Now the assault on higher education begins

[MadHound]

"Gov. Jay Nixon’s plan to base state funding increases on a college’s ability to perform isn’t exactly going over well with faculty at the University of Missouri campus.

“My initial reaction — beyond the ‘yuck’ and ‘boo’— was the way in which it feels like Gov. Nixon is putting the woes of an educational system on us,” said Nicole Monnier, an associate teaching professor of Russian.

Students are coming to college less prepared than ever, in part because the federal No Child Left Behind program has forced them to learn to take tests rather than develop critical thinking skills, she said.

And some have said Nixon’s performance model sounds like NCLB for higher education."
<http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/sep/04/nixons-college-funding-plan-draws-skeptics/>

And sadly this is being done by a Democratic governor.

I expect that this is going to soon be coming to a state near you.

Now, more than ever, I think there is a deliberate effort to dumb down our populace.

[bluestateguy]

1. If graduation rates becomes the yardstick

I'll tell you right now what will happen.

Grade inflation up the wazoo and professors being pressured by deans into passing students who don't deserve it.

[MadHound]

2. Yep,

And the sad thing, that has already been the case at a lot of schools for the past thirty years. I attended college in both the mid eighties and within the past five years. A lot of gen ed courses have really been dumbed down, nothing more than basic high school curriculum. Furthermore, if you've noticed, if you're looking for a professional job that a bachelor's degree used to get you, you now need a master's degree.

This will just make things infinitely worse.

[BadgerKid]

3. Parts of higher ed funding rumored also under assault in Illinois

if it already hasn't been passed into law.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

4. Well, if college weren't a scam....

There is no reason you need a degree for half of the shit they require a degree for. Thomas Jefferson studied law while clerking for an atty. He read the law, learned from his boss how to be an atty, he passed the bar and then practiced law. While it is possible to do this today, most firms won't hire you unless you bought a degree. You need a degree to be a teacher, be involved in the sciences, like be a doctor and a nurse, and maybe a couple of other things, but most everything you can apprentice for.
I was in college for 7 years. Know what I got? $25,000 in debt. I have a Criminal Justice degree. I work for a mortgage company. Yeah. It's a scam. Most of the people I know do not work in their field they have a degree in.

[Igel]

5. NCLB isn't mostly to blame.

It's convenient, to be sure, but the problem is a thorny one.

Do I teach to make sure that everybody reaches the minimum required? Do I teach so that the best reach their potential for their age? Given the constraints of the classroom, it's hard to do both.

I teach juniors and seniors in high school.

When I was in high school we took notes. The teacher talked and we wrote down stuff. We asked questions. We were asked questions. The teacher assigned stuff out of the textbook. The textbook contained more than we were required to know.

Now we seldom use a textbook. The textbooks are constructed to present only what is required; it's too hard for students to figure out what's important and needs to be learned versus what is additional, "enrichment" material.

I tried talking and emphasizing what was important; but I was also concerned with making sure the top 25% of the class didn't tune out after 10 minutes. I defined words and tried to make clear what was essential and what was less important. Over 140 students, a dozen figured out what was important. The rest? They needed to have pre-prepared notes with blanks to be filled in. Even then, at some point you have to say, "The first sentence in you notes has a blank: The word for that blank is 'conversion factor'." You say that 2 or 3 times, and five minutes later 10 students want to know what to write in that blank. Then you check what they wrote and they can't spell "conversion" or "factor." They need it on the board.

We've been teaching the bottom 10% and making sure that their achievement's raised. In so doing we've taught the competent that the bar is set really low, and encouraged a generation of smart slackers: Do no more than is required, learn no more than is necessary for the reward. In ed psych they say reward systems are dangerous: They can provide motivation, but if you reward already existing behavior you undermine it. We've undermined learning.

[Lucian]

6. If that happens, college degrees will be meaningless.

Everyone who goes will get one because profs will be pressured into passing people so the college could get money, even if the student doesn't deserve to pass.

How fucked up is that?

[AdHocSolver]

7. You people are just missing the "big picture".

There is a simple reason for the dumbing down of education and making it difficult for a majority of the people to afford an education without going heavily into debt.

With the outsourcing of work to low wage labor countries, there will just not be enough jobs for the next several years (if not decades) to employ a majority of Americans in family supporting jobs.

Denying people a usable education enables the corporate elite to blame the unemployed for their lack of jobs or lack of full-time employment, because those people just lack the necessary skills to get and hold a worthwhile job.

Having the largest prison population of any country in the world is also useful, as those people can be removed from the unemployment statistics, and the same holds true for those people in the military.

Do you understand the big picture now.