Dean: Almost half the kids tested made no gains after two years of college. It turns out they spend 3 times as many hours socializing as studying.The answer (which is pretty obvious but still worth stating) is here.
College President: Shocking. C'mon, Dean! That's why they come! And as long as we give them good grades and a degree, their parents are happy, too! Who cares if they can't reason?
So, what do you think? Does having the issue aired (again) in a national forum help us or hurt us? The cartoon, interestingly, divides the blame among students, the administration, and parents, but doesn't mention faculty at all. I'm not sure whether that's good or not.
P.S. much as I like Doonesbury, I think Sam Folkchurch does academia even better
P.P.S. But at least Doonesbury is realistic by one CM standard: the college president is drinking.
I like Doonesbury! Garry Trudeau draws better than me. But his characters are kind of funny-looking, with weirdly heavy eyes and long noses (why IS that?), so I guess we're even.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Martini, anyone?
Well, I think it needs publicity and needs talking about. But the punch line (the last two frames) bring us back to the idea that higher ed is only for practical, job and earnings skills. Important those are, but reducing higher to that is a pity. But then again, at tuition rates these days, that aspect is more important than ever.
ReplyDelete@Samantha Folkchurch
ReplyDeleteHe's been drawing like that from the start; I think the heavy eyes originally signified that the characters were "midnight tokers" but now they have this sort of world-weary pathos. The noses are big-ish to prove that he can draw a schnozz (some cartoonists, especially when Trudeau started in the early `70s, either avoided noses or designed characters around their eyes or mouth, following Charles Schultz.) He has gotten better at drawing backgrounds, but then, you can use a computer for that.
@ Those Goddamned lazy students
If you want productivity, you could force them to sign an agreement stipulating that X amount of time be spent studying in certain special areas that are only accessable by key card (the mag strip on the back of their college IDs should do nicely) or they get fined or put on a college "idiot" list. I think they do things like that at the service academies (i.e West Point, Annapolis, USAF Academy) but then I've heard that the drill at "The Point" gets in the way of people's academics, so cheating by the bottom percentile of classes is rife. My point is, the kids don't have any mofoing excuses anymore.
I particularly liked the teaser in the first two panels. I've always looked at the marketing BS coming out of the central admin offices and wondered what exactly they were so proud of.
ReplyDelete@Adjunctslave I noticed the same thing - uni as training (not "education" or dare I say "teaching") for employers. I think the point is that eventually flakes will run up against external reality whether in the form of an employer, complex real world problem, or simply the need to fight your way out of wet paper bag.
@AdjunctSlave and R&/orG: I'm not sure why the last two panels had a positive vibe for me, since I'm not fond of the instrumental view of education either. It might be what R &/or G describes: the sense that there's someone somewhere who might enforce real (not "assessment") accountability. There's also the implied reference not only to basic life skills the lack of which our snowflakes so blithely expect us to overlook (punctuality) but also back to the higher-order thinking skills referenced in the earlier panels (which might just be part of the once-proud tradition the President, but apparently not the Dean, has forgotten). Or it might be because many of the people I know who're in hiring/supervisory positions work in the government or nonprofit world, so their desire for skilled workers is in service of a higher purpose (okay, I know, a lot of assumptions there, but the government employees I know really are dedicated and doing their best to do what they believe is right, which sometimes matches my conception, and sometimes doesn't, and often responds to situations too complex for me to have an well-founded opinion given the information I have). And, of course, the workers they hire won't be making much money, so I guess I'm not assuming that whoever gets the job in question will necessarily have an easy time paying off his/her student loans, let alone strike it rich -- just that (s)he will have the satisfaction of being able to do it well, and engage it fully, thanks to those higher-order skills.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe it depends who the employer is? (I'd include plenty of for-profit ventures that produce genuinely useful goods and services, from bridges to software to food, in the "contributing to the social good" category. There might even be a few useful and necessary jobs on Wall Street, but I'm getting more and more skeptical about that.)