I read this three times, and I’m still not quite sure about the point you’re trying to make. It would seem that you’re blaming your teachers for something; perhaps suggesting that they’re bad because all the good ones have left, and yet you love your psychology teacher’s classes. But you say his content is BS. But you don’t say what the content of the course might be (there are many, many branches to psychology, and it’s arguably the best developed of the social sciences).

You go on to say that your English books are “outdated,” yet most English classes are literature classes, and they’re really just a matter of reading primary texts, many of which are quite old, and perhaps one or two secondary sources. Age of text really means nothing in a literature class. So, I don’t understand what you’re getting at, here.

As for the “content being subject to interpretation,” this is true of most of life. As you know (since you are nearly 50), life rarely presents cut-and-dried issues we can subject to algebraic logic. Tests are there so that the instructor can figure out whether you’ve learned much, and in better schools, where your skill levels (logic, writing, analysis, etc.) might be relative to where they should be. That is the instructor’s means of evaluating what you’ve accomplished. Surely, not all tests are equally useful, but in an “interpretation” situation, they usually provide the only useful data available. To rage against a grade because you didn’t measure up on a test … well, I have little patience for that.

It sounds to me as if you are not attending a very selective institution. I think you would find that things in the classroom can be very different at one of the US’s higher-ranked institutions of higher learning. If your rant was about the poor quality of education at colleges and universities that are serving students who probably should never be seeking degrees in the first place, then you have my sympathy.

In 10 days I will turn 50. Last year I had an epiphany and decided that it is never to late. I have a 2 year degree I received after coming out of the United States Army (1977). I am the oldest in my classes. I have a 4.0 GPA. and was told by my the university, oh we don’t pay attention to that, because I missed too many classes serving my country in AmeriCorps. My psyche teacher gives us videos to watch which are ALL dated in the 1950′s and walks across our desks screaming like a banshee (and i Love his classes) but the content has taught me nothing but that I can SURVIVE the BS.

My advanced English classes for each semester gave us books that were outdated (subsequent text books were already published and available. But the instructors were instructed to get rid of the books.

Except for Algebra, every class I am in – the content is subject to interpretation. My instructors are r ALL under 30 and receive their curriculum from some place on line and (in fact) have no idea what it is until the first day of class when it is handed to them.

As your student, you damn well better explain to me why I did not receive the grade I thought I should receive. If you can give me an acceptable explanation, i.e., I never showed up for class, then I will accept that, but don’t hand me a damn test to decide my fate.

Incidentally, one algebra instructor told us to buy a scientific calculator. Then would not let us use it in class. However, he used one every minute that he stood in front of us (and suggested we forget what was in the 200 dollar book he required us to purchase.

Its a damn racket!

I gotta tell you, about 99% of my classwork was an inconvenience. Like this one intro class where I was assigned 14 books in a semester. This was a HISTORY class, by the way. During the same semester I had a lit class with about the same reading load. And then there were the other three classes I was taking…

Very inconvenient.

If I’d assigned that kind of load to my students I’d have had parents of half the students on my ass by sundown.

Mine and Lex’s comments go through a spam filter? Wow.

Lex: But universities have more than one consumer. Society as a whole, and businesses especially, are consumers. In my perfect world, businesses would track skills and progress of grads from colleges, and simply refuse to hire from those schools that turn out grads who don’t think well. That would cause a bit of a stir in college faculties, don’t you think?

In my less perfect world, colleges that currently are “McColleges” and are forced to scrounge for students would, as a competitive move, offer a special degree that certifies high-level thinking skills, and perhaps even offer a money back guarantee to businesses that hire a grad but find that he/she does not have the special thinking skills the degree guarantees. That special degree would then devalue the regular degree, driving more students into the rigorous, special degree program. Eventually, other colleges would be forced to follow suit.

I don’t expect to see universities failing people out who don’t commit, if only because they’ve fallen into the idea that higher education should be run on a business-like model. I don’t think that they should operate that way, but i do understand why they operate that way. And here we are again at the student as consumer (or parent as consumer, depending on who’s paying the tab). It’s a terrible word for the situation, as you don’t really consume an education and the using the word enables a thought process where-in going to college is similar to a trip to WalMart…and that’s ugly.

If it makes you feel any better i’ve had a few comments disappeared on this thread too…and i wrote the piece.

I thought it was all pretty weird: I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and was expected to learn on the job. And yet there I was, “teaching” undergrads, who would pay for the privilege of listening to me for an hour a week.

Two weeks in, and a couple of fundamental truths slammed down hard:

1. About a third of the students had no business being there. (Not a criticism of them, by the way. I’m not cut out to work on airplane engines or cook in a restaurant.)

2. Professors and students landed at the university with diametrically opposed goals and aspirations. Neither was “wrong.” They just weren’t in synch.

Professors are professors because they want to devote their lives to tackling various “intellectual” problems (physics, philosophy, chemistry, whatever).

The students, however, were there to get a degree, which was, in their minds, a step toward a job.

There wasn’t anything wrong with either goal — but they didn’t and don’t have much to do with each other.

The philosophy professor wants to explore “ideas,” and wants the students to do the same thing.

For the most part, however, the professor’s students aren’t in the class because they’re interested in philosphy; they’re in the class because they need the class in order to complete a course of study that will lead to a degree that will lead to a job. (Again, nothing wrong with that.)

No surprise, the twain rarely meet. And the result is, well, a less than satisfactory structure for “higher education.”

But stepping back to look at this “conflict” from a longer perspective:

The “university” is essentially an intellectual and social construction that dates back to the middle ages (with some alterations along the way).

The “student,” however, is a social and intellectual construction of the 20th century.

Whatcha gonna do?

(Answer: revamp the social, intellectual, and professional construction of the “university.”)

(Who wants to go first? Professors? Administrators? Legislators?)

Finally: I don’t think us old farts are necessarily blaming today’s students for their sense of entitlement. I’m sure not.

As I noted earlier (waaaay back in this comments thread) , the dumbasses who run colleges of education. (Who, by the way, are people my age….)

But if we subject a kid to 12 years of a goofball educational philosophy that totally out of whack with the adult world, what we get are a bunch of old farts who are frustrated with the young whippersnappers, and whippersnappers who feel (rightly so) misunderstood.

We oldsters can hardly expect the youngsters (god, what an awful word) to get with OUR program, when they’ve been raised according to a different program.

So, let me try again. I responded to Lex’s saying that he didn’t know if colleges could do that (“that” meaning insist that grads come out with certain meta-skills) and I disagree. I used a Marine Corp analogy. The Marines insist that the people who go through their boot camp and combat training course end up as semi-elite soldiers. AND, they manage to get a very high percentage of recruits through boot camp. If you don’t happen to make it, you flunk out.

I don’t see why colleges can’t be the same way. If, at the end of your four (or 12 or whatever) years there, you can go through a rigorous battery of written and oral examinations to prove that you have acquired and can apply high-level thinking skills, you get a degree. If you can’t, you get a certificate of participation. If you want to go to college and treat it like a buffet, spending all your time in the desert section, it’s not unlikely that a certificate of participation is all you will get. If, on the other hand, you take a curriculum designed by the faculty that has rigorous standards, then you are extremely likely to get a degree.

And, whaddaya know? The degree, in this case, might actually mean something.

At my previous job in the military I was an Academics Chief at a schoolhouse for Sailors working with the Marine Corps. While there were still a few entitled kids that expected good grades just for showing up, we had largely broken that thought process in boot camp.

Point is- not everyone needs to go to college at 18.

My rather vague point was that even the people who search for the first causes of social conditions tend to frame them in the language of their current environment, either unconsciously or in an attempt to establish common ground with a wider audience. While some commenters here are certainly the “passive realists” you describe, I know that many of the ones discussing education as a form of economic exchange are not, nor do they see the world (at least consciously) in those terms … but they are using the language and currency of the diseased construct, aren’t they?

I disagree. The Marines do a very nice job, I think, of turning out semi-elite soldiers, and only a small percentage of their enlisted recruits fail to make it through basic training or, for that matter, more advanced training. I think colleges should just flunk the AlanSmithees of the world right out, the way the Marines would wash him out of basic training IF he doesn’t buckle down and work his butt off.

If the Marines fail to turn out good soldiers, they do a disservice to both the soldiers (who are more likely to die in battle if they don’t know what they’re doing or aren’t physically up to it) and to the nation, which needs good soldiers. If our colleges fail to turn out highly skilled intellects, then they fail both the students and society as a whole — in other words, both their customers.

By the way, what am i supposed to figure out? Furthermore, your grandpa schtick doesn’t offend me. And Alan Smithee is a very apt moniker considering the quality of your comments.

Junior has to apply himself and want to learn. He has to make the most of his environment. And if Junior really wants it, he can get it from a much less expensive university…or even from the local public library. In effect, that $200,000 is supposed to go into Junior via the university.

So if the concern is not getting your money’s worth, the anger should be focused on the student who was given every opportunity and did nothing with it.

P.S. I’m not that old…just practicing for nothing to do but rock on the front porch with an old sawed-off full of rock salt. I’ll grow out my beard to unimaginable lengths…something to stroke during misanthropic musings between firing on kids who mess with my garden. Ah, those will be the days.