The Community College Scam, Part 2

 The Community College Scam, part 2

By Professor Doom

 

So, last time I looked at a new community college, and saw that it was a joke, with no intention of helping students get an education or a job…any such claim by this community college would be a lie. I assert that this lie applies to most all community colleges, but it’s fair to say that the reason the new community college has no higher education is because they’re currently bringing their (far behind) students up to speed. A new school can hardly be expected to have advanced coursework, I concede.

Let’s demonstrate the lie by looking at a mature institution, say Baton Rouge Community College, BRCC, which has been around a decade and has thousands of students. It is, of course, fully accredited.

Surely, a decade-old 2-year college that’s seriously educating students would offer a great number of 2^nd year courses, right? Even if it might take an extra year to bring students up to speed, there still should be plenty of 2^nd year offerings after ten years. Let’s check the course offerings—a legitimate educational institution would have lots of definitely college material, and quite a bit of it should be appropriate for a 2^nd year student.

I’ve never set foot on the campus, but it’s easy enough to see their course offerings, since they list them online (You can see for yourself the Fall 2013 offerings here, although that might change at some point). I’ll concede I’m only qualified to judge the math courses, so that’s what I’ll make my determination by. My standard will be “if a high school offers it, it’s not college material.” Nobody’s ever made any claims that what’s going on the high schools is particularly advanced, so this is hardly a tough standard.

First, we have 40 sections of their 092 mathematics course, the pre-sub-remedial course I’ve discussed before, covering 3^rd to 5^th grade material. Yes, 40 sections, and each could hold 30 or more students. I’ve mentioned before that the”0” in “092” makes the course explicitly not college material.  While in general if you know someone taking a course with a 0 in front of it, you take them out of college, immediately (not that administrators will give such honest advice), this particular course, to judge by the description, is roughly 3^rd grade material, so a strong “get out, now” applies.

Next we have 37 sections of 093 math, sub-remedial, covering 6^th to 8^th grade material…again, a student in this math has no business being in college. He’s just going to waste years of his life and get deep into debt taking and retaking the material he didn’t learn in the 6^th, 7^th, 8^th,9^th, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grade. Anyone who’s serious about learning this level of material should just go to the library and learn it for free.

Next, we have another 33 sections of 094 math, the first remedial course to prepare a student for even pseudo-college material, covering 7^th to 9^th grade. I can’t make this stuff up, three levels of explicitly remedial math.

Next there are 25 sections of Math 101; this is high school level math offered in the 10^th grade, re-packaged as “college” material, as “College Algebra.” With my own eyes, I have seen that the high schools really do cover the same material, with the same depth, as this course, which is, of course, somewhat behind what I took when I was in high school, nigh thirty years ago.

Then comes another 20 sections of college algebra, but with a different number, Math 110; BRCC apparently teaches the algebra in two formats. This latter format has classes start in June and end in September, and thus is listed as a Fall offering. But, we’re still in high school here.

Next are 11 sections of trigonometry; I took this in my senior year in high school, but quite a number of my friends took it in their junior year. The high schools around here still offer it for 11^th grade students.

BRCC also offers a single section of precalculus; there’s no listing of what’s in this course, but I imagine it’s basically a refresher course of algebra and trig (since those are the precalculus courses). Twenty years ago, this was the only “remedial” course, intended for students that have been out of school for ten years or more, and just wanted a review. It wasn’t for college credit, then, and there were only a few sections, instead of remedial courses being the bulk of “college” work in community colleges.

 

It covers a variety of topics, that include problems of growth, size, measurement, handling of qualified data, and optimization using basic concepts form (sic) algebra,…

--from the course description of Math 130.  Even though it has a higher number than algebra (101), it’s clear the material is a watered down version of the course, described with very big words to make it sound more challenging.

 

Then there are 4 sections of “Introduction to Contemporary Mathematics”—Math 130. The course description makes it clear this is a bogus math course, intended as math credit for students that can’t otherwise get math credit, and are going into degrees where knowledge is irrelevant. A degree in Urban Studies, for example.

There’s a single section of something called “Transitional Mathematics”—Math 131. Again, it’s presented as a bogus course meant for students that need two math credits but have no chance of actually passing a college math course. The course outline makes it clear that it covers the material of college algebra, just at a lighter level. Colleges offer this sort of stuff to make students feel good, but in terms of preparation for more advanced study, or preparation for a professional job, these courses are a massive waste of time and money.

 

“If a 12 foot ladder is broken into 3 equal parts, how long is each part?”

--final exam material in a “Math for Education Majors” course, with other questions comparable, and no question much more difficult than this. I proctored the test. I’m not joking.

 

Two more courses, Math 167 and Math 168, are “Math for Education Majors” courses. I’ve written extensively how bogus these types of courses are, and, again, not college material.

Let’s summarize where we are right now. The catalogue features 198 course offerings. 110 of these, a clear majority, are offering 9^th grade or lower material. Another 57 are at the high school level. Seven are sham courses that exist simply to fill up the credit hours of students that are never going to make it.

How much room is there for actual college material when 174 of 198 courses are high school level, lower, or bogus courses? Now, don’t get me wrong, there have always been bogus courses in schools, even in major schools. Bogus courses have their place, and there should be a crack or two for slackers to fake their way into a degree, I suppose.

One example of a tolerable bogus course is  “Geology of our National Parks”, AKA “Rocks for Jocks,” an important course for many athletes that were nonetheless forced to take college classes, and this course satisfied the science requirement—a discussion of the immense fraud in collegiate athletic programs is for another day. A fraud course for fraud students seemed fair enough, and it was tough for “real” students to register for this course, which, like the bogus courses above, was only offered a section or two a semester--athletes were given first priority to register for all courses, filling up the seats in this course long before “normal” students could get to it. Folks that graduated from this course had no illusions about what they were doing…and a real student that somehow got in, figured out real quick the nature of the course.

Now, of course, nearly the whole campus is bogus, and there’s simply no way a real accreditation review can’t notice what anyone with access to a computer and the course offerings can see. There’s also no way a student can tell the legitimate from the fake, since so much is fake.  Still, we’ll look at the rest of the courses next time to get another interesting revelation.

Until then, consider all the students being swept into CC programs, with the lie that they’re saving time and money by taking these types of classes. Years later when/if they graduate, they learn that they’ve been duped from start to finish. How is this not fraud?

Think about it.