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College Dropouts
Topic Started: Apr 16 2007, 07:37 PM (358 Views)
piercehawkeye45
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Franklin Pierce
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http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2007/04/16/71562

"MNDaily"
 

Now at the end of the term we are reminded once again that at every major university, certain courses fail predictably large numbers of undergraduates semester after semester, year after year.
Thirty, 40, and (if we include drops and withdrawals) even 60 percent failure rates are not uncommon, especially in introductory courses, such as mathematics, chemistry and biology, but also occasionally in the social sciences and humanities as well.

An institution whose avowed purpose is to educate students, you might think, would naturally interpret high failure rates as a sign of failure on the part of the course or teacher. Yet such self-indictments are rare, for lack of student success can always be attributed to a host of other causes. Here are two of the most popular.

Blame the victim

Since students must take responsibility for their own learning, it follows they must also be responsible for their failure to learn. Some students (the best and the brightest?) always manage to get through every course, and where some succeed, neither the course nor the teaching as such need be faulted for high failure rates.

The problems must lie elsewhere: for example, in 1) character faults that make students apathetic or lazy or lacking in proper study habits; 2) inadequate finances that force them to work low-paying jobs to pay for fancy apartments - or high tuition; or 3) being products of a secondary education system that leaves students (especially Americans) woefully unprepared for university-level work.

Praise the culprit

If the inadequacies of undergraduates are assumed to be pervasive and generally acknowledged - whatever their cause - then any course that does not fail a significant proportion of its enrollees cannot be doing its job.

"Gate keeper" courses exist for that very purpose, preventing masses of students from entering the promised land, and even in disciplines where there is no danger of admitting too many majors, high failure rates are often taken as evidence of academic rigor. Such courses, it is claimed, help maintain high intellectual standards by refusing to "dumb down" the content or succumb to the pressures of grade inflation. Hard subjects make for hard courses, and when the going gets hard, students start failing.

Now, what's wrong with all the clichés by which a university shifts blame for student failure away from itself?

If students could in fact take complete responsibility for their learning, and hence for their failures, then teaching them wouldn't be necessary at all. But they cannot. The responsibility for education rests as much with the educators as the educated, and so just as every instance of student success redounds to the credit of the teacher, the course and the institution, so also every failure constitutes an institutional failure.

It makes no difference whether the students are under prepared by the secondary schools they come from; it is a university's job to teach the students it admits. For it makes a promise by admitting them - not to hand out free degrees, obviously, but to offer a series of learning opportunities suited to their talents and needs. And when it admits only the upper 25 percent of high school students, there's not much excuse for a university's inability to find ways to make virtually every student successful, not by changing the curve or "social passing," but finding methods that actually work.

If too many students are failing when all of them are taught the same way, then something new needs to be tried. If too many students are failing when they're in large lecture courses, then something new needs to be tried. If too many students are failing when good mentors have already been made available, then something new needs to be tried. If too many students are failing when general education students are enrolled in the same course as pre-majors, then something new needs to be tried.

But how many is too many? What is the percentage that should trigger self-reflection, self-doubt and change on the part of the institution? At what point must we admit that it's not the students who are failing the courses but the courses that are failing the students?

That question only the conscience of the university can answer.

Personally, being a current university student, I think it is mostly the student's fault while teachers can play a big role in it too. I know of many students that just give up when they don't understand the material, blame the teacher, and do nothing to get extra help. But these students aren't part of the controversy, no matter how hard a teacher tries to teach, these students will most likely fail out.

The controversy comes when most of the students are starting to do very bad on tests, assignments, and that. In my Calculus class right now, the average test scores for our first two midterms were 48 and 55 out of 100 and I'm pretty sure the midterms do not get curved. If the average is that low, is it the students fault, or maybe the professors, or maybe just the material is too hard, or a complex combination of the first three?

Another controversy comes when a student does go to class every day, works with other classmates to understand the lessons, and goes to the TA/professor's office hours yet still doesn't understand the material. For all the hard work, should we sometimes lower standards for these types of people to succeed or should we keep our higher standards and let nature sort them out?

Opinions or experiences?
Dropped the atomic bomb let them know that it's real
Speak soft with a big stick do what I say or be killed
I'm America!

I have found the enemy and he is us.
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Killer Bee
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From my own experience, it's a double edge blade. I'll explain:

For the student(s) that only shows up to class once per month and complains about how hard the subject matter is, why are they having trouble? If they're smart enough to skip class 90% of the time, then they should be able to ace any test given that semester/quarter. In cases like these, it's like they are paying $7,000 per semester to flunk out. Sad. I wish I had that kind of money to party..... To accomplish anything in life, it takes making an effort.

For the student(s) that do show up and put forth the effort and they still are having difficulty, then maybe the style the class is being taught needs to be changed. If an instructor/professor has to curve the test scores so a 50% is passing a test, there is a huge problem. Also, if there are a few students who are gifted and ace all tests and the instructor/professor curves to their scores, that's also a problem. There should be NO curves when grading tests in college. If you're teaching and no one's getting it, how will curving ultimatley do any good? Outside of just passing a student who may not understand anything you taught for the length of the class. When I was in college, most of the TA'a were about as useful as tits on a bull. When you could get one to help, their "I'm in a Frat and you're not" attitude gave me the urge to go homicidal on them. I guess there really is no clear cut solution to poorly teaching at the university level, except for an across the board study involving a large handfull of universities to find out what their weakest subjects are and then setting up new criteria to help students pass and UNDERSTAND the material. I do think, Pierce, it's a combination of student ethics, harder than high school subjects and poor teaching. Just my two cents anyways.
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BohemianG
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I'm a university dropout.

I was essentially told what course I should be doing, and then told that a gap year was a waste of time and money. The gears of my going to university were in motion when I had no commitments down here where I live. Unfortunately, I then got a girlfriend (the one I am still with). The university in question was over 200 miles from home, and seeing her often was not viable. I was increasingly depressed and, well, a bit disturbed (thinking nothing of writing on the walls in my own blood...Christ, what was I thinking (I sound very emo now, don't I)). On top of this, I wasn't too enthusiastic about the content of the course that I had been shuttled into. It wasn't my original choice, but I was told by advisors that it'd be better for me. Of course, it wasn't. So, a course I didn't really want to do at a place very far away from the sole romantic interest I'd ever had (what did you expect, I'm a geeeeek). And so, these things contributed to my increasing unhappiness, until it came to the point when there really was no point carrying on.

So yes. Don't get romanitcally involved with anyone, ever! ;)

I might go back in the future. To a different place and on a different course.
Mister 'Balls' Sinister
 
Normandy took more balls than Vietnam, it took more balls than Korea, it took more balls than facing mustard gas on a battlefield full of giant ditches with nowhere to run. It took more balls than the world will ever be able to ante up again.
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严加华
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Unsurprisingly I side (mostly) with the teachers. Yes there are terrible teachers out there. Yes they seem to congregate in universities. (Universities, after all, are not institutions of learning. They're institutions of research where learning is a side-activity.)

Still, push comes to shove, the teacher can do absolutely nothing to put knowledge into the students' heads. The student does the learning. The teacher can only ease the process.

The most common question I get in my line of work is "how can I improve my English?" My answer never satisfies. Because my answer is "work". Or "use it". Or, the long version, "to improve your speaking, speak; your writing, write; your listening, listen; your reading, read." The answer isn't appreciated because, although it is 100% true, it involves work. And work is not what they want to hear. What they're really asking is "how can I have English magically implanted in my head?"
LC Sez: Posted Image
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piercehawkeye45
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Franklin Pierce
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Ñϼӻª
Apr 16 2007, 05:57 PM
Unsurprisingly I side (mostly) with the teachers. Yes there are terrible teachers out there. Yes they seem to congregate in universities. (Universities, after all, are not institutions of learning. They're institutions of research where learning is a side-activity.)

Some universities are geared more towards learning and other towards research. My university has a goal of being the number three research facility in the world by 2015 or something like that. I've had some bad teachers already but usually they just let the TAs teach.
Dropped the atomic bomb let them know that it's real
Speak soft with a big stick do what I say or be killed
I'm America!

I have found the enemy and he is us.
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Dizzarth Stumpy
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i can say with total certainty that me dropping out of college was 100% my fault...
STUMPY WAS RIGHT. HIS TOUCHING SOLILOQUY HAS MOVED ME, TRULY A MANIPULATOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. I HAVE ALLOWED HIM USAGE OF HIS PREVIOUS ACCOUNT.
EHRHRHRHRNGGHH
LC is the best and brought back my embarassing sex tapes.
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Grenelle
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I know someone who dropped out of university after her mum died, to support her family (financially more than anything) so that was nobodies fault, really. It was a shame, as she was an incredibly intelligent girl and would have done well at uni. Ah well. She might go back, one day.
Blanc sur rouge et rien ne bouge.
Rouge sur blanc, tout fout le camp.
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