A university education today primarily serves as a stepping stone. You get in, you get out and you get busy. As higher education has become more and more a prerequisite for entrance to the middle class, the goal of the student is to get a degree as soon as possible, and the goal of the university is to accommodate as many students as possible in achieving this goal.

Unit caps, which limit how many units a student can take in any given quarter as well as over the course of their undergraduate career, are just one institutional expression of this trend. Interestingly, however, they hinder the ethos of the educational drive toward prosperity. At first glance, unit caps seem practical — after all, the university can hardly spend its time providing shelter and occupation to the hobos of the educational system. But at the same time, unit caps seem to be utterly at odds with at least the theoretical objective of higher education — the pursuit of knowledge.

Those who pursue a double-major may well understand this conflict. In the history department, for example, even double- majors must graduate after 240 units. This hardly seems fair; double-majoring probably results in double the back-tracking and mind-changing as does a normal major, which is why the university should provide plenty of room for maneuvering. No unit caps should be instituted, save for a safeguard against the extreme — a 340-unit cap perhaps for the eccentric few who hope to one day reminisce about their seventh and eighth year of college. Beyond this, however, a unit cap seems unreasonable and discouraging for students with a healthy appetite for knowledge and an energetic ambition. Although many students double major to have an even more impressive resume upon graduating, there is undeniably a certain attraction for those who enjoy it so much that they simply cannot choose. In addition, if school is not a particular misery, there is not always a need to speed ahead like lightening to the finish line of graduation. It is hard to disappoint pure lovers of learning for the sake of admitting more ladder-climbers; although graduate school presumably allows for the academically addicted to freely carry on, it still seems a sorry thing to curb the flowering of options and possibilities in an undergraduate career. The idealism of knowledge for knowledge’s sake is hard to completely abandon — what high school teacher, for example, would ever dissuade a student from reading more books or doing more assignments than necessary?

However, unit caps can also frustrate the logic behind the “race-to-the-top” function of higher education. If higher education is all about preparing for the job market in our modern capitalist society, it seems reasonable to let capitalist rules apply at the university level. If one wishes to be particularly ambitious and stack up an impressive list of majors, minors and other academic pursuits, then the university ought to grant them the freedom to do so — especially considering that the individual will have to pay for it. Raising tuition fees after the completion of a certain number of credits seems reasonable, as it allows for the individual to take more credits if desired but also requests compensation for the extra space being occupied beyond the expected stay. But these higher rates should not be unreasonable. Although allowing as many students as possible to obtain higher education is a reasonable goal, it hardly seems right to seriously hinder personal ambition in the process. To do so might make sense in a less competitive society, but in a culture where relentless work and personal drive seem necessary for success, it is anathema to deny these traits in an institution tangled up in preparing students for the work world.

Although higher education should be available to everyone, distribution of time and resources should not exceed the point where it hinders those who may be more enthusiastic or ambitious. It seems unjust to put the brakes on a student’s energetic attempt to construct something grand so that an indifferent student can construct something mediocre — and in the long run it will probably only deprive our culture of the kind of genius that such energy can contribute to society.