Looks Like Marketing to Me “New on Campus: The 3-Year Degree”

You can read the article,New on Campus: The 3-Year Degree – WSJ – WSJ#livefyre-comment. or just read the quote from it on my comment.

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First note this fact, from “Academically Adrift” by Arum and Roksa:

Students are reguired to study 45% less than in the 60′s, and 35% less than in 1980. Gain in critical skills is next to nothing. That gain used to be one sigma.

Then this quote from the article should be unsurprising.

“.. she didn’t sacrifice much to earn all her credits in three years. She..was able to work..for 20 to 30 hours a week and join a business fraternity..She now is studying for a real estate license while working as a leasing consultant in an..apartment complex…”

These schools are into marketing to naive “customers” (once quaintly called “students”).

It gets worse.

When I taught at Wash. U. in St. Louis, I was told to make my course a “cookbook” course, and I was told by the engineering Dean of Student Academic Integrity that “retention” was important, so don’t discourage them – apparently, even if they cheated, which I told them many had..

You can read that story and more on my blog inside-higher-ed.com .”