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Thursday, May 5. 2011

Explaining College as Oversold and Underperforming.

Good interview with George Leef, who contends that half of the kids who go to college in the US these days do not benefit and should not bother. Higher ed has become a self-interested industry with a greater investment in sales than in product...the product often being an unaccomplished, ignorant person with a piece of fancy paper in hand.

When you think about it, it is rather remarkable that there is no exit exam of advanced intellectual achievement. I would offer to design one. Maybe I will design one, just for fun (there will be Math because, in my reality, there is no higher ed without Calculus and Statistics).

Posted by The Barrister in Education, Our Essays at 12:13 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

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No exit exam? I had final exams after most every class. Do we really need a formalized nation-wide exit exam?

What I didn't see was a link to the conference mentioned at the end of the video. I'd be interested in going if anyone can find that.

#1 DrTorch on 2011-05-05 14:01 (Reply)

(there will be Math because, in my reality, there is no higher ed without Calculus and Statistics)

It is not unknown to have elementary school teachers who are clueless about 9th grade algebra. At least I have met some.
Just sayin'.

#2 Gringo on 2011-05-05 16:00 (Reply)

The current education theory is that any teacher can teach any subject at any level. Specific knowledge of the subject is not required. The teacher or eve professor simply facilitates the student's discovery of the subject.

And that's why we can't have competent graduates. The worst students are the ones who are hired to teach so they came up with a no-competency theory of teaching.

#3 JKB on 2011-05-05 17:54 (Reply)

Geez folks c'mon on:
First the Culinary Institute ( for profit school) has to pay millions of dollars in a class action lawsuit because it overstated it's employment claim percentage--how many graduates have been hired to be full chefs at what rate of pay. Every school has some figures they suggest.

Second: Now this poor guy does the right thing and ends up in jail:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/04/04/professor_arrested_for_battery_after_he_shut_laptop_of_a_student_in_class

#4 faculty wife on 2011-05-05 19:00 (Reply)

You include "Math" like it is something to be feared. As an engineering student, I had three levels of Calculus in the first three semesters; only Calculus III had concepts I had not seen in High School (and I graduated High School in the '90's!) Probability and Statistics was considered a fun course by the engineering students, and I took it as an easy A.

Throw in some Vector Analysis, Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra, and then you might have my interest.

;)

---BubbaB

#5 BubbaB on 2011-05-05 19:04 (Reply)

As I History major and Catholic school grad back in the "wild years" of the late '70's and '80's my friends would help me memorize all the mathematical theorems, tricks and formulas the night before exams. God forbid there was something that didn't fit the mold!

RBM

#6 RBM411 on 2011-05-05 20:15 (Reply)

Ha! Ha! i wanted to go to college and learn so badly, but I couldn't get financial aid. I got a BA but it nearly broke my parents and me.

I come from a blue-collar family. Blue collar work gets harder to do as a person gets older and the body begins to wilt. I can work with my mind even though I am on disability thanks to my education.

But the internet is making college obsolete! I just completed an online archeology course because I thought it would be nice to be able to go the community college and use all their services. But I never made it up there!

So why should I keep paying for the privilege of keeping a professor in a job and the college in business? There are lots of online courses!

#7 betsy r on 2011-05-18 07:47 (Reply)

@DrTorch,

My undergrad program had a "senior comprehensive exam". Most grad programs also have comprehensive exams.

I wonder if anyone has compared people's SAT scores to their GRE scores -- that could be a way to show whether college "made them smarter" or not.

#8 Tarl on 2011-05-29 10:55 (Reply)

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Thursday, May 5. 2011

Oversold colleges