Slate wants to redesign college.

Of course, they asked academics how.

Charming.

And each academic insisted on greater emphasis on their own particular dick to jerk axe to grind.
A History and Germanic studies teacher wants more grammar and respect for professor's experiences. A co-director of a disability studies program wants more disability studies. Everybody wants more liberal arts and philosophy.

Why? Because that's what makes academic dicks hard perpetuates the idea of college as finishing school for the white collar world. Enriches you, prepares you to interact with culture, wank wank wank. And keeps these suckers employed.

I believe in the liberal arts, by the way. I believe in alternative curriculums and funky make your own majors. I believe in all of the wanky, gimmicky courses that should all be titled, in the spirit of full disclosure "Prof. Drones On About Own Graduate Thesis 230-310".

But I don't believe that that's for anyone. I don't even believe that it's possible for everyone. I don't believe everyone needs it, wants it, or will benefit from it. It's mean to force it on people who won't realize any benefit.

I spent 45 minutes yesterday explaining to an older, motherly, pushy, hillbilly, confused woman a basic practical use of statistics in the sciences. And she kept telling me that I was wrong. Patiently, patiently I explained to her this element again, and again, and again. And she wasn't listening, didn't want to, was sure that she was right and I was wrong.

"No, listen. If what they're saying is P is LESS THAN .01, and that's the threshold they've set, then, the null hypothesis is rejected, and the results can be said to be not the result of chance"

Over, and over, and over again. Until the professor came over and told her that I was right.

Today I've taken a day off work to rewrite a group paper, for another class. A group paper that I was shouted down about, not allowed to edit properly, not even allowed to annotate correctly. A group paper in which, when I was trying to relate the material (a film) to the concepts in the reading, my group members said I was doing "plot summary" and "making it too long".

There's a lot of group work at UMass. Group work is trendy right now. It makes students feel like they are actually doing something, not just listening to the professor. Group work, when students have such varying degrees of college readiness, as there are at UMass, is useless.

And that's the real problem of college education. The real way it needs to be made over. It trys to be too many things to too many people. The slate article only really deals with the elite liberal arts student at a private school, with good high school preparation, and some motivation to actually BE in college.

Unfortunately, that's not the majority of college students now.
People feel (and sometimes rightly) that not having a college education bars them from the middle class. So everyone needs one, now. So there are colleges (Like Umass) who don't turn anyone away. Colleges that serve huge populations that are hugely unprepared for college. People who don't know how to study, how to read critically, how to get their own questions answered. And these people make classes slow down. They make papers shorter. The entire experience is graded down to suit the efforts of the professor to the unmodified aptitudes of the least prepared students.

There are two solutions to this problem, which, for best effect, should take effect together.

1. Public, post-secondary technical education. The Katharine Gibbs, East Coast Aerotech, and the rest of the for-profit, advertise-during-jerry-springer pack shouldn't be the only way to prepare for a career without college. Every public university system should have a technical school, open enrollment, fucking rigorous, practical. These are careers are society values, skills that will broaden employment options.

2. Placement testing and a foundation year at most large, non-selective universities. Not everyone needs English One, Algebra 1, Bio 1. But everyone needs to have the ability to write a college length paper, with good grammar, spelling, and accurate, appropriate citations. They need to know how to use the library, for research. They need to become so adept that they can get most answers to background questions themselves. They need to understand the scientific method, statistics, and provenance. If you can do these things, you procede to year two. If you can't, you get a year of college that leaves you as prepared for what is to come as anyone who went to the best high school.