Posted on 12/24/2008 12:35:29 PM PST by Zack Nguyen
...I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé.
...A few weeks into the semester, the students must start actually writing papers, and I must start grading them. Despite my enthusiasm, despite their thoughtful nods of agreement and what I have interpreted as moments of clarity, it turns out that in many cases it has all come to naught.
Remarkably few of my students can do well in these classes. Students routinely fail; some fail multiple times, and some will never pass, because they cannot write a coherent sentence.
In each of my courses, we discuss thesis statements and topic sentences, the need for precision in vocabulary, why economy of language is desirable, what constitutes a compelling subject. I explain, I give examples, I cheerlead, I cajole, but each evening, when the class is over and I come down from my teaching high, I inevitably lose faith in the task, as I’m sure my students do. I envision the lot of us driving home, solitary scholars in our cars, growing sadder by the mile.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Correction......before I get freepmails about the ‘dangers of a pre-med major’ My daughter is on a pre-med track, majoring in bio-chem. A ‘pre-med’ major is generally considered a risky undertaking and not the best way to go.
Sorry for the lack of clarity
Ivy League schools admit the kids at the top of their class in high school. We're talking about maybe the top 1-2%, academically. That creates an extremely intense and competitive academic environment that you wouldn't get at a place like Arizona State or wherever.
Does a doctor from Harvard know more about his specialty than a doctor from Duke?
Those schools are in the same league, so there is not a huge difference between a doctor from Harvard and Duke. But, again, due to the fact that these schools are extremely difficult to get into, a doctor from Harvard or Duke is going to be extremely intelligent and hard-working.
In large part, these schools are prestigious because of the extremely high caliber of the students that go there.
Indeed. Most likely she was never challenged academically in her formative years. In early middle age, college level work is, for now at least, beyond her. But I would never give up hope on anyone who wants to succeed - our educational system is so thin in this country that few students ever reach their genetic potential. She needs to start at a more remedial level.
You're right. Only a few of my classes growing up really caught my fancy. I was always rememebr them. But graduate school was, by far, the most profound schooling experience of my life.
That is one of the strengths of American higher education. The industry offers a wide range of educational products, from elite Ivy leagues for the academic hard-chargers, to junior colleges for the kids who need to re-group after not doing well in high school, to for-profit universities geared towards non-traditional students.
You may be right. Thanks for your response.
I once sat in a Middle School class in which the teacher was introducing Holocaust literature. She said WWII ended about 1947. As the only other adult in the room I came within a whisker of raising my hand to correct her, but decided discretion was the better option.
Let's see if we noticed the same things...constant boredom, complete lack of respect for authority, rampant cheating, and a disdain for learning making it socially acceptable to fail, and thus socially problematic to succeed. Top it off with teachers that constantly lower the bar, and an administration that does not know how to discipline students.
And this was an extremely wealthy school considered "good" by most teachers.
Believe what you want. I know people who have started at Tyson plants (non illegal employee... they kind of stuck out), who simply (and without a college degree), raised a family by simply working hard, and doing their job. They didn’t stay a line employee forever.
The problem that you apparently would like to ignore - is that we have so blurred the line between “support a family” with “having everything your heart desires”.
Nothing in the US Constitution or any other legal document says that we are entitled to a brand new car, LCD HD TV, XBOX 360, Fridge full of booze, and a cushy job to support that.
We have made the “other jobs” so stigmatized that folks don’t want to do them. I personally don’t understand what is so ugly about cleaning tables, butchering chickens, picking up trash, washing cars, digging ditches, painting homes, laying brick, etc. Not a one of those jobs requires a college degree (or at least shouldn’t). And I know people who have done all of the above and not considered themselves to be “poor”. They didn’t have “walking around cash” or the nicest possessions in the world - but they lived happy and content lives - because their priorities were on living a life of love.
I always use my Father In Law as an example - he has spent his entire life as a farm hand. From the age of 12... He and my Mother In Law raised two children on one income - and it blows my mind when I think about how little they had... yet my wife and her brother never lacked necessities - and even had some “luxuries”. Oh - and my in-laws didn’t get their first credit card until just a few years ago. About 50 years on the farm - making what most people would consider poverty-level wages. Yet they survived. Their priorities were different.
There’s something about physics guys in the business world. They’re some of the people who are least able to buy bullcrap, even when wrapped up in a lot of fancy mathematics.
Look around at how many of the people calling this financial/debt crisis were physics jocks: Taleb, for one. The guy who did the math on Madoff’s claims and wrote to the SEC is another. There are others - I should put together a list of how many people with a physics or hard science background had the goods on all these idiot economists, MBA and “financial engineers” early on.
The Harvard MBA’s, however, starting with Bush and proceeding on to Paulson, and ending with the CEO of GM, are utterly clueless. But oh, they are so proud of having a Harvard MBA.
If I were in a position to be hiring now and someone came in my door bragging about a Harvard MBA trying to impress me, I’d launch him out an unopened window - preferably a second or higher story window.
Yea, that’s what their marketing claims.
However, as a graduate of a private engineering school that had many of our grads going into companies side-by-side with Ivy League engineering grads... the results in engineering show that the Ivies are just a country club. Their graduates in engineering leave quite a lot to be desired.
In Silicon Valley, I can say that we laughed more than a couple of Ivies with high-falutin’ CV’s out of the interview room. More than one of these we laughed out of the room had a 4.0 GPA.
“Tennessee State Univ. in Nashville, for example, does such a woeful job of educating its so-called “engineering” graduates that most companies simply won’t interview them.”
I attended some classes there after UT left town. I saw students that could barely read and write getting A’s. It was also very racist in my opinion.
I thought UNT had a fair engineering program, albeit a newer one. (I’m UT Arlington myself.)
The Ivies have never been particularly well-known for their engineering programs, AFAIK.
Careful — the physics guys are also behind the modeling in structured finance that helped build the house of cards.
At my local CC, students like Ms. L take up to three remedial courses before they advance to one that even gives college credit. A pal went to a exurb HS in the early 70’s and he couldn’t write at a sixth grade level when he started at the CC. I mentored him through the first few writing assignments, telling him why what he wrote made no sense. He advanced quickly and can write a good paper now.
My father owned a construction company in Wyoming in the early 70’s. He paid carpenters $10-12 an hour. Houses cost $20-30k and a new car was, $3,500?
It is now 2008 and carpenters in Wyoming make $10-16 an hour. Enough said.
I think you’ve missed my point.
I was disagreeing with your statement that college education causes “the jobs Americans won’t do mentality.”
The “cause” isn’t college education, but the undercutting of the wage rate by illegals. Plain and simple.
What most folks do not realize is that the wage rate for unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in America has plummeted by at least 50 percent over the last 30 years. Anyone can run the numbers, it’s not a mystery. (When I worked construction in the late 70’s it was $7 to $8 per hour).
How is this possible?
Because illegal aliens have been allowed to compete for American unskilled and semi-skilled jobs and to force wages down to at least 50 percent less than what they should be.
And when I say “should be” I mean according to the CPI, the Average Wage Rate, and/or to all the inflation indices since the late 70’s.
I am no scholar, as I will tell anyone.
The agony I go through correcting spelling, grammar and convoluted syntax is like a mental bastinado.
When I get after them and suggest that at least they could use spell check and grammar check on their computers, all I get is a bovine look.
that is well written piece. You might appreciate this one:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1672282/posts?page=1
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.