'We Are Creating Walmarts of Higher Education'

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/we-are-creating-walmarts-of-higher-education/282619/



Universities in South Dakota, Nebraska, and other states have cut the number of credits students need to graduate. A proposal in Florida would let online courses forgo the usual higher-education accreditation process. A California legislator introduced a measure that would have substituted online courses for some of the brick-and-mortar kind at public universities.

Some campuses of the University of North Carolina system are mulling getting rid of history, political science, and various others of more than 20 “low productive” programs. The University of Southern Maine may drop physics. And governors in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin have questioned whether taxpayers should continue subsidizing public universities for teaching the humanities.

Under pressure to turn out more students, more quickly and for less money, and to tie graduates’ skills to workforce needs, higher-education institutions and policy makers have been busy reducing the number of required credits, giving credit for life experience, and cutting some courses, while putting others online.

Now critics are raising the alarm that speeding up college and making it cheaper risks dumbing it down. “We all want to have more students graduate and graduate in a more timely manner,” says Rudy Fichtenbaum, president of the American Association of University Professors. “The question is, do you do this by lowering your standards?”

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. yep

[malthaussen]

2. Knowledge factories? n/t

[jdadd]

3. I think of George Carlins Rant....

"Just smart enough to Run the machines, and do the paperwork. But not smart enough to figure out how badly they're getting fucked...."

[Berlum]

7. 21st Century Proles

[Iris]

4. College is already dumbed down.

Why not just about it?

[countryjake]

5. ...

Drive-thru colleges. How enlightening.

K&R!

[mnhtnbb]

6. The Republicans--led by Koch Brother clone Art Pope in NC--are determined

to dumb down and 'right wing' size the long standing well known
and respected University of NC system--particularly the flagship campus
at Chapel Hill. They've been after the University for years, and now
that they have control of the State government, they are determined
to turn it into a right wing factory for creating unthinking widget makers.

They are going to have a battle on their hands.

[woo me with science]

8. Proles need to be able to obey.

Think? Not so much.

K&R for this disturbing article.