[Magdalen] US Higher Education

[Roger Stokes]

On 11/01/2015 19:07, James Oppenheimer-Crawford wrote:
> 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.

Should it have been named Duchess County without the "t" given that lineage?

> 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.

The book I have nearly read is "College Unbound" and the author does not 
decry the maturizational effect of college.  Indeed he recognizes it as 
essential for all people but that this maturiz ation can come through 
different routes., Basically his theme seems to be one size does *not* 
fit all and a four year college course may not be the right choice for 
all high school graduates.  I echo that view from this side of the pond.

Roger