Starting Out Behind – NYTimes.com.
In the above editorial, the Times makes comparisons between1970 and 2012. They see that young people did better in 1970 (with fewer having gone to college), but I’m not sure that they are ready to say that education has changed for the worse. I did. Here is my comment.
“I was in the 18-24 age group in 1970. I have also been a professor and have seen what a college education is today. (I taught for years at Wash. U. in St. Louis.)
Much of the difficulty that today’s grads are having, is, to a large degree, from a LACK of an education, not from a lack of need for people with an education.
The academic community has stolen from students by claiming to teach them to fish, while using their resources to get the fish that they, and their corporate supporters (lenders, egotists, etc…), want.
I have personally seen administrators say they wanted a course taught in a “cookbook” manner just to make a few indolent students happy – even when the students who took the “cookbook” version showed a shocking lack of skills (when compared to peers who learned the same material legitimately) and a shocking amount of confidence in their faux-A’s.
(This administrator was embroiled in a struggle about who would get to teach this money making class. He and the competing department didn’t agree on much, but they did agree that it would be costly to ask some students to stretch themselves to learn, and its easy to fool the other students into thinking they are learning.)…
What has been going on is unscrupulous, immoral, and an atrocity for our young people. They are easy prey for powerful institutions with smart marketing departments and sophisticated managers.”
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