Go USA!
Saturday, 2 September 2006
Though higher education is now a near-universal aspiration, researchers suggest that close to half the students who enter college need remedial courses.
—from Diana Jean Schemo in the NY Times.
Translation: how can you teach freshman classes in, for example, anthropology, if the incoming students can’t read, write, do simple syntheses of what they’ve been assigned?
Answer: you can’t and you don’t. You compensate by not requiring college-level performance (e.g., no writing assignments). Why anyone would chose to pay college prices to learn high-school level material mystifies me.
Sad truth: nearly half the incoming students will not graduate.
The real question: when those that do graduate receive their diplomas, are they still behind? Or are they truly competent? Heh—guess we know the answer to that!