By Professor
Doom
It used to be the degradation of higher
education required effort to see. It was incremental: a few pages taken out
here and here, one less paper to write, one less book to read. If you weren’t
working in higher ed, you could easily miss it.
Now the degradation is in real-time, as
we literally watch the meaning of a college degree change on a month to month
basis. A degree from 2016, already
debased to the point that it means little more than a high school diploma from
2010, will still represent far more of an achievement than a degree from 2018.
I’ve covered before how a school admitted their math courses were frauds, and simply removed them, replacing
them with fake (instead of fraudulent) courses. One of the weird things about
higher education is the “best practices” concept, which merely means “if
someone else jumps off a bridge, then it’s reasonable for me to jump off a
bridge, too.”
So, with one state university abandoning
the mission of higher education, others are following in short order:
Students at Michigan State University
will no longer have to take college-level algebra, thanks to a revision of the
general-education math requirement.
We’ve gone from major news sites laughing that we
teach algebra, a
beginning high school topic, in college, to our colleges now not even aspiring to teach something so advanced
as algebra.
Now, readers of my blog know that
“college-level algebra” is a lie, the algebra there is the same stuff the
average high school graduate saw in the 10th or perhaps the 11th
grade. The lies continue:
Michigan State University has revised
its general-education math requirement so that algebra is no longer required of
all students. The revision reflects an increasing view on college campuses that
there is no one-size-fits-all math curriculum -- and that math is often best
studied in connection with everyday life.
The above is certainly pleasant sounding
pabulum. A commenter flips things a bit to show how idiotic this line of
thinking is:
Michigan
State University has revised its general-education writing requirement so that
writing is no longer required of all students. The revision reflects an
increasing view on college campuses that there is no one-size-fits-all writing
curriculum -- and that writing is often best studied in connection with
everyday life. The new course - Life Tweeting 101 - will require students to
compose one tweet of no more than 140 characters every week. The tweet must relate
to an issue of social concern that has been discussed in class. A
representative of Michigan State said that students connect to writing when it
is presented as relevant to real life.
Look, I agree “one size fits all” can be a
problem, but, seriously, “1 + 1 = 2” is taught to everyone as well. The
alphabet is taught as rote memorization to all. Should we remove these things
because they’re “one size fits all”? Higher education isn’t about “one size
fits all” anyway, it’s about pushing humanity to be better.
It’s well documented that we’ve removed
writing and reading from higher education. Mathematics has been pretty much the
last standard bearer of higher education, but now that “best practices” will
allow the removal of mathematics from an education, there won’t be much left to
justify that diploma.
MSU is abandoning that mission of higher
education, under the spurious claim that pushing people is a “one size fits
all” thing, and, instead, will remove mathematics, so that everyone is the same,
at the same level of cognitive ability when they graduated the 9th
grade. I’m starting to wonder if administrators take chainsaws to their
brains…I just don’t see how else these levels of cognitive disconnects are
possible.
MSU wants to teach everyday knowledge
instead of even high school level knowledge, further reducing the college
diploma from “high school” to “middle school.” Why should people go deep into
debt for this?
With algebra gone, new courses will take
their place:
Two quantitative-literacy courses --
Math 101 and Math 102 -- will be offered this fall, Melfi said. An estimated
1,000 students will enroll in these courses each year, he said.
The gentle reader should understand that
the long words of “quantitative literacy” are a smokescreen. These courses will
simply be deeply watered down versions of the courses most students took around
the 8th or 9th grade. While the claim is these courses
will focus more on real world applications, I assure the gentle reader they
will do no such thing.
When I taught at a bogus community
college, we had these quantitative literacy courses, and justified them as
being “real world applicable.” Rubbish. Here’s the type of question that will
be asked and discussed in these courses:
“Frankie is three years older than
Johnny. If the sum of their ages is 13, how old is each?”
--does this question come up often in
real life? This is what you’ll see in a quantitative literacy course.
These courses will focus on questions you
can just trial-and-error your way through, the hard part will be getting the
students to indicate their answers in English (that’s what goes on now, the
Math courses now cover the English).
I’ve been teaching mathematics in higher
education for decades. You know how much of that advanced math I use outside of
the classroom? None, at least none I have
to use. I don’t use calculus or statistics or differential equations or
theoretical probability (much less algebra) to balance my checkbook, or
determine that the cost of things I actually pay for is going up much faster
than the government rate of inflation. Outside of the classroom, I mostly use
the math I’ve learned for amusement purposes…I don’t suspect I’m typical in
that regard (outside of math professors!).
I knew how to handle my finances getting
out of high school. I went into higher education to move higher than where I was before. MSU is getting rid of the fraud of
“college algebra” and replacing it with an even bigger fraud.
To be fair, I also don’t use the Marxism I
learned in higher education either, or the history, or the physics, or the
chemistry, at least not on an everyday basis. I didn’t go to college to learn
everyday things, and higher education was never about everyday things. It’s stupid to annihilate a foundation of
knowledge because you don’t use it to tie your shoes or take out the garbage or
even pay your taxes. I again wonder why we should put our kids deep in debt to
learn skills as common as the tying of shoelaces?
There’s another problem with annihilating
mathematics, however.
STEM, STEM, STEM, we’re told over and over
again how our taxes are used in education, how important it is to produce
graduates in science, technology, engineering and math. Does the gentle reader
suspect these courses will help with that? Of course not. Administration knows
this as well:
Still, it’s important to remember
that the quantitative-literacy courses will mainly have an impact on students
in non-STEM majors…
Since we won’t be accomplishing any of
our goals in higher education by forcing students into fake math courses, what
is the real purpose? Buried within the article is the true reason:
Bob Murphy, director of university
relations and policy for the Michigan Association of State Universities. “It’s
helpful…Ideally, it will lead to more successful graduation outcomes.”
Again, we have long words here, but the
true purpose is clear: more graduates. The university, bloated with growth
through open admission and signing up everything with a pulse for student
loans, is now under pressure to get actual graduates. Rather than focus on
education, the administration has taken the cheeseball easy way out, and
changed the definition of “college graduate” to “can perform at the 8th
grade level.” Once again, this is why I keep saying we should have educators in
charge of education, instead of the immense (and immensely overpaid) legions of administrators we have
now.
Note also that once again I’ve produced an
administrator whose title, “director of university relations and policy” is
thrice as long as his name. We really do
have so many administrators that they’re running out of simple titles to award
themselves. If we really want to help education, we need to trim back the
shambling hordes of administrators that plague higher education. As I’ve
mentioned before, we could probably start by just getting rid of administrators
whose title is beyond a certain length.
Until then, we’ll just watch higher
educator degrade further and further, until “college graduate” simply means
“can check a box qualifying for a loan to get a diploma.”
No comments:
Post a Comment