I’ve heard this about online universities.
But I don’t understand why an administrator at a reputable, brick-and-mortar, non-profit schol should worry about losing money. Selectivity correlates with a school’s attractiveness, which means high numbers of applicants and loftier tuitions. Good schools attract richer students, top-quality professors, and people with big endowments. Seems like if a school got the reputation for being a hard-ass, then administrators would see more $$, not less.
I don’t understand it either, monstro , yet it seems to be happening everywhere I teach. Some of the results seem obvious: campuses over-run with “just give me the credit” so-called “students”; itinerent, non-committed faculty; and adminstrations that are more like CEOs (in-terms of pay disparity and isolation from front-line issues) than academics.
I think it’s an inevitable result of the goal universal college education.
Society allots the resources to build an infrastructure sufficient for everyone to attend college. If not everyone is prepared (or suited) for college, there will be unused resources in search of ‘users’ (i.e., students).
So institutions that don’t have an excess of well-prepared students applying (like the large public university where my brother teaches) have to either lower their standards, or be ready to give up some of the resources they control. Self-interest on the part of school administrators makes the latter choice hard to make.
I believe that this is not the case with schools that are very hard to get into. E.g., I bet MIT doesn’t have to worry about discouraging unprepared students, because it has all the well-prepared students it needs (and then some).
I welcome information from those who could confirm or contradict the belief I’ve stated in the previous paragraph. (I have fairly recent master’s degrees from two fairly elite private universities, but I can’t speak to the standards in the undergrad programs at these institutions).
And as long as I’m indulging in some serious logorrhea, I believe there’s another generational difference.
In my interactions with kids today (I’m 47), I’m amazed at how aggresively they negotiate everything. This may be partially due to the populism promulgated in the last few decades by both ends of the political spectrum, and the cultural phenomenon of all types of organizations to emulate business. (I loved where Rev. Lovejoy’s wife on the Simpsons thanked people departing a service for “choosing our church”).
The result is a society where negotiating not just expected, but a vital skill. I’ve never been one to haggle over prices, or ask teachers to change grades, and if I were to go back to being 17 today, I think I’d feel very out of place.
I’m, personally, deeply saddened by the demise of vocational tech. Now, since the college degree has become the new high school degree, a bunch of kids who are just going to end up leaving school anyway acquire a bunch of debt in the process, when in fact they’d be really great plumbers or locksmiths or mechanics and have done a lot better in a vocational high school in the first place.
I couldn’t agree more, Zsofia.
I would much rather have a child who never went to college (but is happy making a living as a plumber, locksmith or mechanic) than one who limped through a degree just so he could be a college man like his dad.
Our society is too damn status-conscious, and too many people place an irrationally high value on a college degree.
I agree. At the cash-strapped universities it’s all about getting more warm bodies through the door, at the wealthy ones it’s all about letting the kids of alumni cruise through in the hopes of getting a top-up to the endowment. The one constant is that the days of setting a clear academic standard and then measuring achievement relative to that standard are long gone.
Hell, even Harvard and the like get in the news fairly regularly for letting ‘legacy’ students skip entrance requirements and for giving A or B grades to 90% of the students in a class.
Besides, I assure you, my plumber makes a hell of a lot more money than I do, with my masters’ degree. Also, he’s in business for himself, calls his own shots, etc. Too bad he loses all the cash in alimony, but that’s his own lookout. There’s a hell of lot worse things you could do in life than crawl around under other people’s houses.
How do you define weaker students. Some students are so grade obsessed that they are impossible to deal with. They often make crappy employees .How many professors have to defend the grades against a student who NEEDS the A. Some b and c students understand the work very well. A little sloppy turning in assignments and perhaps having a little too much fun.