Why Do So Many Idiots Opine on College Education?

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Clarissa

April 16, 2015

Everybody is joyfully and dumbly quoting the following bit of idiocy:

Moreso than any time in the past, today there are huge numbers of students flocking to college who have zero ability to succeed there. Universities of course want to retain these students, and in order to do so they have to create a massive bureaucracy of support services. Any skill tangentially related to completing college level work now has a lavishly staffed support center devoted to it on campus. A writing center, a study skills program, tutoring services, a math helpdesk, a massive bureaucracy devoted to the shockingly large share of students diagnosed with various disabilities, and anything else you can imagine.

It’s true that an enormous number of underprepared students come to college. This is especially true for public universities that cater to people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. And it is true that a lot of remedial teaching has to be done to get students to the point where their writing and reading skills would at least somewhat approach a normal adult level.

But this crucial work is not done by the semi-literate paper-pushers. It’s done by professors. For free. There is no “massive bureaucracy” at the math help desk or the writing center. Just think about it, how would a bureaucrat manage to help a student with math? The whole idea is bizarre.

I’m heading over to campus in a bit to dedicate the time that is my own to helping precisely such underprepared students. I get it that I will never be compensated for this work. But at least I’d like to see an acknowledgment that this is the work that professors do.

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20 responses to “Why Do So Many Idiots Opine on College Education?”

David P. Bellamy

April 16, 2015

Our administration has funded a math help center staffed by undergrad math majors. It is pretty effective, but not enough.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 16, 2015
  
  We now have this great program where advanced undergrads work as tutors of Spanish to help the students who are falling behind. The program is extremely effective and very cheap since we only pay a minimum wage to the workers.
  
  But this program will not get any more funding because of the budget cuts. Apparently, these 5 minimum-wage workers are the reason the state of Illinois is bankrupt. So the students will not get paid and, instead, the positions will be turned into unpaid internships. :-(((((((((((((((((
  
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  1. Z
    
    April 18, 2015
    
    We had created such a program and it was great, but it was demolished because it was run by faculty and majors in field and was therefore not “professional” enough. Now the only tutors are in another building, and they have to be minimally qualified in a few different subjects, and you can only see them 4 times per semester for 30 minutes per time, and you have to have an appointment. That’s professional, all right…
    
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2. Z
  
  April 18, 2015
  
  The one at Berkeley was staffed by TAs & was open at all hours, as I remember. Go in at almost any time and someone competent would work with you. I was amazed by it & am shocked we don’t have anything like it.
  
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  1. Z
    
    April 18, 2015
    
    (I refer to the math one.)
    
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Shakti

April 16, 2015

Any skill tangentially related to completing college level work now has a lavishly staffed support center devoted to it on campus. A writing center, a study skills program, tutoring services, a math helpdesk, a massive bureaucracy devoted to the shockingly large share of students diagnosed with various disabilities, and anything else you can imagine.
That didn’t really exist where I went to college. I had a friend who desperately needed help of the remedial kind in her psychology class. She got that help not by going to any center, but from another friend who spent hours of her time going over homework.

The students who need the most help are the least prepared and least equipped to navigate any bureaucracy.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 16, 2015
  The best system would be to allow departments to set up their own remediation programs. Like the one we have for students who fall behind in Spanish or the one David Bellamy describes. No bureaucracy is involved (precisely for the reasons that you mention.) There is no paperwork to fill out. Everything is happening on an individual, personal basis. And it works. But the tutorship program is being demolished.
  
  “The students who need the most help are the least prepared and least equipped to navigate any bureaucracy.”
  
  I can’t agree strongly enough! So many times when I tell students that they need to approach student services or apply for something, I see the light go out of their eyes and I know exactly why that is. I’m right now applying for long-term disability insurance and the process is driving me up a wall because it is so complex.
  
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Pen

April 16, 2015

Most of the time people aren’t being paid for those positions! They’re staffed by either professors or students–or both–and the students who are getting paid are getting something like $10-20 a week for it. Where is this massive bureaucracy? And why are students’ and professors’ claims so often dismissed because “they don’t really know what it’s like?”

As far as disability services go, there’s a bit of filing and paperwork, but many schools only have two or three people to deal with that work. Testing centers are run mainly by work-study students or volunteers, and extra time not taking place in the testing center is taken over by the professor (or, in some places, by grad students). How is that a massive bureaucracy?

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 16, 2015
  “Where is this massive bureaucracy? And why are students’ and professors’ claims so often dismissed because “they don’t really know what it’s like?””
  
  Exactly! People repeat this silly myth of wasteful academics and overspending colleges with the kind of glee that I find suspicious.
  
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shadowofashade

April 16, 2015

“And why are students’ and professors’ claims so often dismissed because “they don’t really know what it’s like?”

Because the students and professors are not donors to political campaigns?

A problem with the article is that it faults the colleges, and not the culture that thinks a college degree will instantly lead to big money, and/or serves as some sort of proof that a person is worthy of hire. A bachelor’s degree is just a piece of paper, and says “This person has stayed with a subject for 4 years”: a certificate of perseverance?

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DWeird

April 16, 2015

Is there a detailed breakdown of the kinds of administrative staff (or what these “kinds” would even be) hired and how that changed through time available anywhere?

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1. Z
  
  April 18, 2015
  
  Yes, I have seen several pieces like this. I don’t have them at fingertips but one might start by looking through Academe (a professional journal): http://www.aaup.org/academe
  
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Jonathan Mayhew

April 17, 2015

We have a new office of first-year experience. This did not exist three years ago and is a new layer of bureaucracy designed to help freshmen students. There is also a new vice-provost for undergraduate studies. Once again, a proliferation and duplication of administrative functions. No single one of these branches of the administration will break the bank, but put them all together, incrementally increase their number, and you will take away from the departments whose role it is to teach and research. Writing centers and tutoring are not really the problem, but the proliferation of administration with more tenuous connection to core functions.

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1. Z
  
  April 18, 2015
  
  Our first year experience program has now been assessed by yet another outside agency and appears to be detrimental.
  
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Jonathan Mayhew

April 17, 2015

And “moreso” is not a word.

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Z

April 18, 2015

It is true that there are massive and wasteful bureaucracies but it is because they have created academic staff to take over some of the professor functions.

Example: advisors. Instead of being advised by a professor, you are advised by a staffer who has been trained to advise. That downgrades the quality of advice, of course. But it allows the university to have fewer professors. The goal is to have most faculty be contingent / be instructors, with very high teaching loads and no other duties to speak of. There will be research stars in a few fields, and they will mostly do research and direct a few dissertations. Students will be taught by minimally prepared contingent faculty, and advised by minimally prepared contingent staffers. This affords the kind of “flexibility” the university run as a Wal*Mart-style business requires.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 18, 2015
  
  Again, I have to agree. This is a model that is coming into existence. And is it really necessary to point out why this is a horrible model?
  
  Just from the purely jingoistic, ultra patriotic point of view, this is a horrible model.
  
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Z

April 18, 2015

And just in general: there are some institutional crises here and they have kept me up tonight; unhygienically I have not donned the correct seignorial manner of dealing with these things. I will don it now. But I will say I endorse your p.o.v., against the shocking hatred of research and knowledge which reigns outside universities and at times within. It is hard for me to see ill will because I am un-cynical to a fault and sincere to a fault. But there it is.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 18, 2015
  
  It is absolutely a malicious, intentional destruction of research that is guided by ill will.
  
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“Malicious, intentional destruction, guided by ill will” | coldhearted scientist وداد

April 18, 2015

[…] It is what is done to my field and research in my field by the university, and from a much broader point of view there is this. […]

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