The bar was extremely low, especially at the business school. I was perplexed after reading people's discussion board posts or edit group work. Many students had serious trouble writing coherently or using proper grammar. Math classes were even more ridiculous.

Around sophomore year I gave up on school work in favor of software development and still managed to graduate with a 3.2 GPA.

I'm looking for a new job in part because I disagree with their decision to seriously ramp up marketing and recruitment. IMO if a university can't stand on their faculty / programs / research they aren't really worth attending.

I understand the spirit of your example, but mentioning esp. Hungary is quite out of place. I work in an international context and have many colleagues from all over Europe - and the Hungarians absolutely kick major ass (Apologies to the HN community for the choice of language).

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

The US citizenry allows this, overall. Partly there is the manipulation of reasonable desires for "freedom" and "local control," and part of it comes from the social attitudes toward math and science that lead to STEM being disproportionately dominated by children of immigrants in the US.

Reading through this article reminds me of decades ago approaches to making sure graduation rates for high school went up. they simply changed the requirements and load, put the burden on faculty, and labeled anyone who disagreed as a bigot/racist/etc. So we ended up with students who do not know how to learn and their understanding of basic math, science, and literature, suffered.

Just what type of degree program will these young people actually obtain? Without the base Eskills how can they manage the more difficult subjects to come?

[1] http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb...

I recently visited a school with one of these in every classroom. Every student has a laptop. Every classroom has an unused commercial "curriculum" product in the corner.

And given how much administrators make, and presumably embezzle, I'm not even sure these are bad investments, in a relative sense.

The overwhelming majority of kids (including me) received poor educations. I learned this in college when I was shocked by the difficulty of the courses. The majority of the kids passed high school because the standards were lowered.

I think lowering the standards in college is failing to target the source of the problem. I believe the further you get from hard skills (e.g., math or cs) the more relevant your soft skills become (e.g., cultural fit)[0]. The fact of the matter is that poor people have a distinct culture and it involves many elements that are not normative. I don't know if it is objectively more difficult to assimilate culturally or learn hard skills. On the other hand, I found it so difficult to assimilate to my PhD program in a social science that I didn't finish. I found programming to be much easier, albeit still a difficult mid-career change, than assimilating culturally. If it is the case that acquiring hard skills offers better opportunities for the poor to rise, then that is exactly what teachers and parents should be telling their kids. That is exactly what those with "sympathy for the poor" should be funding.

[0]Brendan Eich & the Googler who wrote about diversity are counter examples. I can (but I won't) argue the case they have better chances financially due to their hard skills compared to a person in a occupation lacking said skills.

Yes lower-ed degree mills are a huge issue, and need regualating, but that hardly applies to CalState, which is a top tier public school: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/cal-state-la-1140

Appropriately so, when the issue is their preparedness for further education.

> Yes lower-ed degree mills are a huge issue, and need regualating, but that hardly applies to CalState, which is a top tier public school.

The concern is that it appears to be taking a step in the degree-mill direction. Reading the article in full does not assuage that concern:

“Our timeline for implementation is aggressive,” Minor [Cal State’s senior strategist for academic success and inclusive excellence] said, but “we've got more than enough evidence to suggest that our current treatment of students, with the use of developmental education courses, doesn't serve them very well. ... And we have worked with and talked to our faculty... who are ready to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work that we need to do to serve our students better.” [all elisions were made in the Times article, so I am trusting the journalist has not misrepresented Mr. Minor.]

The justification seems to be that this will work because a) other things do not, and b) we want it to work. Anyone who understands how bureaucracies respond to "aggressive" mandates that specify outcomes for unproven methods probably has misgivings.

In fact, I feel like I've seen a study showing that the "new math" teaching methodologies that get parents so mad nowadays end up with kids being better at math...

To each their own I suppose.

This is the same approach that sports/martial art/artisans use (deliberate practice, etc). The concepts are tools, and being able to use those tools intuitively and instinctively is key to advancing to the next level.

Since we're generalizing, I think that most people that complain about complaining parents haven't taken the time to listen to what the parents are actually complaining about.

It would be interesting if teachers could provide cliff's notes of the lessons so parents can help out. Would help the kids too!

Or even better, teachers could have kids prepare explanations for the techniques. Might take a while but I bet the children will remember the techniques way better afterwards.

But I'm happy everything works out so easily for you. I could only hope that one day I'll be as smart as you seem to be.

If you hate something on political grounds, you're not going to be amenable to finding out what it actually is, for example.

It's pure politics.

Hell if anything, universities are making up for the massive shortcoming of public schooling by offering courses to people who would not have otherwise received anything resembling an education.

As for the degree mill statement, who cares? Since when do degrees matter anyway? If destroying the integrity of the accreditation system results in more people getting an education, then so be it. Accreditation is almost never anything more than a racket anyway.