On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 13:21:00 -0400 Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
writes:
> Justin:
>
>
> > Generally speaking I'd say, what do you really expect
> > of students? For the most part very little in their
> > lives or background, or future prospects, exists to
> > have stimulated intellectual curiosity, love of
> > learning, or doing hard work that doesn't produce
> > extrinsic rewards. In the humanities and social
> > sciences, lots of students take classes as
> > distributional requirements, and without these,
> > there'd be even less demand for philosophy, english,
> > history, political science, sociology, or anthropology
> > professors -- maybe even less demand for economics
> > profs. Occasionally you get the student with a live
> > mind or the ones who mind you can help to spark. For
> > the rest, you try to impart some basic skills that
> > will help them in their endeavors.
>
>
> Amen! Schools have become credential selling institutions - perhaps
> more so
> than they used to. That means a very different composition of the
> student
> population. It used to be more selective - more likely to attract
> mainly
> those with interest in the subject matter or intellectual pursuits -
Well in the United States colleges and universities have long been interested in recruiting students who had little interest in intellectual pursuits as such. Back in the 19th century, it was not the norm even among the wealthy upper class for young people to go on to college. And keep in mind there was a lot less credentialism than is the case now a days. Generally speaking, university degrees were not required for practicing most professions. For instance, most lawyers learned the law by apprenticing to practicing attorneys, what was called "reading law," and then going on to take the bar exam. Most physicians were trained in proprietary medical schools where the courses of study ran from anywhere from six months to two years. Generally the graduates of such schools, after having picked up a smattering of science, would then work for a time under an established general practitioner, before going on to hang out their shingles. Under such conditions, it was generally only the most academically young people who would consider going to college or university. With the growth of a wealthy upper class during the 19th century, colleges and universities began to seek out ways to make their institutions more attractive to this affluent clientale. Thus they introduced such things as student athletics, fraternities and eating clubs and so forth to make college life more attractive. Since many of these students were not necessarily strongly drawn to intellectual pursuits, other means had to be used to attract them.
> but
> somewhere down the line (I cannot pinpoint the exact time, but I
> would say
> around the 1970s - at least in Europe - but perhaps earlier in the
> US)
> colleges started turning into credential distribution outlets.
>
> I think there are several factors responsible for that:
> - the progressive idea of social advancement through education
> - the business practices of demanding college credentials for
> routine jobs
> - which in itself was a way of avoiding discrimination suits (you
> could
> always claim that the candidate you hired had "better education" -
> whether
> needed for the job or not
> - structural unemployment which pushed both young and older people to
> colleges
> - social status associated with credentials.
>
> The net effect of that was not that people are getting dumber -
> although
> that may be the case as well - but that there is a change in the
> composition
> of the student population - the "pointy-headed geeks" became a
> minority, and
> there is an increased intake of people who are seeking credentials
> rather
> than education, and would not enter college under the "old"
> conditions.
>
> So chastising professors for "contempt" for their students is really
> missing
> the point that educators are increasingly asked to perform tasks for
> which
> they have not been prepared or equipped - selling credentials and
> entertaining paying customers. No wonder they get frustrated,
> especially
> that they are usually the first to blame for all social problems
> affecting
> their clients (i.e. "students").
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
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