More Than a College Graduation Gap

Source: The Growing College Graduation Gap – The New York Times

It’s also a learning gap.

Until the public wakes up to the realities of college, those gaps will only get worse.

I taught for three decades, first at a regional state school, then at private research university. I know of what I speak; but, if there is any doubt, here is David Riesman from 1980.

“.advantage can..be taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions..” (from On Higher Education: The Academic Enterprise in an Era of Rising Student Consumerism)

Here is what has happened.

Most colleges have become corrupted. They have little qualms defrauding their students by catering to their “wants” which are quite different from their “needs”. (D. Riesman)

Here is a little of what I have seen.

I have seen an elite school ask me to change a real course to a “cookbook” course so that NO ONE would drop engineering. (Read “A Tale Out of School” on my blog inside-higher-ed . It’s even documented.)

I saw professors at state regional schools who were not competent to teach their subject. They got their doctorates at research schools who got government grants to produce American professors.

Here is the outcome of this corruption. A college degree from a “good” school usually represents less of an education than it used to. The same is true from more inclusive schools, but instead of “less of an education that it should”, it is “much less…than it should”. This trickles down to K-12.

That’s the gap problem in a nutshell.