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quantumreality
2010-01-17 08:09 pm UTC (link)

2. While many readers may view me as an “asshole” that is too “entitled” and “self-absorbed” to care about my education, your assumptions are just that…assumptions. I graduated valedictorian from high school and transferred to UoM: Dearborn with a 3.75 GPA.

THE ENTITLED STUPID IS STARING SO HARD AT ME I NEED SUNGLASSES.

Seriously what the fuck? Ok, so he was valedictorian. *twirls finger* in the grand scheme of things, I doubt it matters that much. And that bit about transferring from a community college wth a 3.75 GPA?

Dude.

If you apply yourself in college it's not hard at all to snag a really good GPA. I did some bird courses in a community college and walked out with a 4.08 going into university transfer. Guess what? That's when I hit the hard slog and my grades dropped to more realistic levels. :P

In most instances when it comes to colleges and universities, I find that they operate under a backwards business model. As a rule of thumb, customers come first. After all, satisfied customers means increased revenue and likeliness that references will be acquired blahblah blah more crap

The thing is, state-funded institutions in particular get a fair chunk of cash from the state government, not from the tuition-payers. There's a reason why it costs $40k a year to go to Harvard and only $8k to hit a state uni.

So his very idea that they operate on a 'business model' is false, since they actually exist as quasi-public institutions and therefore serve the public purpose of relatively broad access to higher education. This sort of public-spirited purpose goes back to the days of land-grant colleges.

He does make a valid point that students are treated with relatively little respect but this has nothing to do with the common courtesy expected of students that they'll pay attention in class and not blatantly use their electronics to distract themselves.

le sigh.

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ladybirdsleeps
2010-01-17 08:23 pm UTC (link)

He does make a valid point that students are treated with relatively little respect

I've never had this problem, at least not when it comes to teachers and students - the people who text messaging in the classroom will annoy. Bureaucracy is another matter, but it respects nobody, not even the people in it.

There are always going to be assholes, but if being disrespected characterizes his experiences with college so much that he thinks it gives him the right to do whatever the hell he wants, maybe the problem isn't the college.

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sparkysrevenge
2010-01-18 01:39 am UTC (link)

My state-supported school? $3600. That's per year, not semester, and I graduated in 2008, so it's not super-inflated yet.

Students were treated with less respect at my first college (state-supported school, 16k students) than my 2nd (also state-supported, 7k students, originally a community college), but the sorts of people who went to my 2nd school typically ranged over the age of 25, and almost every professor of mine had a professional job to supplement their teaching. But my first school? Teachers were extremely rude to students, and I didn't appreciate it. It had nothing to do with cellphones, though.

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evilsqueakers
2010-01-18 01:52 am UTC (link)

If you apply yourself in college it's not hard at all to snag a really good GPA. I did some bird courses in a community college and walked out with a 4.08 going into university transfer. Guess what? That's when I hit the hard slog and my grades dropped to more realistic levels. :P

It is when the school uses some weird diagram. I can have 2 As and a 1 B but only 7 hours of class so I don't get a 3.5 GPA. I get something like a 3.33 or something. If you take under 12 hours, you're hosed even if you take hard classes and need a lighter schedule.

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digigirl132
2010-01-18 11:35 am UTC (link)

Also, based in my experience in two separate schools, high school is nothing like college at all.

In high school I had almost no homework, because we had time in class to do it (and at one school, we had 20 minutes at the end of the day to do any work we had). That generally keeps grades up, because people are doing the work. But when you get to college, a lot of the work is done at home, and if you don't get the work done or develop good study habits then you are going to fail.

Also, deadlines. If there's one thing I wish they were stricter about in high school, it's deadlines. So many of my classmates flunked out of college because they couldn't turn anything in on time.

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	librarianmouse 2010-01-18 09:26 pm UTC (link)
	I was one of those "smart kids." I graduated from high school with a GPA of around 4.3, and about 25 college credits. Then I almost flunked out of my first semester of college because I had no idea how studying worked, since I'd never done it before. So I happen to think that this guy is in for a very rude awakening rather soon. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	digigirl132 2010-01-18 09:34 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, this has to be his first year of college. Though I'm surprised he made it through the fall semester. (Reply to this)(Parent)

frequentmouse
2010-01-19 09:30 pm UTC (link)

I was one of the other sort: graduated from high school with a 2.3; that munificent GPA was dragged upwardfrom 1.9 after a senior year where I was always above 3.5.

My first two years in College, drawing on the stuff I was learning in the library and at home, I got a 3.9; then I went to Evergreen and got great if slightly befuddled evaluations; then I took a second BA and graduated Summa, with mostly grad level classes.

And then my brain fell out and I dropped out of grad school, because hyperfocus only takes you so far.

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	tetradecimal 2010-01-18 03:22 pm UTC (link)
	As a rule of thumb, customers come first All I heard was MEMEMEME. (Reply to this)(Parent)

snarkhunter
2010-01-20 01:57 am UTC (link)

He does make a valid point that students are treated with relatively little respect

Yeah, this can be a real problem, and there's no reason for it. Students deserve respect, just as their professors do.

I think the problem, at least in my experience, is that we just get so worn down by entitled or difficult students. I mean, students have, what, maybe 4-5 professors a semester at the most, and at least two or three of them, total, are probably complete dickbags or utterly useless in the classroom. But those 4-5 professors a semester each have 3-5 classes of their own, with anywhere from 15-200 students in them. I've got something like 65 students right now--a very light load. And so while one student being difficult is no big deal, student after difficult student starts to wear one down, and you develop this really horrid attitude about them.

Which doesn't excuse treating one's students badly, or talking badly about them where they can hear you (at home...with friends...over wine...that's different), but I think it explains it a bit.

Then again, some people are just giant dickbags.

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	librarianmouse 2010-01-20 06:20 am UTC (link)
	Then again, some people are just giant dickbags. This needs to be on a T-Shirt. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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