Dan Laroque put this comment on the WSJ
“… In the latter years of my teaching career, it got very frustrated dealing with students and administration. The universities have literally turned the curriculum standards over to the students. It is all about garnering as many students in a major as possible with no rules on rigor. It is ‘take what makes them feel good’. To me all of this has been just remarkable. I never dreamed I’d see the day that some of our science programs would be turned into artsy degrees. We have students who can’t spell or write…and they are seniors!”
Since I put all my comments here, this is my reply to Dan. (It’s not news to regular readers, though.)
“I’m also a professor. This is right on. I taught a course that our engineering school was worried about. Here is an example of their worries.
A couple of letters that my chairman gave me, telling me they were among the things he was having to “deal with”, were from a parent and his son. The parent said he “was told” that the class average on the last test was 47 (NOT even close) and asked the Deans to look into the issues (about my course in differential equations) and see if his concerns were merited. Apparently, the Deans (who never came to me) asked the STUDENT for his opinion. The student gave me “one week” to “allow any changes to take place” but, sadly, he didn’t observe any. As a matter of fact, he observed that the homework assignments, mainly from MIT’s course, “…are very dissimilar to the questions we see on the exams…” Actually, some of the MIT homework problems are not only “similar” to problems on the exam, they are ON the exam. (The letters and the story are on my blog inside-higher-ed.com. Click on “A Tale Out of School”.)
I write all of this because people really need to know what is happening. This wasn’t at some for-profit, or fly-by-night place. It was at Washington Unversity in St. Lous.”
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