Is College Good for Our Country?  

For a malcontent like this writer, the following hurts.  It is not enough that “No Child Left Behind” is leaving our world in a bind.  Now we read about the deficiency of higher education.  

... If “passionate and eager” can be used to describe the attitudes of the Greatest Generation and their children towards higher education, what can be said of the grandchildren? In the past twenty years, the number of college degrees handed out annually has more than doubled. So certainly they are attending college in droves. But with what attitude and to what end?  

Peter Sacks took up the question in his 1996 book, Generation X Goes to College. What Sacks found when he left journalism to become a college professor was an overarching lack of interest on the part of the students—what he identifies as a kind of disengagement. He describes a typical classroom scene:  

Scattered mostly in the back and far side rows were young males with professional sports baseball caps, often worn backwards. Completing the uniform . . . was usually a pair of baggy shorts, a team T-shirt, and an ample attitude. Slumped in their chairs, they stared at me with looks of disdain and boredom, as if to say, “Who in hell cares? Say something to amuse me.”  

According to Sacks, today’s college students have been “conditioned by an overly nurturing, hand-holding educational system not to take responsibility for their own actions.” He blames a system that has become “customer-driven.” Administrators want students to be happy so that enrollment remains high. And fearing lack of support from administrators, teachers have become reluctant to hold students to high standards. As Sacks writes, “Excellence wasn’t really the point . . . [T]he real point was whether you kept students sufficiently amused and entertained.” ... From http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo5/5segelstein.php.

If you answer the multiple-choice questions below and e-mail to lessonanswers@mymontebello.com with “Lesson answers” in the subject field, you will be credited toward a “certificate of recognition in community affairs” to be awarded in 2008 by a local nonprofit organization.  

1. What does Peter Sacks assert about college?

(a) Tuition is too high.

(b) College is “customer-driven”.  

2. What is meant by “customer-driven”?

(a) Colleges and professors lower standards to keep enrollment high.

(b) Students have a say in the curriculum which is offered them.   

July 24, 2008