This "Race to the Bottom" (an inversion of Obama's "Race to the Top") is achieving its aim: more special admits who will never graduate from SIU-C. The Center for Academic Success (CAS) serves (at no small cost) 3% of the student body. Yet 60% of our entering freshmen will never graduate (IPEDs six-year graduation data). How is this compassionate?
If lowering standards was the key to increased enrollment, our classrooms would be packed. Those interviewed concede that enrollment has declined for ten years while it has increased at other schools. Yet they remain committed to cheating the ill-prepared of their money and the well-prepared of a rigorous education.
It is an open secret -- and Interim Provost Don Rice alludes to it -- that a SIU degree is losing its value. We are getting a "reputation" for accepting everyone. Every incoming chancellor wraps this sad fact in maintaining our "historic mission." It is reminiscent of those Party apparatchiks in the late 1980s who maintained that East Germany must maintain its mission. That worked out well.
"SIUC Chancellor Rita Cheng said students who may need a little encouragement and help, such as supplemental instruction and tutoring, can succeed at SIUC."A "little"?! Those of us in the trenches are trying to teach a mix of students: half who need a lot of "remediation." The other half are deprived of a solid education. It is demoralizing.
Let's face facts: we need a "remedial track" with courses for the half that need a "little" help. How can we teach a class that contains students with an ACT of 14 -- the cut off for the remedial CAS?
CAS is a one-year program that begins by reviewing a student’s class rank and ACT score.I went to the ACT web site and looked up a composite score of 14. It places a student in the bottom ten percent of all test takers! In math, it places a student in the bottom 6%.
“I usually don’t take a student that has anything below a 14 ACT score,” Williams said.
Who are we kidding? We feel good about our "mission" but this mantra reminds me of a book subtitled "Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy." If your policy keeps failing your institution, your clientele, your staff then self-congratulation is a grotesque joke played on all parties.
I will end by quoting from the opening lines of FDR's first inaugural address.
"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today."Let's stop "shrinking" from reality. After all, "reality is not optional."
7 comments:
Not so surprising or Amazing!
As a grad student of SIU and a teacher at Logan CC, I asked those students who went to Logan before attending SIU. They ALL said they had better instruction at Logan than at SIU.
In 15 years when the school's reputation and enrollment numbers are int he toilet, will they still spend all their money on sports?
But, will they remember this in 15 years when the school is all but gone?
Not so surprising or Amazing!
As a grad student of SIU and a teacher at Logan CC, I asked those students who went to Logan before attending SIU. They ALL said they had better instruction at Logan than at SIU.
In 15 years when the school's reputation and enrollment numbers are int he toilet, will they still spend all their money on sports?
But, will they remember this in 15 years when the school is all but gone?
Higher educaion is the next bubble to burst. I am at a regional campus of a Big Ten school and we use SAT as a measure. We have the lowest in the system (below 900).
Of course in America everyone has the "right" to college. Bull crap.
If you can, short the publically traded schools.
The rationale for these special admissions policies, according to Provost Don Rice, is "to cater to first-generation students instead of raising admission standards." This is a canard of the first order, as if kids whose parents didn't go to college are inherently lousy students. Unless someone is not a native speaker of English or has a learning disability, the only reason they have a low ACT score is 1) they lack native talent; or 2) they didn't study (or both, of course). First generation college students may need some extra help orienting them both socially and academically to college, but if they fall in the bottom percentiles of their class and/or have very low ACT scores, I can't imagine how anyone expects them to succeed at any Big U. And, as the Provost himself noted, it lowers the quality of education for the motivated and/or better prepared students. Special admission students numbered 590 last year out of 2,686, or 22 percent of the Freshman class. That's much larger than I thought, and can't help but affect the academic experience of the other students -- many of whom are also poorly prepared for college work.
Look we have a new football stadium and a rebuilt basketball arena. Rock on !
I am a professor of engineering at SIUC. I see the effects of this policy in the classroom. It's almost impossible to teach those students. I feel that I am cheating them.
Rita Cheng needs to make deep changes in the university administration. Replacing Victoria Vale may not be enough (if at all necessary). So far one sees the same faces who presided over the last ten years of decline hold key administration positions.
I attended this school in early 2000. All I can say is party party party. Most of the teachers push there liberal ideology into your brain. Fortunately for me I'm a conservative and back lashed at such biased teachings. I told one professor the truth and that If You graded my paper on your own biases I would report it to the department head and prove the truth. Needless to say I got a B in the class and my gun rights viewed were heard by everyone when I presented my paper. Some of my grades suffered because of my beliefs but I don't care. I own my own buisness and own numerous pieces of real estate. Needless to say I don't belong to the alumni association and don't plan on giving this school a dime. I started out at a two year college and my professor there was the best I ever had and I still talk to him to this day. I would recommend going to a two year college first or go to the best school you can get in and go from there. Don't let the liberals control your life of course unless you are one.
Post a Comment