[Magdalen] US Higher Education

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

Higher education is changing, and not neceesarily for the better.

It was the assumption that if one attended college, one would attend a set
curriculum of courses, over which you had little to say. The educators knew
what you needed to learn, and it was your job to be there and learn it. At
the same time, and not any less important, the student was placed in many
situations in which civilized behavior was also learned. When I first moved
to the Dutchess county area of New York in 1975, I immediately began
meeting a long line of formidable and remarkable women who were graduates
of Vassar College.  They were a living testimonial to the fact that just by
being in a great institute of higher learning, you changed.
Pretty much up to the time it ceased to function as such, vassar was geared
to provide a signualr and remarkable education to women with the goal of
preparing them to be remarkable citizens. One can argue that for such
education, the course material is incidental.

Today, few colleges truly function in this way anymore, and as a result we
have a large number of people just saying, "What's the use of higher
education?"

Arguing that online and independent study are "equally valid" kind of
misses the point, since they are not.  One hopes that in the near future
technology will make online education far more responsive to the needs of
the student, but that time is not yet. Independent study is only useful for
certain subjects not requiring more than rote or literalistic learning.  An
independent study course in some historical period will appear to be
terrific right up to that moment when a passerby says, "But what about the
impact of ... ?" and throws the whole thing off the rails.

Many courses are well served by a literalistic presentation, but many are
not; they require a kind of on-going dialogue between student and teacher.
And the best teachers are the ones who not only tolerate those tiresome
questions that interrupt his lectures, but joyfully welcomes them as the
only clear signs that actual Learning is transpiring.



James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better
for people coming behind you, and you don’t do it, you're wasting your time
on this Earth.”  -- *Roberto Clemente

On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 12:20 PM, Roger Stokes <
roger.stokes65 at btinternet.com> wrote:

> I am nearing the end of a book (on Kindle) considering the US Higher
> Education system.  The author says so many credits are required for a
> degree, a concept I can understand.  However he then suggests that credits
> are obtained by attending so many hours of lectures and implies that there
> is no real test of what has been learned during the course.
>
> Is this really the case - turn up and you get the credits with minimal
> testing?
>
> Roger
>