The Dumbing Down Of Higher Education - Its All Business
As adults, we need look no further than a child’s homework to know that each generation is being pushed to learn more, faster. Today’s children are learning subject matter in 3rd grade that I didn’t study until 5th and older generations, let’s say baby boomers, probably didn’t learn until 7th or 8th grade.
This seems to be a common theme from grade school through high school but when it comes to college, the story changes quite a bit.
It used to be that only a small percentage of those who attended colleges and universities actually graduated. Today, it seems that a vast majority earn their degree. Why this change in statistics? Well, I can tell you it’s certainly not because of the quality of the institutions.
Basically, the average cost of a college education has skyrocketed every decade. And today, colleges and universities are more concerned than ever with making a profit. They’ve become businesses, giant corporations that would rather pass students through with a mediocre education than lose the tuition they could milk out of them.
Don’t get me wrong, not every institution operates this way. There are still some with higher standards, mostly the nationally and internationally known institutions with a century or so of educating under there proverbial belts. Ivy League schools like Princeton and Yale, major universities like the University of North Carolina and the University of Pittsburgh, and many other schools are still quite reputable. However, they seem to be the vast minority these days.
To see the “dumbing down” process first hand, one need look no further than two of the newest rages, online courses and accelerated programs. These courses are largely geared toward adult professionals. And in my experience, this segment of the population basically gets their grades handed to them on a silver platter. Graduate programs are notorious for this. For crying out loud, many of them don’t even require thesis projects anymore.
When it comes to online courses, the biggest problems lie it the facts that instructors cannot monitor cheating or even who is doing the coursework. So in essence, these classes are basically worthless. And in the case of what schools like to call “accelerated programs,” students get the same amount of credit for taking courses for shorter periods of time. For example, instead of attending classes several times per week for an entire semester, students need only attend 1 class per week for about half of a semester - what a crock!
Maybe the decreasing value of a college degree is just one of the many reasons for our nations economic problems.
Tags: cheat, class, course, grades, graduate, thesis, tuition, college
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