By Professor Doom
So let’s
continue analyzing some commentary by a professor in Canada, who has
looked up from his books and noticed the overwhelming fraud of higher education
in his country.
The fraud the
professor sees is very common to, if not born in, my country, I assure the
gentle reader.
Our
universities are ripping themselves apart to get enough money to support the
administrative caste, money that comes from a huge inflow of students. Our
campuses are being flooded not simply by students that don’t want to be there
but…by those that probably shouldn’t be there:
In 2009,
the Canadian Council on Learning reported that 20 percent of all university graduates in Canada fell
below Level 3 (the minimum level of proficiency) on a prose literacy scale…That
proportion was expected to rise.
--emphasis
added. The graduates are below the minimum? So it’s not the minimum, then. A
higher percentage of US college graduates show no improvement from when they
graduated high school, so Canada at least has more room to fall.
It’s always good for a laugh when
we do checks to see if students are actually doing the work. The Canadian
professor had the opportunity to do so, to see if students were looking at his
online postings:
“readings
were accessed—not necessarily read—by 5 to 15 percent of the enrolled students.”
So only about 1
student in 6, at best, is even
trying to learn anything in the classes. In the US, successful community
colleges with 0.6% 2 year graduation rates give a clue that the students
actually trying here are even more rare than in Canada. He confirms this
data in a different way:
I was
teaching George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and I had ordered 230 copies
based on enrolment numbers. At the end of term, the bookstore had sold only
eighteen copies, a hit rate of about 8 percent.
To be fair, I
would suspect some students are just getting hacked copies of the books for
free. That said, many students don’t bother buying the books (cuts into their
“refund checks” of student loan/grant money)…I can hardly count the number of
times students asked to take pictures of the pages in my book, rather than just
buy the thing for themselves. I didn’t mind: at least they were trying!
Finally the
faculty here starts to connect the dots:
They will
tell you that they don’t read because they don’t have to. They can get an A
without ever opening a book.
I’ve seen so many
bogus professors award all A’s to all students, every semester. I know they do
this because the students tell me. I know the students are not lying because
administration showers praise and adulation on the bogus professors for their
“good teaching.” Students aren’t necessarily stupid, and quickly catch on that
their grade has nothing to do with their effort, in many classes…and thus we
learn why so many students don’t even try.
The Canadian
professor has seen the same thing:
So long as
your class is popular and fun, you’ll be favoured by the administration and
probably receive a teaching award. This, even though your students will leave
your class in worse condition than they entered it...
I helped a
student go from remedial math, to differential equations. Approximately 1
student in 1 million makes it from remedial math to differential equations (an
estimate, as I’ve not heard of anyone doing so besides me). I’ve also brought
several students from remedial math through calculus. Again, I don’t know the
odds, but at one school (student base 50,000, approximately 40,000 remedial
students), it had not happened in the history of the school, or so I was told
(not that they were going to improve their remedial programs…just too much
money to be made in trapping these kids in the system).
I will never get
a teaching award, and I’m not asking for one—students hold much of the
responsibility for their own success. But like the Canadian professor, I’ve
seen people get awards for “great teaching” that was nothing more than giving
everyone an A, even the students that never even came to class a single time or
completed a single assignment…this is award-worthy because administrators get
to decide what good teaching is.
“…can teach
3000 level courses…”
--from one
of my job evaluations, as praise. 3000 level represents 3rd year
courses. There are so many fake graduate degree holders around now that
actually being able to teach college material is NOTABLE.
The huge problem
of fake “Education” degrees in higher education in the US has spread to Canada,
as the professor explains:
A master’s
of education degree, for instance, may be acceptable for teaching students in
bachelors of education programs…It is, however, a completely inadequate when
teaching those pursuing regular bachelor’s degrees, because the minimum
requirement for teaching undergraduates is a graduate degree in the relevant
discipline being taught. Yet MEds are routinely allowed to teach undergrads at
my university,..
My Canadian
counterpart is once again behind the times. Years ago I wrote of how Education
degrees are being used as jokers, and how the only thing these
“professional educators” know how to do is remove content.
The professor
realizes that the ability to hire these jokers for any course is a driving
factor in the adjunctification of higher education, where professors nowadays
are temp workers, receiving no respect and little pay.
There is no clearer example of administrators’ contempt for faculty.
With so many
examples of how much contempt the Poo Bahs of higher education have for
education and educators, I’m hard pressed to identify the clearest example, so
I’ll yield to the professor’s opinion on this.
I lean towards another
thing the Poo Bahs are doing, which is debasing higher education in a
fundamental way, as the professor notes, by changing the curriculum of higher
education, away from academics and into…sludge:
That
curriculum? Life skills, university transitions, critical thinking, leadership,
and communications—all modern mouthwashes of the “applied” course industry,
designed to give a pleasant taste of practicality to humanities programs otherwise
deemed useless. This curriculum may “pay” in the short term—more bums in
chairs,
Again, pretty sure
I’ve talked about the “butts in seats is the epitome of higher education” theme
that administration keeps cramming down faculty throats…the professor once
again is a bit behind the times.
The professor
touches on the huge administrative bloat, and again I concur:
“In other
words, the number of those employed to support the work of the institution was
more than double that of those employed to do the work of the institution.
At my
university, which is a small, primarily undergraduate institution with a
student population of roughly 4,400, this department has a full-time staff of
twelve.”
--He’s
talking about the university’s public relations department. Just the PR
department as his small school has 12 executoids in it.
My small community
college (comparable to his university in student base) likewise had a legion of
full time administrators, more than faculty. One full time accountant and one
full time HR person for every 5 faculty, 2 classrooms devoted to “student help”
bureaucrats that did nothing, nearly as many secretaries/assistants for the
administrators as there were faculty…it was nuts, the CFO even complained to me
(off the record) that he did nothing in his job, because he had so many
assistants. And, yes, we had PR people as well. If education is so frickin’
valuable, why are so many needed for the hard sell? We could have fired a
couple dozen administrators, and that would have freed up enough money for
scholarships for every student on campus.
One
university vice-president I know promises on her website that she will provide
“one-stop shops” and “exceptional customer service” to all. Do not let the
stupidity of this statement fool you into believing it is in any way benign. We
no longer have “students”—only “customers.”
The professor
goes on to further take down the silliness of online education (particularly
for students that are already on campus-—if we honestly thought online
education was the same, why bother with the campus?).
The professor
gives an extensive discussion, and I’ve only touched on the highlights. One
thing he’s missed is accreditation’s role in all this: accreditation is
supposed to affirm that a school is legitimate, but much like our higher
education administration, has long since sold out.
As apparently, has
Canada. Are there any English speaking countries left where the higher
education is basically legitimate?
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