Roy Schreiber: Should Indiana Reform How It Awards College Degrees?
[Roy Schreiber is a professor of history emeritus. He taught at Indiana University South Bend.]
The vast majority of students who come through the public school systems in Indiana are reluctant university students. Just ask them. This is especially true of those who attend the state-funded universities like Indiana and Purdue and all their regional campuses.
These fresh-out-of-high-school students are there for a degree, not an education. Most of them come to universities unconvinced that learning about other countries, or about their own for that matter (never mind literature and philosophy), is of any particular value. As a result, they learn as little as possible while chasing that degree.
If high-paying jobs did not require a college degree, they would have gone straight to work and skipped university altogether. Had they done so, many of their university teachers would not have missed them. No one likes head-banging on stone walls.
Given this situation, why not put all concerned out of their misery? It is time to adapt another model, the one used by two distinguished universities, Oxford and Cambridge. They have a tradition that, seven years after a student begins one of these universities, for a small fee, it is possible to receive a Master in Arts degree. The student can receive this degree without wasting time by attending classes.
The Indiana version would work like this: Seven years beyond the freshman year of high school, for a small fee, all high school graduates would receive a bachelor's degree. It is Gov. Mitch Daniels' three-year degree program at virtually no expense, indeed at a profit....
Read entire article at South Bend Tribune
The vast majority of students who come through the public school systems in Indiana are reluctant university students. Just ask them. This is especially true of those who attend the state-funded universities like Indiana and Purdue and all their regional campuses.
These fresh-out-of-high-school students are there for a degree, not an education. Most of them come to universities unconvinced that learning about other countries, or about their own for that matter (never mind literature and philosophy), is of any particular value. As a result, they learn as little as possible while chasing that degree.
If high-paying jobs did not require a college degree, they would have gone straight to work and skipped university altogether. Had they done so, many of their university teachers would not have missed them. No one likes head-banging on stone walls.
Given this situation, why not put all concerned out of their misery? It is time to adapt another model, the one used by two distinguished universities, Oxford and Cambridge. They have a tradition that, seven years after a student begins one of these universities, for a small fee, it is possible to receive a Master in Arts degree. The student can receive this degree without wasting time by attending classes.
The Indiana version would work like this: Seven years beyond the freshman year of high school, for a small fee, all high school graduates would receive a bachelor's degree. It is Gov. Mitch Daniels' three-year degree program at virtually no expense, indeed at a profit....