looking at degrees and past work because it is very hard to measure creativity. Although most employers value creativity and innovation, they still stick to Using the same method as they always have, which pressures more kids to go to college even if it is not a great fit for them. Society benefits from more creativity and innovation, so we should increase it and help the younger generations explore their creativity instead of dampening it.

This topic has really plagued me over the years, but it has piqued my interest now that I am in college. When I was in high school, I would always find a way to insert my creativity into my classes. The loose form of my classes almost always gave the student the option to incorporate a creative aspect into their work. Going into college, I knew that it wasn’t going to be as creative. Looking at my new schedule, it seemed like I might have been wrong, I had a lot of classes that I thought were going to be creative, but every class I went to was the same: analyzing, memorizing, and calculating. Even in classes that seems obviously creative, like music, instead, I was stuck listening to a lecture and trying my best to memorize vocabulary, there was absolutely zero input and creativity from the students. This, paired with the awkward schedule I had, really stumped my creativity and made me feel drained. Many articles show the same frustration, saying “teacher can become the co-creator of new meaning-making”(Gaspar and Mabic p.599). There is also a little hope for my classes to get any more creative because the more I get my core classes out of the way, the less creative they seem to be. Creativity is a big problem in today’s higher education system. The linear style of learning can suppress students’ creativity and make them feel like they’re just a gear and a machine. The view that college needs more creativity is not uncommon among students. Many students today share the opinion “Generally, students think that teachers do not encourage them enough to be active participants of teaching process which leads to the conclusion that classical, ex cathedra approach is still prevailing.” (Gaspar and Mabic p.602)This problem is way more widespread than the quote implies. Beachers may be a part of this problem because some of them are just trying to prepare their students for an exam that they have no control over. However, everyone could help by advocating for more creative styles of learning. This is not the first time this question has been raised, studies were done to convince teachers and students to change the environment of higher education into a more creative one. Making class more creative can help draw a student’s attention and make a more interactive experience. An example of this would be asking the student to create something of their own, like asking law students to make up their own cases or asking music students to create their own melody. Instead the linear style of education “fails to prepare learners to be creative in a life of Change” (Florida et al. p.604) Most classes do not take recent events and changing tides into consideration, this makes it important to let students figure out how to adapt and create their own material, whether it’s a problem, solution, paper, or song. Schools that adopt these styles of learning are usually rated higher by students, showing that this method doe benefits the student. The big downside to this is the extra workload it can put on teachers, forcing the teacher’s grade and interpreting students to work instead of just checking something off as right or wrong. Other than the small criticisms, the majority of articles agree that colleges should change their style of teaching, But why isn’t it? It’s hard to find many reasons, but it can be because of the risk of an assignment being too hard to interpret, This is part of the reason it is so hard to find many statistics on the problem because there’s no standard way of measuring creativity. The risk of creativity also means that teachers will have to look at the journey instead of the final product most of the time. Logos It was hard to find because, as mentioned before, there is no good way of measuring the creativity of a person besides service, and even then everyone has a different opinion of what it means to be creative, which can make surveys very inaccurate. Florida et al does try to stay a little more factual than Gaspar and Mabic which makes Florida et al seem more credible. Both pieces were informative and clearly showed everything. The. Creativity is clearly needed, but yesterday’s method of teaching needs to be replaced or modified. Higher education needs to change for the better, and industry leaders need to change.

Works Cited

Florida, Richard, et al. “The University and the Creative Economy.” Creative Class Group, 2006, https://creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/University%20For%20City%20and%20Community%204.pdf. Accessed 21 April 2023.

Gaspar, Drazena, and Mirela Mabic. “Creativity in Higher Education.” ERIC, 2015, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1074814.pdf. Accessed 21 April 2023.