More On “More on Starbucks – And Arizona State – And Alarms”

An online conversation has been going on on my comment referenced in my previous post .  I will copy and past it here.

Eric from NJ replied to my first comment.  (see the post )

Engineers have to have a lot of courses in math – calculus up to and beyond differential equations as well as statistics. Hard to believe Columbia is doing anyone any favors by admitting a student wit low grades into its engineering program. Either they have t dumb down the courses – which is not really possible in engineering or they have a high drop pout rate – which I bet will be disproportionately female and minority.

I replied

You are almost exactly right. You are only wrong about one thing. It is possible to dumb down math.

I taught math at Wash. U. In my blog post “How Competition Leads to “Content Deflation” in One Anecdote”, I describe teaching differential equations there. I have emails from the math chairman and an Engineering Dean, essentially begging me to dumb down the course – to turn it into a “cookbook” course, to focus on “retention”. They wanted to make it a course where A students can hardly do any standard MIT problems – problems that my class was doing regularly, and well. To change that course would be morally repugnant to me. So I didn’t. I told the students what was happening and warned them that a young professor would have to buckle under. They applauded and I started a blog. People need to know what is happening.

You might also want to read my post “How to Make Calculus Students Believe They Know Calculus When They Don’t” That explains how to fool even smart students.

Here is a quote from David Riesman’s 1980 book “On Higher Education: The Academic Enterprise in an Era of Rising Student Consumerism”.

“…advantage can still be taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions..Like any other interest group, the student estate often does not grasp its own interests, and those who speak in its name are not always its friends.”

It is much worse now than then.

Terry B from Decatur, Ga also replied to my first comment

Earth to Feldman: The system is forcing most people to take on crushing debt to get the basic credentials necessary to earn a living. Come down from your ivory tower. Be relevant.

To Which I wrote

You are right; and I just want them – and the country, and our society, and our economy – to get their money’s worth. If they only get a “credential”, they won’t get the job they need, nor the job the system waved in front of them to get their money.

There is another important fact behind your observation. As ironic as it sounds, one of the major reasons that people need those credentials is that college does such a poor job of educating.

If, as is the case in too many instances, high school teachers wind up with a college “degree” but not a college “education”, they will not be equipped to teach thier own students well. That is exactly what is happening. (Again, see my blog on for examples and descriptions. By the way, politically, it only takes a minority of ill equipped teachers to dumb down a whole system.)

Thus, we end up with a vicious cycle of uneducated young people. But at the same time, the average college degree pays more than the average high school degree, not because a college degree is worh so much (which is not so clear, anymore, since the data is from grads from a long time ago, as it must be.), but because a high school degree is worth so much less. A high school degree could be worth much more by making a college degree worth more…