, 2 min read
If you attend all classes, you pass…
Two profs allegedly got fired because they refused to grade students based on “effort” instead of results. Not that I think that recognizing effort in the grading is such an evil thing… and maybe the policy was even acceptable… Saying that students attending all lectures will pass the course might have its advantages… but the fact that the fellows were fired tells us something about the state of education in North America right now… I think there is clearly a downward spiral as far as the academic level goes. Not that I think it is necessarily bad.
It is a bit troubling in the following way however. If Internet is making information more widely available as before, and the university is no long the holder (and certainly not creator) of knowledge… I was thinking that universities could still authenticate knowledge: provide proof to someone that you do, in fact, know about archeology. But I forgot that academic levels have been going down in the last 20 years or so. So what will remain? Someone commented in one of my earlier posts that universities are good at organizing knowledge. Knowledge might be readily available through Google, but it isn’t validated or organized very well. I guess, this is true: university professors are pretty good at determining what is sensible knowledge, with the unavoidable mistakes and bias. We are also pretty good at organizing it in a sensible fashion. However, time and time again, studies show that students overwhelming enrol in courses and degrees, not to learn, but for the recognition they get. They don’t care so much about the work professors do to organize and validate knowledge. If we lower the academic levels further, could it be that students will just leave universities? I think that if we ever reach the tipping point where corporations lose confidence in the training students receive, and this day is around the corner, we’ll be in trouble.