Due to my uncanny similarity with the group of college students William Zinsser described in his essay “College Pressures,” his words induced within me feelings of guilt and regret. Throughout my years of schooling, there have been many occasions in which I have labored to a maximum which resulted in an almost unbearable amount of stress and panic. Oftentimes, I credited this anxiety to my teachers who assigned many projects and tests; or to the School Board that made continuous changes to the learning curriculum and expectations for “success.” At the beginning of his essay while he elaborated on his thesis, William Zinsser, master of Branford College, countered this thinking, “It is easy to look around for villains -- to blame colleges… the…
Author Keith M. Parsons’s purpose was to briefly summarize the differences between high school and college to his future students. Parson begins his article by stating a few things that will guide you into becoming a successful student. He first wants to explain the difference between a teacher and a professor, “Teachers are evaluated on the basis of learning outcomes, generally as measure by standardized tests. If you don’t learn, then your teacher is blamed. However, things are very different for a university professor. It is no part of my job to make you learn. At university, learning is your job and yours alone. My job is to lead you to the fountain of knowledge. Whether you drink deeply or only gargle is entirely up to you”. (Parson, 1)…
When someone asks you why earning a higher grade in class is important to receive, your first response might be to help increase your grade point average (GPA). But why is a high GPA so coveted? Is it to get into a good post graduate school? But then why is this important? You would probably respond by saying to create more opportunities for yourself when it comes to a career to venture in. These are the questions that Steven Vogel dives into, and gets to the point that through all of these questions lead up to one underlying factor that grades are money and learning is what is paid for. He believes students will attempt to maximize…
There has been a debate regarding whether struggling students should repeat a grade. Proponents point out that grade retention gives another chance for the student in trouble to “get it right” the second time. On the other hand, opponents argue that the harms retention bring outweigh the benefits. Though there are valid arguments on both sides of this issue, those who disagree with grade retention policy have a strong case for the following reasons:…
It is obvious that Arthur E. Levine’s article, “Sure Changes for Colleges in the Future,” wrongly suggests that the future of education will be questionable. Levine writes that “educational passports” (283) will be needed to track down a student’s educational records. He also questions whether “faculty will become increasingly independent of colleges” (282), and whether “degrees will wither in importance” (283), because of the variety of new ways degrees can be earned. All these points that Levine speculates on seem to be far fetched and inaccurate in describing the progress education is making in our world. It is misleading to say that “degrees will wither in importance,” when employers are constantly choosing people who have a better educational background than others. Furthermore, “Educational passports” (283) are not a good way to record a student’s educational achievements, because they fail to record the learning that happens outside of a classroom. Likewise, would students actually watch faculty members on “weekly PBS programs”(283)? It is almost impossible to believe that Levine’s “Sure Changes for Colleges in the Future” is written with considerable concern for education in the future, because of the extreme improbability of degrees withering in importance, educational passports replacing degrees, and faculty becoming more popular than their colleges.…
“Graduating with six figures ' worth of debt is becoming increasingly common.” (179) In the essay “Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission” Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus discussed about how the price of college education is increasing, while the quality of some teachers is decreasing. Hacker and Dreifus gave tips on how to make college education successful. Hacker and Dreifus included the tips they discovered including money, faculty-student relations, classes that should be taken, graduate schools, and teaching techniques; the two also visited schools across the United States from University of Mississippi to Western Oregon and figured out what those schools were doing right to have a good success rate.…
Why We Should Stop Grading Students on a Curve by Adam Grant, is about a professor who is dealing with grade inflation and deflation the problem with higher education. This professor promises to his students that he will never curve down but only up. He also tries to guide his student to work together while studding so that they will do better on the test. He was trying to get the student to work together so that they will all succeed instead of only a few. He gets them to support one another instead of working in competition against fellow classmates.…
During this essay the authors tone was very direct and persuasive toward anyone whom was reading the article. All in all, you could conclude that the author, Carl Singleton thinks very poorly teachers and the schooling system in general. Within in the composition the author claims that “Illiteracy among high-school graduates is growing because those students have been passed rather than flunked; we have low- quality teachers who never should have been certified in the first place…” in other words he [the author] believes low quality teaching leads to unfair grading. I believe that teachers probably realize that when kids always get F’s after putting in a lot of effort it lowers their self-esteem and will make them want to give up. Instead of keep trying. I know for a fact that if I kept getting F’s on papers that I worked my heart out on all the time I would eventually quit because I would feel stupid and feel…
We live in a society that uses grades as a reflection of learning. Grades are supposed to show how well you know a subject, but is that what they really show? In our society it has become more about getting the grade than actually learning the subject. What impact do grades even have on learning? Jerry Farber, a professor at the University of California wrote an article, titled “A Young Person’s Guide,” that discussed grades and the impact, or lack thereof, they have on learning. Farber is correct in saying that our school grading systems are terrible because grades are not an accurate representation of someone's knowledge.…
College education, in general, is a very controversial topic amongst society mainly in America. The articles “The Purpose of Higher Education” by Richard Kahlenberg of The Chronicle of Higher Education and “America’s Most Overrated Product: The Bachelor’s Degree” by Marty Nemko also of The Chronicle of Higher Education both address these issues associated with college education. Colleges have become a business, often times seeing students as revenue instead of students wishing to learn (Nemko 2). College are building towering, very elaborate buildings, and creating a website that shows everything the college has to offer but leaves one important aspect out: it’s rate at getting college graduates jobs, how much a student learns, and really spends at that institution. College isn’t connecting with its students’ who attend as it once did. Very large lecture classes are a main contributor to the separation of professor and student. This is causing roughly 44.6 percent of students’ nationwide to become dissatisfied with the quality of education they are receiving (Nemko 2). Also, approximately 43.5 percent of students’ nationwide are frequently reporting that they found themselves being bored in class in surveys from the Higher Education Research Institute at the Univ. of California at Los Angeles (Nemko 2). Nemko adds, “A 2006 study supported by Pew Charitable Trusts found that 50 percent of college seniors scored below “proficient” levels on a test that required them to do such basic tasks as understanding the arguments of newspaper editorials or compare credit-card offers” (2). Despite the inabilities for colleges to produce well rounded, qualified individuals, they are constantly being given more taxpayers dollars and allowed to raise tuitions (Nemko 2). According to Nemko, “College should be held at least as accountable as tire companies are” meaning that…
An article was published in The New York Times by Max Roosevelt titled “Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grades Disputes.” The focus of this editorial was to highlight what is often seen as a disruption to grades and our educational system. Many students these days feel they are entitled to higher grades because they did what was only expected of them which do not involve the greatest effort. In my opinion, a student that subjects themselves to minimum effort should receive the minimum grade without any complaints. In past experience, I have realized that students fail to recognize their creative abilities which cause typical mind-sets and projections. Professor Marshall Grossman of the University of Maryland presumes that he will receive complaints whenever he returns assignments to students; many feel as though they are privileged in this manner. Grossman’s point is outlined relatively throughout the article, providing useful information through personal experience based on his observations. A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, highlights his objective whereas 40 percent of surveyors believe that they should receive a B just for completing the required reading.…
Second, The author claims that the idealized college environment has no longer existed today. Students learn less in the way of subject matter, but also in the way of hard work, self-discipline, self-restraint, and respect. The students are not taking college seriously as they were before. Their bills paid by their parents not themselves is one of the factors.…
The line that separates what doing the right thing as opposed to doing the wrong thing is often very thin. This line holds a grey area that prevents many things from being deemed as either right or wrong. For example, a lot of times somebody does the wrong thing, but for reasons that are not explicitly wrong. The Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal demonstrates this example well. The Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal refers to the 44 Atlanta schools that were found to have cheated on standardized tests a few years back. Educators manipulated the tests to make the students score higher and were eventually caught. The grey area regarding this situation does not include the cheating, but the underlying issues that led to the cheating.…
According to Shepard (2005) there are two reasons for grade inflation. First she talks about how colleges turned into a “consumer product”. As Shepard (2005) explains “Pure and simple, tuition at a private college runs, on average, nearly $28,000 a year. If parents pay that much, they expect nothing less than A’s in return” (p.452). In other words, people think that if they pay for college they want straight A’s no matter how hard they work. The second reason is “helicopter parents”, these are the parent who are watching their kids every move. They want their kids to do so well that they end up pressuring them, which then leads the students to turn to grade…
Throughout the United States, students are enrolling in colleges and universities at records numbers. This trend is occurring in spite of the hard to swallow increases in tuition and fees by institutions of higher learning. For example, attending a two-year college in 1980 would cost a low-income family 6% of their income; in 2000, the number was 12%. Those attending four-year schools in the same period spent 13% in 1980 and 25% in 2000 (Higher Education , 2012). The cause of the increase has been contributed to higher education cost, an increase in technology, and other educationally related expenses. As a result, it has become more and more difficult for those in middle and lower-income families to attend college. The persistent increases in tuition, along with government assistance targeting certain demographics and family income not keeping pace, has made it difficult for some to earn a college degree. Therefore, as America opens her classrooms in search for her next great scientist or mathematician, she systematically locks the doors of opportunity to a large portion of her population.…