By Professor Doom
Many times I’ve
warned that what’s going on in higher education today is mostly fraudulent, but
rarely have I tried to link any of the fraud to the likewise mostly fraudulent
“public” (more accurately, “government”) school system. This isn’t a simple
oversight on my part—I prefer, when making such serious accusations, to have my
own direct observations to add, and I just don’t have the personal experience
with what goes on in public school to do so.
Nevertheless,
it’s quite plausible that higher education’s decay is simply an extension of
“lower” education. In the past, people were particularly willing to surrender
their tax dollars to get their children educated. Only now, after a century of
such waste, have citizens started to realize that what’s been going on in the
public school has, primarily, been detrimental to their children. As we see
more and more students graduating high school with the inability to read
cursive and lacking other abilities we used to associate with 10 year olds,
and, in short, the unwillingness to learn or do anything but to go to the
government to get the next dollop of information/food/money, it becomes ever
more obvious that putting a child in government school is probably one of the
worst abuses a parent can do.
The abuses and
mistakes of government school have been filtering up to higher education.
There’s been no choice in the matter. “Open admissions” foolishness, combined
with the student loan scam, have caused a flood of semi-students to come on
campus to get their checks…and these students have no equipment for the obscure
theory-crafting of higher education. They want their money, and they want to go
home.
While higher
education has been heavily debased, there still are a few rules here and there
that make it tough, or at least inconvenient, for the completely ignorant to go
far in college coursework. Even
defining “college” down to the 6th grade only helps a little:
there are still educators in higher education that honestly believe a student
shouldn’t attempt material intended for adults until the student has mastered
the material any 10 year old can learn. These educators are vastly outnumbered by
administrators that only view standards as an impediment to further
institutional growth.
“The Civil War was inevitable, but it didn’t have to be that way.”
---quote from a student history paper.
A month before the paper was written, the history professor ranted extensively
to the rest of the faculty how annoying it was that he had to stop his lecture,
and spend time defining the word ‘inevitable’ to his class. This student was in
the class, heard the professor give the simple definition of “inevitable”…but
still didn’t understand. This is common to remedial students: they can look you
dead in the eye, nod in agreement that they understand, and still not
comprehend a word you’re saying. Remedial students can take other college
classes, even if they have yet to take, much less pass, the remedial courses.
They usually do terribly, of course.
This coursework
is “remedial”, and, as I’ve shown many times before, almost
the entirety of community college is remedial work, with only a miniscule
amount of what goes on in community college being even remotely passable as
college material. To emphasize: I’m not saying “in my day…”, the material in
community colleges is oftentimes identical, if not simpler, than the material
being taught right now in public
schools, to children, in places mere blocks away from the institution.
I’m not the only
one to notice the huge joke that is community college, and if it ever becomes
widespread knowledge that community college coursework is mostly pre- and lower
level high school work, there’s going to be a problem. Fixing this problem in
advance would require integrity, and regular readers of my blog know that’s not
an option in higher education.
Instead, the
problem will be covered up using the technique that the public schools used to
cover up the fact that, quite often, they’re not doing anything at all with the
children in their care: social promotion.
Yes, social
promotion has come to college. I kid you not, as the title of the following
states:
--it’s just Florida
Community Colleges for now, but I assure you it will be copied…I’ve been to
many meetings where we copy the frauds committed at community colleges
elsewhere. Faculty explain to admin that the new plans are academically
frauds…and then we get it shoved down our throats anyway.
As is so often
the case in these little news pieces, everything is candy-coated to give the
appearance of legitimacy, as though the actors involved would be shocked,
shocked, if anything untoward was going on.
So allow me to
rip off the candy coating in the article and reveal some truth of what’s going
on:
Students are
often placed into remedial courses at community colleges by inferior
standardized tests…
Those
standardized tests are inferior? Inferior to what, exactly? I concede they’re
far from perfect, but considering these tests take about 15 minutes to
administer (which is all the students will stand for), and cost about $2 to
grade (which is all administration is willing to pay), they do a GREAT job of
summarizing what the student has learned in 12 years of government schooling.
I promise you,
if there was something better, we’d use it. “Inferior” is rubbish when there’s
nothing superior available.
“…with arbitrary
cut scores, “
Uh, nope. The cut scores aren’t
arbitrary at all. The cut scores are determined by looking at the success rates
of students in the courses, based on the scores they got on the tests. They’re
about 95% accurate when it comes to placement, which the best you can hope
for—sometimes students will just have a bad day or be lucky guessers. For what
it’s worth, every institution has a “the student can do whatever he wants”
clause if he doesn’t like the test score, and register for courses that we know
he isn’t ready for despite what the placement test says.
Admin: We’re
changing the cut scores to put more students into College Algebra. They’ll
still be competitive.
--even though
the test makers know what the test scores mean, admin views them as an
impediment, and will override them for the goofiest of reasons.
About every
year, a student will get a low score on the standardized tests, yell at admin
“I got a 4.0 in high school, I’m not a remedial student!”, and they let him enroll
in the sophomore level high school courses that pass for “advanced” community
college coursework today. In ten years of my being at a
questionable community college, every single student that did this failed.
Despite this,
I still argued in favor of having the clause; no matter how good the tests are,
they’ll never be perfect, we should always allow an individual student to do
what he thinks is best, even if that means ignoring our advice.
No, the
scores aren’t arbitrary…they’re just the best possible guess based on thousands
of students.
The article
continues with the barrage of misinformation:
“..and less than
one-third of students placed into remediation are likely to graduate from
college.”
This is inaccurate. It’s not less
than 1/3, it’s
less than 10% of remedial students graduate. Granted, most
community colleges boast less than a 10% graduation rate overall, so perhaps
this is just picking on remedial students. The point still remains: this
article is not doing the most accurate job of conveying information. Otherwise
the article would simply also mention that most community college students are
remedial students, and that community college graduation rates run below 10% in
general.
“…with a wave of
their legislative wand, the Florida legislature has made all of the students
that would have placed into remediation disappear.”
And, just
like that, maybe the 90% of the community college work that is high school
level or lower will just disappear, right? Nope. The remedial courses will
disappear…but they’ll quietly be replaced by “college” courses that cover the
exact same material as the remedial courses, just now for (worthless) college
credit.
“…According to
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, in 2009 only 32
percent of students leaving Florida high schools tested proficient or above in
reading, just 19 percent in mathematics….”
So yes, what
we have here is, indeed, social promotion. The students, the strong majority of
them, are not ready for college, completely unprepared, in fact. That’s how
it’s always been; in the past, only students that took college preparation
courses in high school were prepared for college, which really strikes me as
reasonable.
But now
everyone can go to college, because “open admission” policies are better for
growth. Since there’s a stigma of the being a “developmental” student (hey,
remember when “retarded” was a stigma, to be replaced by “special ed”, which
was then replaced by “remedial”, and then by “developmental”? Anyway…), they’re
going to socially promote these students directly into college.
But…wait a
minute. The lower education system is a forced system, imposed on children. So,
I sort-of followed the idea of social promotion there, because it wasn’t all
that fair to children to get labeled like that…even as I acknowledge that ultimately
these children get harmed by being moved up to things they’re not ready to
handle (it’s called abuse for a reason, after all). But this is college
now…these students aren’t being forced to go to college, and I don’t see how
there can be that much of a stigma when 90% of the campus is devoted to
remedial coursework, anyway. If anything, being a real student on a community
college campus would be the stigma. I know being a legitimate professor on a
community college campus made me a target, since I was such a minority.
The article
fails to ask the OBVIOUS question: why are these students, with little to no
interest in higher education, flooding onto campus? The answer is likewise,
obvious: the student loan scam.
These people
are coming to college to get those checks; with my own eyes I’ve seen plenty of
community college classrooms with 30% or more of the “students” disappearing
the day the checks arrive.
So, when faced with the prospect of swarms of people showing up to exploit the student
loan scam, the path of integrity would be to shut down the scam, or at least
restrict it to just the students that obviously have an interest in learning.
Instead, we’re
opening up the scam to a wider audience.
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