October 2008

To summarize, the students at the community college level include dual credit, traditional, and returning students.  Women dominate and the majority of students are under the age of forty.  Many are of low socioeconomic status and more than one-third are the first generation in their families to attend college.

The highest variety of courses community college students are taught can be found in English as a Second Language courses, with as many as twenty-seven ESOL courses at a single college.  The courses with the highest section numbers, developmental writing and freshman composition classes, are evenly distributed among full and part-time instructors.  And college-level literature courses, mainly American, British, and world literature, are almost entirely taught by the full-time faculty.

The full-time faculty teach a typical course load of twelve courses a year.  They teach five classes each long semester and a two course summer session.  Research is not supported, although doing it can improve the likelihood of receiving a teaching award.

One in four community college teachers has a PhD.  And only about one in four is employed full-time.  They are not necessarily the same fourth.  One eighth of the teachers are tenured.  Even full-time jobs are outside a tenure track one third of the time.

Clearly teachers at two-year colleges are demographically different and teach different courses to different students than teachers at four-year residential colleges or research universities.

With half a million students attending two year colleges in Texas, an awareness of who is teaching what to whom is essential to an understanding of the state of the profession.

Other articles on this topic:
Teaching College English in a Texas Community College: The Teachers
Adjuncting, especially in a community college
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Focus
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Courses
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Students

Who are the two-year college students taking these courses?           

An increasing number of high school students are on campus taking dual credit courses.  Public high school students usually attend in the evening, but many homeschoolers attend the college for dual credit and they often come in the daytime.  Lone Star College has just added an on-campus, full-time, dual-credit program for at risk students, usually non-white males, who are interested in college but are maintaining less than a C average in high school their sophomore year.  This has been an attempt on the college’s part to help limit the dropout rate and has been very successful to date (Pearson). 

These younger students can offer some frustrations for freshman composition teachers who are expecting eighteen and nineteen year olds in their classes when the fourteen year old on the fourth row can’t come up with a topic for “most traumatic event” in their lives.  This came up on my campus after 9/11.  The teacher told the student that he could write about that.  He ended up in her office explaining that he had been restricted from television that day, as he was only eleven at the time.  For some reason he didn’t want to announce that in front of the whole class.

Then there are the traditional students, ages seventeen to twenty-one.  They comprise 43 percent of the community college classes, the largest percent for a single age group.  The next largest cohort is the twenty-two to thirty-nine year olds, who make up 42 percent of the student population (“Community College Stats”).  So, 85 percent of the students being taught in two-year colleges are under the age of forty.

The gender divide is clear in community colleges.  Women comprise 60 percent of the student population (“Community College Stats”).  The young ladies tell me this makes it a little bit harder to get a date.  I have not heard any male students complain though.  The two community colleges I have taught in are both perfectly aligned with the norm on this.

Most community college students come from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Tai).   A common explanation for that status is single parenthood, which 17 percent of the two-year college population experience.  But parenting can be an issue even in two-parent households.   Some traditional age students are married to other traditional age students, which makes two teenagers married to each other, another contributing factor to low socioeconomic status.

Community college students include 39 percent who are in the first generation within their family to attend college (“Community College Stats”).  This varies from school to school.  One of my colleges has 95 percent first generation students, while the other has 20 percent.  The geographic area that the colleges pull from makes the difference.  At one of my colleges the students primarily come from a low socioeconomic neighborhood, with some rural.  There the rural students are the most likely to already have parents with college education.  At the other of my colleges, most of the students come from an upper middle class neighborhood, with some rural.  At this school the rural students are the most likely to be first-generation college.

To summarize, the students at the community college level include dual credit, traditional, and returning students.  Women dominate and the majority of students are under the age of forty.  Many are of low socioeconomic status and more than one-third are the first generation in their families to attend college.

References:

 “Community College Stats.” American Association of Community Colleges.  January 2008. 10 August 2008 < http://www2.aacc.nche.edu/research/index.htm>.

Pearson, Dr. Kathleen.  “The President’s Welcome Presentation.” Adjunct Faculty Meeting for Lone Star College: Kingwood.  21 August 2008.

Articles in this series include:
Teaching College English in a Texas Community College: The Teachers
Adjuncting, especially in a community college
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Focus
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Courses
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: Summary

What are the five courses a semester that the teachers are teaching at community colleges in Texas?

The community colleges teach English as a Second Language, Developmental English, and college-level English. 

The number of these courses vary significantly.  Wharton County Junior College offers no English as a Second Language courses according to its catalog, while Lone Star College System offers a total of twenty-nine, including nine classes for listening and speaking, six for reading and vocabulary, and nine for grammar and writing.   A sampling of the community college systems show that they either lean toward ESL, with twenty or more classes, or away from it, with one or none.

Developmental English courses have less variation.  Austin Community College offers none, the least, while Lone Star offers four, two in reading and two in writing, the highest numbers I found.  The most common number of courses was two.

Then there are the college-level English classes.  Since these are designed using the Texas Common Course Numbering System for easy transfer to a four-year college in Texas, the number of possibilities is limited.  There are only twenty-eight possible courses offered under this system (Lower-Division).  These courses include two freshman level courses, which some colleges further designate as Honors or Self-Paced.  The TCCNS further differentiates freshman composition for non-English speakers.  Those two numbers are not used often in two year colleges.

Other writing courses include two semesters of creative writing, a year of freshman business writing, and a single semester or a set of two one-semester classes in technical writing.  The most commonly used of these courses was the single semester technical writing course, followed by the two semesters of creative writing.

Then there are literature courses, offered as a single semester course or two semester courses, with the number for the one semester course being different than the first of the two semester courses.  These literature courses include British, American, and World literature.

Also in literature there is a one semester Chicano literature course and a one- and two-semester series of Forms of Literature course.

The final possibility offered within the Texas Common Course Numbering System is the Academic Cooperative which comes in two and three semester credit hour versions.

Those are the only choices that the two-year colleges have, if they want their course work to be accepted at four-year colleges in Texas.

But the community colleges do not offer this many courses.  Since the highest level courses they can offer are sophomore, this makes sense.  Think of what your colleges offer in terms of sophomore level courses. There is not a great variety.  However, the two-year colleges do offer more than might be expected.  The range in the community colleges I looked at went from ten to eighteen.  Most of the colleges offered two semesters of British literature, two semesters of American literature, and two semesters of world literature.

Why would they offer three different sets of sophomore literature courses?  Obviously variety is an issue.  Giving three choices makes sure that students have a choice of sophomore level English courses, assuming they need them, and it also gives the faculty different courses to teach.

I would guess that the issue of faculty options is the strongest one.  Many of the adjuncts at my schools have taught for ten years, but I am the only one who has been given a sophomore literature course to teach.  All of them have said that they would like to teach a literature course.  So why aren’t they teaching one?  Because the full-time faculty teaches all the sophomore literature courses, including those offered in the evening, with one exception.

The exception to the full-timers’ teaching of literature is the miniterm.  The miniterm does not count toward my college’s 10.5 month contract, so a full-time teacher teaching during miniterm does so for the same pay I get, about $3500 less than their salaried teaching OR they have to teach the miniterm and another course in one of the two summer sessions.  Since this fills up more of their time, it is not a popular choice.

The reason I was able to teach the course is I have a flexible schedule.  Most of the other adjuncts are public school teachers and are unable to meet a three-hour course five mornings a week during the month of May.

Besides the fact that colleges don’t have the students taking enough college-level English courses to warrant teaching twenty-eight classes, there is also the fact that the four-year colleges don’t accept a lot of transfer credit in English. According to their catalogs, the different four-year schools in Texas accept a range of college-level English courses.  Texas A&M lists two courses they will accept.  Texas Tech accepts five, while Baylor takes six. University of Houston will accept seven.  And University of Texas will accept seventeen.

There is not a lot of reason to offer courses for transfer, if the colleges the students will be transferring to don’t accept the courses.  So the two-year colleges wisely don’t offer those.

Of course, a listing in the catalog does not guarantee a regular offering of the courses.  This fall the Lone Star system lists seventeen ESOL and developmental English and fourteen freshman and sophomore courses across the system.  Even those aren’t offered everywhere. Lone Star: Kingwood is offering ten ESOL and developmental English courses and five freshman and sophomore classes.

Those are still a lot of courses; they are especially a lot of courses when the bulk of them are not accepted as credit hours toward graduation or transfer.  The students must be taking them, though, or they wouldn’t continue to be offered.  

References:

Alamo Community College.  Catalog.  2008. 8 August 2008 <http://www.accd.edu/nlc/docs/2008-2009%20complete%20catalog.pdf>.

Austin Community College.  Catalog.  2008 8 August 2008 <http://www3.austincc.edu/schedule/s208f/engl208ff.htm>.

Dallas County Community College.  Catalog.  2008. 8 August 2008 <https://www1.dcccd.edu/cat0809/coursedescriptions/detail.cfm?heading=English>.

Lone Star College.  Catalog.  2008. 8 August 2008 <http://www.lonestar.edu/108552.pdf>.

Lower-Divison Academic Course Guide Manual. Texas Common Courses Numbering System. 2007. 7 August 2008 <http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/AAR/UndergraduateEd/WorkforceEd/acgm.htm>.

Navaro College.  Catalog.  2008. 8 August 2008 <http://www.navarrocollege.edu/pdfs/CatalogFinal-printer.pdf>.

San Jacinto Community College. Catalog.  2008. 8 August 2008 <http://www.sjcd.edu/files/catalog_course_descriptions.pdf>.

Temple College.  Catalog. 2008. 8 August 2008 <http://www.templejc.edu/admission/pdf/Catalog2008-09/CourseDesc.pdf#CourseDescriptions>.

Wharton County Junior College. Catalog. 2008. 8 August 2008 < http://www.wcjc.edu/catalogs_n/2008-09%20%20Catalog.pdf>.

Articles in this series include:
Teaching College English in a Texas Community College: The Teachers
Adjuncting, especially in a community college
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Focus
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Students

Two-year colleges focus on teaching. They sometimes focus on it to the extent that even tenure reviews ignore presentations and publications (Berry). Teachers are free to pursue research, but do not generally receive much institutional support (Woolston). That does not mean there isn’t any though.

One of my college systems has in-house presentations of research. This can either be work already presented or something someone is trying to get accepted. The other college system does not have this, but they will allow teachers to assign extra work to the students and take a class day of in order to go present.

While the focus of community college schools is one teaching (Jacoby) and not on research, according to an older study from the 80s, those who do research are more likely to receive teaching awards than their non-published counterparts at a rate of 31 percent to 17 percent (Oromaner). And a 2005 study looked at the top ten factors relating to the rewarding of Exemplary Teacher awards in a community college system; four of the ten factors could be considered research (Silvestri). So while there may be little institutional support for research, it is still valued.

Whether or not there is strong support, though, research is important. Teaching the same course or same two courses every semester for years without doing any research is an easy way to burn yourself out and make your teaching stale.

Even as a voluntary adjunct, I’ve found that to be true.

Two-year college teachers stay busy teaching and without an institutional commitment to research, the continued development of scholarly expertise can easily disappear. The course load for the two-year college teacher is five courses a full semester and, for 10.5 month contracts, two summer courses.

References:

Berry, David A. “Community Colleges and Part-time and Adjunct Faculty.” Organization of American Historians. 1999. 10 August 2008 <http://www.oah.org/pubs/commcoll/berry.html>.

Jacoby, Daniel. “Effects of Part-time Faculty Employment on Community College Graduation Rates.” Journal of Higher Education (November 2006). 12 August 2008 <http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-26679697_ITM>.

Oromaner, Mark. “The Community College Professor: Teacher and Scholar.” Eric Clearinghouse for Junior Colleges. May 1986. 10 August 2008 <http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-924/scholar.htm>.

Silvestri, Jacob.  “Exemplary Professors: Factors Leading to the Development of Award Winning Teachers.” On Research and Leadership 17.1 (Fall 2005). 10 August 2008 <http://occrl.ed.uiuc.edu/Newsletter/2005/fall/fall2005_3.asp>.

Woolston, Chris.  “The Community College Scientist.” Chronicle of Higher Education. 25 February 2003. 9 August 2008 <http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2003/02/2003022501c.htm>.

Articles in this series include:
Teaching College English in a Texas Community College: The Teachers
Adjuncting, especially in a community college
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Courses
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Students
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: Summary

Texas has one of the strongest community college systems in the nation, outnumbered only by the much more populous California. We have sixty-seven two-year colleges (“Community College Studies”), with fifty-five public community college systems (“US”), meaning there are multiple campuses.

For the past seven years I have been happily teaching in two-year colleges as an adjunct. I’ve worked in two different systems, which had very different expectations and requirements. So I know that the generalities I am starting with aren’

t necessarily a perfect picture of where the profession is right now. But it is a beginning.

When we look at the state of the profession in a community college, we begin with a look at the teachers. Who are they?

Twenty-five percent (Tai) have their PhDs.

Twenty percent of those with PhDs are full-time faculty (Jacoby).

Just over fifty percent (51%) of full-timers are tenured, while a little over one third (35%) of full-timers are in situations without tenure or are in non-tenure track positions (“Faculty”).

But the full-timers are usually in the minority.

Although throughout the US’ secondary educational system adjuncts teach around forty percent of the courses, they are often the bulk of the faculty at community colleges (Gappa and Leslie).

An MLA study estimated the number of adjuncts at community colleges across the nation at 45 percent (Papp 701), but others, including the American Association of Community Colleges, estimate that 60 to 75 percent are part-time (Gappa and Leslie; “Faculty”).

In one of my colleges, the part-time adjuncts make up only 50 percent of the faculty. This particular system has a position called “full-time part-time” in which an instructor is hired at the hourly wage for five classes, the full load at that college, on a semester to semester basis and also receives $10/hour for ten additional hours that are on-campus office hours. I do not know how many of their full-time faculty are in this situation, but I know it is normal for these part-time people to be hired for years in a row. It is possible that the MLA’s description of adjuncts would not include these part-time faculty.

My other college system tries to maintain a three to one part- to full-time faculty ratio. There are just over 300 adjunct faculty, I’m unsure of exact numbers because they are still looking to hire, and 108 contract faculty. Despite the large adjunct numbers, the growth of some campuses has kept this system growing. For every new 1000 students on a single campus, the colleges will hire one new full-time English teacher. The growth rate in this system is so strong that they have been hiring at least three and sometimes as many as six full-time instructors every year.

These full-time positions typically have at least eight adjuncts applying for each opening. One thing this shows, if we didn’t already know it, is that not all the adjuncts are part-timers by preference.

References:

 “Community College Stats.”

American Association of Community Colleges.  January 2008. 10 August 2008 < http://www2.aacc.nche.edu/research/index.htm>.

“Community College Studies.”

University of California: Los Angeles. 10 August 2008 <http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/ccs/faq.html#CC>.

“Faculty Members.”

American Association of Community Colleges.  January 2008. 10 August 2008 <http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Content/NavigationMenu/AboutCommunityColleges/WhoAreYou/FacultyMembers/Faculty_Members.htm>.

Gappa, J.M., and Leslie, D.W. The invisible faculty: Improving the status of part-timers in higher education. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, 1993.

Jacoby, Daniel.  “Effects of Part-time Faculty Employment on Community College Graduation Rates.”

  Journal of Higher Education (November 2006). 12 August 2008 <http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-26679697_ITM>.

Papp, James.  “Gleaning in Academe: Personal Decisions for Adjuncts and Graduate Students.”

  College English 64.6 (July 2002): 696-709.

Tai, Emily Sohmer. “Teaching History at a Community College.”

  American Historical Association.  February 2004. 10 August 2008 < http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/Issues/2004/0402/0402gra1.cfm>.

“US Community Colleges, by State.”

University of Texas at Austin. 30 June 2008. 9 August 2008 <http://www.utexas.edu/world/comcol/state/#TX>.

Articles in this series include:
Adjuncting, especially in a community college
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Focus
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Courses
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: The Students
Teaching English in a Texas Community College: Summary

That’s a question that gets answered here. He also includes his rationale for doing so at the end of the article; “They are being cheated by the schools that take tuition and give nothing in exchange.”

I am not sure how the students are being cheated by schools that ask them to write papers. And I am not sure how he can say the school is cheating them. I think he may be cheating them, but I don’t see any evidence that the school is cheating them. He certainly doesn’t supply any. I hope his argument papers he writes for $600 are better than this.

But it is interesting, especially what he says about his clients.

In broad strokes, there are three types of term paper clients. DUMB CLIENTS predominate. They should not be in college. They must buy model papers simply because they do not understand what a term paper is, much less anything going on in their assignments. I don’t believe that most of them even handed the papers in as their own, as it would have been obvious that they didn’t write them. Frequently I was asked to underline the thesis statement because locating it otherwise would have been too difficult. But that sort of thing was just average for the bottom of the barrel student-client. To really understand how low the standards are these days, we must lift up the barrel and see what squirms beneath. One time, I got an e-mail from the broker with some last-minute instructions for a term paper — “I told her that it is up to the writer whether or not he includes this because it was sent to me at the last minute. So if you can take a look at this, that is fine, if not I understand.” The last-minute addition was to produce a section called “BODY OF PAPER” (capitals sic). I was also asked to underline this section so that the client could identify it. Of course, I underlined everything but the first and last paragraphs of the three-page paper.
…

More than once the phone rang at midnight and the broker had an assignment. Six pages by 6 a.m. — the kid needs three hours to rewrite and hand in the paper by 9 or he won’t graduate. “Cool,” I’d say. “A hundred bucks a page.” I’d get it, too, and when I didn’t get it, I slept well anyway. Even DUMB CLIENTS could figure out that they’d be better off spending $600 on the model paper instead of $2,500 to repeat a course.

He goes into how hard others find it to do after this section ends. It is enlightening reading.

If I don’t find a full-time position, maybe I could do this to pay for my son’s college? (Er, maybe not. But wouldn’t it be fascinating to be handed my own writing on an assignment.)

There are great possibilities in this metaphor. I think I like it and will use it regularly.

We are to regard the mind not as a piece of iron to be laid upon the anvil and hammered into any shape, nor as a block of marble in which we are to find the statute by removing the rubbish, nor as a receptacle into which knowledge may be poured; but as a flame that is to be fed, as an active being that must be strengthened to think and feel–to dare, to do, and to suffer.
– Mark Hopkins, Induction address as president of Williams College, 1836.

Found at Heroes Not Zombies.

Irony is found in the previous post being “First Snow.”

For the definition/illustration paper I try to give the students real-world examples of definitions. This peeks their interest and it lets them know that this is not an exercise for English class only. Here is what I gave them this semester:

Last night, I went to the play Cyrano de Bergerac. One paragraph (a long one) within the program was a definition of panache from the play’s author in his “Discourse.”

What is Panache? TO be a hero is not enough. Panache is not greatness but something added to greatness and stirring above it. It is something fluttering, excessive- and a bit daring. If I was not afraid of being too pressed to work on the Dictionary myself, I would propose this definition: Panache is the spirt of bravery. It is courage dominating the situation to the point of needing to find another word for it. To joke in the face of danger, that is the supreme politeness. A delicate refusal to take one’s self tragically. Panache is then the modesty of heroism, like the smile with which one apologizes for being sublime. A little frivolous perhaps, a bit theatrical certainly…

I was reading online blogs and found this personal definition:

To honor is to sacrifice, of yourself or of your own, for something you view to be greater or more important. Honor is the quality of a man who does that.

I also found this a while back and it stuck with me. It is about the changing definition of sacrifice.

I have a friend who recently died, but he actually decided to show kids what a sacrifice looks like, so he sacrificed a lamb at Easter time. “We talk about it so much—here’s what it looks like!” Half the class puked, half the class had angry letters from mommy and daddy. But he did demonstrate that it’s not just a metaphor. It’s a messy and not altogether pleasant process. Since [then] we’ve converted it entirely into an economic question. I ask students the meaning of sacrifice, and they always start talking about “mommy and daddy sacrificing so I could go to college.” We’ve been at war for four years, and I haven’t heard one person yet say some soldier sacrificed themselves. That language is gone. It’s entirely economic.

In the class I am taking, we have to define critical thinking this week. I took a couple of quotes that I liked to start from.

[W]e need to think because the world we live in, however well we learn to cope with it, is constantly forcing us to choose. When experience surprises or disturbs us, we have to “make up our minds,” and, as the phrase suggests, when we do that, not only are we deciding what to do with the world about us; we are deciding what we are or want to be. –Monroe C. Beardsley, Practical Logic (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1950), x-xi.

[There are] two distinctly different kinds of thinking, creative thinking and critical thinking. Creative thinking may be defined as the formulation of possible solutions to a problem or explanations of a phenomenon, and critical thinking as the testing and evaluation of these solutions or explanations. –W. Edgar Moore, Creative and Critical Thinking (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967) 2, 3.

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. –Michael Scriven and Richard Paul, “Defining Critical Thinking: A Statement for the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking Instruction.” http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/definingCT.shtml (16 May 2005).

I was reading for a paper I am doing online and found a discussion which was attempting to find out how students defined gossip.

I collected 76 responses from unnamed students. The answers to, “define gossip” varied but had an underlying theme; gossip isn’t something that should be supported. 81 percent of student definitions included that gossip was talking about others but only 32 percent thought it had to be behind someone’s back or when the subject of the discussion is absent. 18 percent of respondents said gossip is strictly negative but 8 percent of the definitions said gossip could be good or bad. No one thought gossip was a good practice (but as a campus we are participating)! 29 percent of surveyed students said that what is said in gossip was a rumor, or untruthful, or there was no proof to defend what it is said. Other student definitions included hearsay, small talk, sharing something overheard, that gossip is only for amusement or to make themselves feel better. It was said that gossip is something shared of no meaning, distorted facts, or the exchange or sharing of information.

Besides the daily gossip on campus some colleges and universities have had a problem with online gossip. Facebook is a major way gossip can get started but another website has made headlines, Juicy Campus.com has made waves at Cornell and Duke, as well as other campuses. Basically, the site is a outlet to anonymously call anyone out, make any claim, or share any simple gossip.

Education Sector talks specifically about DC universities.

“[I]t’s clear that a great many students are entering urban universities and never completing a degree.”

The reason for this, at least partially, is the lack of preparedness on the part of the students.

These catastrophic failure rates are certainly not all the universities’ fault. The latest UDC schedule of classes shows the fallout of the K–12 district’s historical failure. The math department is offering:

16 sections of “Basic Mathematics”
13 sections of “Introductory Algebra”
9 sections of “General College Math I”
7 sections of “General College Math II”
4 sections of “Intermediate Algebra”
2 sections each of “Pre Calc with Trig I,” “Pre Calc with Trig II,” “Calculus I,” “Calculus II,” and “Calculus III”
1 section each of “Differential Equations,” “Number Theory,” “Linear Algebra,” “Advanced Calculus,” etc.

Any number of high schools in the DC metropolitan area offer proportionately more advanced math. Overall, nearly 70 percent of incoming UDC freshmen need some remediation.

The article offers an explanation for the disparity between HS graduation rates and U graduation rates.

Beyond specific problems of preparation, funding, administration and teaching, the terrible success rates at urban universities reflect the fundamental difference in the way K–12 and college students are viewed. The underlying premise of any conversation about elementary and secondary education is that the schools bear significant responsibility for student success. But the moment a student walks off their high school graduation stage, they are magically transformed in the public eye into a fully actualized adult who bears 100 percent of the burden for any and all educational outcomes that subsequently occur—or don’t occur.

It sounds to me as if Kevin Carey, the author, is arguing that colleges should be responsible for student success, but K-12 has dealt with student success by social promotion. If they hadn’t, then those students coming into college wouldn’t need remediation. I do not think that social promotion in college is the answer.

Students need to know that they know how to do things.

All because of the strange and dangerous idea that educational institutions bear little responsibility for how much their students learn or whether those students earn degrees.

Educational institutions of higher learning should not be responsible for students “learning” when they don’t come to class, don’t do the homework, and won’t do the projects. I am all for working with students who want to learn. (I spent two hours a week outside of class with a single student when I was a part-time adjunct helping her improve her writing.)

I think Carey wants to turn our colleges into the same coddling babysitter system that the high schools are now. I am against that.

Perhaps we should start changing colleges to tech schools where the students are taught practical skills with less of an emphasis on academic information. I am not saying that they shouldn’t be able to learn if they want to. I am saying that they ought to have an alternative to an academic, white collar career, if they want one.

If my a/c repair person can’t write an English paragraph, I don’t care. If my office manager can’t, I am concerned.

Joanne Jacobs suggests that universities “take a hit” by sending the students to community colleges. Thanks a lot, Joanne.

I am not saying the students who want to learn shouldn’t come to my classes. I work out of class a lot with my students. But I don’t want students who think they should get an A because they are paying for the classes (especially when as a taxpayer I am paying more of their tuition than they are). I want students who are willing to work because they want the degree.

Perhaps if we started actually requiring our students in K-12 to come to class (She quotes a NY Times article which explains that NY elementary students miss a month of class.), if we gave them the grades they earned instead of protecting their egos, and we called for personal accountability earlier, we could make a turn around in our K-12 as well as our college classes.