Here’s another story about the dog that didn’t bark. The
author, a university professor at we-do-not-know-which school, inveighs in long
Guardian article about having to teach an increasing number of unqualified
students. He is using the latest bribery and cheating scandal to explain that
more and more of his students cannot do college work, but have been admitted
because they are legacies or athletes or children of wealthy parents.
Naturally, the first thing that pops into your mind is that
he is being extremely disingenuous. He knows and you know and as I know that
the real problem is not legacy students— most of whom, as Heather Mac Donald has
shown, are qualified— but minority students who were admitted to fulfill
diversity quotas.
Yet, he utters not a word about the problems posed by
diversity quotas. This leads us to two possible conclusions. He might be so
obtuse and so “woke” that he did not notice, or he is employing a sophisticated
rhetorical strategy to speak about a matter that he would not be allowed to
speak about. He might will be evading censorship by complaining about Lori
Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
The more I read his article, the more I think that the
latter is the case. In place of groups of unqualified students he trots out, you should substitute: unqualified diversity candidates.
In any event, the article is well worth your attention. The
author begins by explaining the problems posed by unqualified students:
In this
setting, where teaching quality is at a premium and students expect faculty to
give them extensive personal attention, the presence of unqualified students
admitted through corrupt practices is an unmitigated disaster for education and
research. While such students have long been present in the form of legacy
admits, top sports recruits and the kids of multimillion-dollar donors, the
latest scandal represents a new tier of Americans elbowing their way into elite
universities: unqualified students from families too poor to fund new
buildings, but rich enough to pay six-figure bribes to coaches and admissions
advisers. This increase in the proportion of students who can’t do the work
that elite universities expect of them has – at least to me and my colleagues –
begun to create a palpable strain on the system, threatening the quality of
education and research we are expected to deliver.
When there are too many students who can’t do the work, what
can you do?
Students
who can’t get into elite schools through the front door based on academic merit
don’t change once they’re in class. They can’t do the work, and are generally
uninterested in gaining the skills they need in order to do well. Exhibit A
from the recent admissions corruption scandal is “social media celebrity” Olivia
Jade Gianulli, whose parents bought her a place at the University of
Southern California, and who announced
last August to her huge YouTube following that “I don’t know how much
of school I’m going to attend. But I do want the experience of, like, game
days, partying … I don’t really care about school.”
If you think that this is just about Olivia Jade, you have
missed the point. The author gets to the point, namely that “every unqualified
student” requires more attention, more resources and waste more time. And more remedial work. You probably know that colleges and universities have long been providing remedial classes for minority students:
Every
unqualified student admitted to an elite university ends up devouring hugely
disproportionate amounts of faculty time and resources that rightfully belong
to all the students in class. By monopolizing faculty time to help compensate
for their lack of necessary academic skills, unqualified students can also
derail faculty research that could benefit everyone, outside the university as
well as within it. To save themselves and their careers, many of my colleagues
have decided that it is no longer worth it to uphold high expectations in the
classroom. “Lower your standards,” they advise new colleagues. “The fight isn’t
worth it, and the administration won’t back you up if you try.”
Better yet, unqualified students game the system to get good
grades… because if they do not, professors will be accused of racism. OK, the
author does not say “racism” but you get the picture:
In
comparing stories, we have also found that such students strive to “work
the system”, using university procedures to get the grades they desire, rather
than those they have earned, and if necessary to punish faculty who refuse to
accede to those demands. It is perhaps unsurprising that students whose parents
circumvent the rules to get them into elite universities are often the ones who
become adept at manipulating the university system in a corrupt way.
Unqualified students require remedial classes. Does this
refer to legacy students or to minority students? We report, you decide:
For
untenured faculty members, the pressures created by this setup can be a threat
to their careers: it’s very difficult to teach well, let alone do the research
and publishing necessary to keep your job, when you’re being hounded to provide
a remedial education on top of an already heavy set of official duties….
Even
for tenured professors, whose jobs are supposedly secure, becoming known as
someone who won’t “play ball” by giving the sports star or the legacy an easy
pass can mean exclusion from important opportunities and sources of support. So
we suck it up as we recap our lectures for students who couldn’t attend due to
golf team practice, or teach them skills most Americans learn in high school,
or create extra credit assignments to bring up their marks.
It’s a cautionary tale, one that would never have been
published if he had added the least indication that the problem was not being
caused by Jade Olivia, but by the increasing numbers of students admitted to
fulfill diversity quotas:
This
kind of thing has easily added 10-12 hours a week to my workload, and I know
I’m not alone in that respect. As one of my colleagues put it, the unskilled
and entitled students will “eat you alive”. Over the past decades as an
instructor, I have seen my teaching workload increase dramatically despite
holding the same number of courses in the same subjects. What has changed is
the proportion of unqualified students in the classroom.
3 comments:
The article brings light to an important recognition, one that will bite all of us if not ignored. Someone recently said college was not longer about learning but about credentialing, a certification that "you are now in the club".
The real problem is that for the significant number of people who have graduated and/or are attending these institutions of higher learning the value of that education is now tainted by all of this debasing of our work.
College degrees are now questionable. Untrustworthy, even.
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