Patriot Media Network
An anonymous adjunct professor of English explains why society is demanding that too many people attend too much college, when they just aren’t prepared for it:
No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces [...] that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty. [...] Although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment.
The writer teaches mostly older, “night school” students, but the point stands for the average student, as well. It may make us feel good that so many of our generation have access to college and will earn college diplomas. But at what cost?