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 ...
All except “socially acceptable to fail”...if “fail” indicates grades. The pressure is on to make the grades “passing,” even if the actual performance is failing.
The article, however, indicates a different problem, though. If this professor is failing 60 percent of his students, I have to question whether he’s a good professor. I found that I was able to get college-level performance out of marginal students (not to brag). And these are English classes...not writing classes. Depending on what ENG101 and ENG102 are, the research paper requested might be out of the norm. We had writing-class requirements to handle those, and covered English topics in English classes.
hehehe...good story.
LOL! My brother is an excellent cop, choosing to be a county cop rather than a trooper because he didn't want to spend so much time doing traffic patrols. When he did have to do traffic enforcement, though, he put his education to good use--and continued to do so as a detective.
He would often be given the line, "I'm a student at the university," when he stopped cars on the Interstate. Invariably, they'd cite their major as English or Political Science, two of my brother's best fields.
Then, for example, he'd ask what type of English, and they'd often say "English Lit.," so he'd ask their favorite author or poet. If they waffled, he might suggest one, and he ended up reciting a poem or passage--but not by the writer they'd cited. They'd say, "oh yeah, that's my favorite", and he'd say, "well, that was Byron [or Browning or whomever he chose to recite], so how about you start telling me the truth!?"
More than once, he got, "Dang, I thought you were just a dumb county cop!"
(All that being said, it's a lie that everyone needs a college education, other than the fact that the minimum isn't being learned by many in high school! I'm so glad there are some good teachers out there, along with good homeschoolers!)
I would hope your employer recognizes his effort and has tried to coach and mentor him. I would also hope you have tried to assist as well.
The fact he tries and is a hard worker is a noble trait and rare these days.
If he is in a medium to large size company, I would hope they would be working to keep this hard worker, help find a spot where he “gets it.” If he is placed where his drive and determination is encouraged and he is productive, the company would do very well.
Any person with an small sense of environment can tell when things are not going well in the work place, and most can tell if the company is looking to terminate them (and with a screamer for a boss, it is painfully obvious to all). The fact that this guys soldiers on speak volumes about his character, work ethic and dedication.
Regardless, if he doesn’t have a clue the company plans to terminate him and that the rest of the employees (or is it just you) know about his impending termination, and no one has saw fit to give him a clue, that is very troubling.
Maybe you don’t think it is your place to let him in on a secret that involves him and others know about, but maybe a few words of encouragement for him to search elsewhere might be timely and fair, as well as compassionate.
Just my opinion, of course.
Also, depending on the company, it's worth a lot in prestige to say you have 10 Harvard or Georgetown or Holy Cross or Dartmouth grads on board. You probably don't have a prayer of being hired or recruited for one of the big name (for instance) accounting firms if you graduated from a state school. That's just the way it is.
I do think though, that kids graduating from those top tier schools do have something extra - poise and confidence that are instilled in them from day one. Also, the kids in those schools have to be of a competitive nature to get in at all -
All IMO.
I would say that if you want to be a serious journalist, go to Boston University and spend the money. If you want to be an English major or a teacher, go to a state school and save the money. My daughter is in nursing school - she could go to BC and pay 50k a year or she could go to a good smaller nursing school and pay 20k per year - and end up making the same salary either way (union).
Well said!
And further eroding the value of a degree is the rush by the higher-education "industry" to sell its wares -- even a Harvard degree has lost its genuine prestige. A degree from a once-vaunted institution now possess more snob-appeal than merit.
Then, of course, out in the marketplace, if one doesn't hold a degree -- however watered down it may be -- he's in the professional ghetto. It's ridiculous. And finally, well, to see how ridiculous it is, look what it's wrought on Wall Street, where the elite of the degreed elite gather.
>>>In large part, these schools are prestigious because of the extremely high caliber of the students that go there<<<
Having meet many “Ivy League” grads here in DC, I disagree.
They are not brighter than most and, truth be told, it is a rare exception to find one without that sense of “entitlement” and enormous ego. The entitlement and ego are conveyed by their presence, their attitude of “I went to XXX. . .therefore, I am smarter and better. . . .”
Nope.
The best graduates I meet, and hire, are hardworking from “lesser” schools. Those graduates carry themselves with quiet confidence, not arrogance. They are also eager to learn, whereas the “Ivy League” grads (usually) lazy, i.e., I worked hard already, gimme the job. Such arrogance is rarely found in those that went to less well-known schools. They know they are not Ivy Leaguers and most are eager for the chance to prove themselves and prove the company right for hiring them.
Some good ones? Yes. But just because they have some degree from a known school doesn’t give them an edge. Every applicant gets the same chance.
Any sign of arrogance or entitlement kills the interview real quick, no matter what school you went to.
We talk about egos and self-esteem, it is a problem across the board, but the worst offenders, in my experience, are Ivy Leaguers.
As far as doctors are concerned, give me any doctor from any American school. Ivy League or not. Period.
Please see my Post #68.
In the current world, writing is an extra essential skill. Writing sentences and paragraphs to convey necessary information is not learned well enough in highschool.
Even people on loading docks and driving forklifts must interface with computers and communicate via e mail.
If you haven’t learned writing, you will not get a decent job.
“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.”
Not to worry. When President Obama blesses them and they become “legal,” their wage demands will go up accordingly.
That’s all I feel qualified to say. Waaay too many college graduates around here.
I disliked both high school and college, especially the latter. One of the happiest days of my life was when it was over. My main regret about it is that I did not take ROTC.
As an adjunct at my local community college, I second that. Public high schools are passing students who should fail and granting diplomas to kids whose best work is still on an elementary level. Then the junior colleges have to take them, adding to their own curriculum a bevy of remedial classes, for which these students now pay (or receive financial aid), just to get them to a basic level of competence. Home schooled students - and they are admitted as young as 15 - are a standout in every class.
“I think one of the failures of the modern corporate world is the demand that job applicants possess college degrees. In many cases the performance of these jobs do not require a college degree,”
So true. But it benefits banks by forcing people to go into debt to get those degrees.
bump
BTT
Didn't the dean of that school of journalism get caught plagiarizing?
Her only hope for success is remedial work to build the core skills required for college level work. She should have learned these in high school, but didn't. Most colleges offer such remedial courses for the same hourly tuition as other courses but no credit. After all, it is remedial...
There’s a reason for that: engineering and hard science doesn’t give a rat’s rear end who you know, who your daddy knows, how big your mommy and daddy’s checking balance is, or whether your family is politically connected. Hard science and engineering care only whether you know the facts, can do the work, etc.
And from what I’ve seen, Ivy League grads, with the possible exceptions of Princeton and Dartmouth, prefer to trade on their connections rather than their skills.
Harvard is especially guilty of this.
I won’t even bother going into some of the absurdly over-inflated stuff I’ve seen in the process of due diligence for M&A in the valley on companies started by Stanford grads and professors, because they’re not technically Ivy, but their attitude of entitlement is right up there with the blue-blood schools.
Give me engineers out of small engineering schools, land grant universities like Texas A&M or the military academies - any day.
Whaddya mean by that?
It's a statement of ignorance. I went to an engineering school, and have engineering degrees, and have no idea of who hires Lit Crit graduates or what criteria they use. While I understand why companies like Pixar might heavily recruit from schools like Carnegie Mellon, I don't know what industry is crying out for the best and brightest Lit Crit graduates. (And the education industry doesn't count, as that's a simple requirement for there being any Lit Crit graduates).
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