Mine is 
Universities and college also often have a writing center where you can get some tutoring if you only need a little help.
I’d be pissed if my college professors started teaching basic English - we don’t have time to cover the material they need to cover. Come to school having your prereqs - which includes being able to write.
An issue I’ve raised in several other threads is the trend for public universities to treat college like a business. This results in a need to maximize enrollment, which creates a totally different dynamic in grading standards. An elite institution that has more than enough qualified applicants can set standards and stick to them. But a school that needs every tuition dollar has to lower its standards to what it applicants are capable of doing. This results in a sense of entitlement to grades that doesn’t exist at elite schools.
Thirty or so years ago, not everyone who applied to college got in, so grading standards were upheld at even public insitutions. My brother, a math professor at the same state university he graduated from, genuinely struggled with some math classes his freshman year. They called them ‘weeder’ courses.
My brother attests that not only has he definitely been forced to lower standards in the roughly twenty years he’s been teaching (I’m speaking here of overall standards, not just reading standards), but students have an annoying tendency to negotiate everything.
I’m not talking about asking for more partial credit on a test question (I did that a few times myself). But the students seem to think the grade criteria are just rough outlines, and can be totally reset if they make a good enough pitch.
He’s had students flunk every test, and then come to him asking to have the test scores thrown out and have their course grade based on the final.
He had a student who skipped pretty much every class, and then came to him the day before the final asking for a review of the entire course.
When he turns down these negotiators, they complain to his boss, and then up the chain, until they find someone who stands up for them. And the higher up you go in the admin chain, the more likely you are find someone committed to the ideal of maximizing enrollment (and safely isolated from the consequences thereof).
(Oh, and the student who asked for a complete course review the day before the final told the admins that my brother had ‘refused to answer my questions about the material’).
My brother teaches undergrads mostly, and he prays that grad schools haven’t lowered their standards like this.
I disagree. Compare the kinds of complaints.
50 years ago, profs probably complained that their students didn’t know Latin.
40 years ago, profs probably complained that their students used a slang word in a formal essay.
30 years ago, my profs complained that students didn’t organize their essays well enough, which showed they hadn’t thought through their thesis well enough to argue it effectively.
now, we have posts in this thread from profs complaining about the inability to write a single sentence.
I recently had lunch with my former undergraduate adviser – easily the best, and toughest, teacher I’ve ever had. He told me that he was denied promotion two years ago, and that he was told he “wasn’t the caliber of teacher that merited promotion.” He asked about the basis for that statement, and was shown student comment sheets on which his students complained about the difficulty of his courses, and the resulting less-than-spectacular grades.
Last year he lowered his grading standards for every class and adopted what he called a “no disappointed student” policy.
This year he was promoted.
This reminds me of an old episode of The People’s Court where some college kids were suing someone. The plaintiffs kept explaining their case with verbiage like the following:
“… and then I go, ‘No way.’”
“… and she goes, ‘Yes.’”
"… and I go, “That’s great.’”
Judge Wapner flipped his lid and kept complaining that he couldn’t follow the story. He kept asking, “You keep saying you are going somewhere. Where are you going?” Then, it apparently dawned on him that “go” means “said.” He grumbled angrily and in disbelief that college students were allowed to get away with such horrible grammar these days.
I have teaching credentials in English, as well as biology. I’m going to be nice and not point out all the errors you made in the quoted post. Maybe you could talk your students into attending a remedial English class with you.
Scumpup, that’s lovely and all, and I’m very proud of your ability to nitpick a post on a message board, but anyerrors Figaro has made in this thread are absolutely nothing in comparison to the errors you find in some undergraduate students’ papers. Suggesting he attend a remedial English course is nonsensical. College-level compositions are held to an entirely different standard than posts on a message board, as I’m sure you know.
As to the errors in Figaro’s post, what exactly is your quibble? Do you dislike his use of commas? The way he used the ampersand? Maybe the hyphenation or parentheses? I’m going to assume it’s not the use of asterisks as emphasis, since you used it yourself. As I cannot see anything too egregious for a message board post, I’m leaning toward your comment being an act of passive-aggressive cattiness, which I would love for you to elucidate. You must have reasons for saying something like that, given your credentials.
Dude, I’m like amazed.
In 1957 the joke phrase in my engineering courses was: “Six months ago I couuldn’t spell injuneer and now I are one.”
Hi, Scumpup. It seems you meant to post to the “My students super suck and I’m super awesome because I’m better than them” thread. I thought I’d let you know, since your perspective will surely be appreciated there.
::starts scouring previous posts for everything that’s only slightly egregious…:: :o
No, I meant to post to the “I’m bitching about my students when I’m, clearly, no better educated than I assert they are” thread.
I found nothing wrong in your post. Some people are real bitches when it comes to commas and smileys, though. I’m not.
Really? Are you serious? What leads you to suspect that Figaro can’t form a correct sentence or loves comma splices like a brother? There are some really shitty writers out there, but Figaro doesn’t strike me as one of them.
I said, and I meant it , that I wasn’t going to point out all his errors in the post I quoted. If you want to re-read it, look for sentences that begin with conjunctions for starters.
I regret to inform you of this, Scumpup, but sentences beginning with conjunctions are perfectly allowable in conversational writing. I would even go so far as to say that if you were writing an analytical essay (not one you’d submit to the MLA or anything), you could begin a rhetorical question with a conjunction. If it’s good enough for Susan Sontag, it’s good enough for me.
So, conjunctions? What else? I’m really expecting you to nail Figaro for a run-on sentence or not using five-paragraph essay form.
Screw writing–sometimes I wonder if my students can even read. I want the answer to one question: why do I have scores of students who are incapable of following written instructions? I list my paper requirements in writing and go over them verbally in class. The requirement that sources must be DIRECTLY QUOTED is right there on the page, but every semester I have quite a few students who end up with terrible grades (the deduction for failing to use direct quotations is severe) because they “didn’t know” they had to directly quote them. slams head against wall
I consider it part of my job to teach students the writing techniques of my discipline, but I’m not trained in composition. I don’t care to take time away from my syllabus to give lessons on introducing quotations and other basics. I really don’t care for the extra grading that inevitably comes to any professor who takes it upon him/herself to teach basics of writing either! glares at student homework in the corner
If you have a perspective to share on the OP, please contribute it to the thread. Otherwise, please look somewhere else for a fight. This thread is not about me, not about “bitching,” and not about who is or is not a perfect wordsmith. It’s a discussion about students and writing. Everyone here except you seems to understand that.
I’ve taught college and university students since 1990 and have noticed a dramatic decline in skills. I attribute this to several factors:
–very little reading, if any
–disinclination to drill and improve
–too much emailing, chatting, and text messaging
–no sense of audience or proper tone/diction for academic writing (I just got an essay the other day in which a student said of a poem, “It’s like the writer was all like wow she’s really beautiful and stuff”)
–being passed along in K-12 without basic skills competence
–refusal (?) to get help from the numerous resources available and free on campus
Have you, like F. U. Shakespeare’s brother and my former mentor, encountered pressure from your administration to lower your expectations?
No, although I hear that this is the case at some campuses.
At mine, my division dean and department head are fond of saying that students have the right to fail.
Marvelous.