11/24/2015 A Certain Tendency In Higher Education | The Odyssey

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A Certain Tendency In HigherEducation

Campus construction doesn't build better facilities for learning, itcreates more illustrious buildings for rich elitists to put their names

upon, driven by vanity rather than educational advancement for others.Christopher Walsh in Ideas on May 26, 2015

Image Credit: http://www.betterparenting.com/standardized-tests-failures-in-

education/ (http://www.betterparenting.com/standardized-tests-failures-in-

education/)

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The University of Maryland recently raised tuition for business, computer science

and engineering majors in order to provide a more quality education for those

students – or customers, as I like to think. But just like every other piece of

construction or change on campus, I understand that this will do absolutely

nothing to improve my education, or those who attend the university after me.

Putting a price on education is one of the greatest debaucheries of our generation.

With tuition rates skyrocketing, anything less of a impending �nancial crisis is

inevitable. I reject the ideology that every dollar, or even a majority of my $40

thousand in tuition, is essential to my educational pursuit, yet I am castrated by the

cost.

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There is an apparent lack of sympathy for out-of-state Terps who have endured a

24 percent increase in tuition in the last nine years comparative to a one percent

increase for in-state students. This information was acquired from the recent

O�cial Report (http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/pdf_3efa59f2-f2c4-11e4-

ac11-cb1604953283.html) urging The University of Maryland to further raise

tuition.

Although I may sound portentous, rude and even ungrateful, I stand by my beliefs

based o� of the reoccurring, frustrating hypocrisies that plague our campus.

Got Tenure?First o�, there is an alarming, and unnoticed by many, disparity between the

income of professors with tenure and those who don't. Some, if not most of my

greatest teachers have been hard-working post-grad students, teaching courses

not only because they absolutely need the income to continue their educational

pursuit, but because they love and specialize in the �eld of study they are

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presenting. Without comfort of tenure or any special titles instilled upon them,

they are the humble, unappreciated geniuses that still give me hope in the

education system and humanity as a whole.

Now lets contrast this �gure with one of my lovely, previous business professors

granted with tenure. His lectures to hundreds of students at a time were as grey

and outdated as his hair. Every word that came out of his mouth felt bland,

intellectually trivial and a waste of my time. Attendance was the only incentive that

kept the mass of students from never returning to class again. But this was a

professor with tenure and even his own luxurious lecture hall. Surely his previous

experience and life's work deemed his worthiness.

Meriting his own aptitude from previous success in a business environment vastly

outdated from today's economy, this professor was given responsibility for

instructing thousands of students on how to be successful in the world of business.

His economic success and wealth irrationally established him as an educational

guru.

It is not that he wasn't a great businessman, but he was a horrid teacher whose

previous experience running his own company did not directly transfer teaching

skills. Regardless, I quickly saw how talented my professor was at making pro�ts.

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Every semester, he required each student to buy a copy of his memoir; something

that even our TA's assured us was irrelevant for the exams or the class in its

entirety. Regardless of relevancy, my professor enjoyed the added comfort of 500

more book purchases each semester.

Today, I still walk by his personal lecture hall, infuriated that I forcefully wasted so

much time in his class, as well as by the sheer pompous expression the lecture hall

exuded itself. On the outside wall of the giant classroom hung an elegantly framed

portrait of the professor below a gold plate inscribed with his name.

To me, this professor surely must have seen himself as a god at best and a

visionary at worst. His ignorance and overvaluation of his importance angers me,

which only builds when I remember his tenure grants him unlimited security and a

much higher income than the hard-working professors without it.

Target GPA'sAs a student who has taken these highly competitive business classes, which are

supposedly about to be improved from raised tuition, every class makes the

student feel less and less human and more like soulless statistics. Target GPA's are

used in these classes to ensure the course remains competitive, while also basically

enforcing that a large majority of students will not attain the grade point average

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they strive for; even if they are intelligent enough. Target GPA's require classes to

have an overall average GPA usually around 2.8 In these classes, students don't

compete against tests, they compete against each other.

So why wouldn't tests become more incoherent and frustrating to take as students

quickly adapt to these intimidating educational environments? While we hope that

tests demonstrate aptitude we have attained from the course, they are used more

as an instrument of natural selection: to weed out those students who may know

the material, but are too confused and intimidated by exam questions to recollect

relevant information.

If you don't believe my accusation of conventional testing methods, just ask any

student at this university who ever took accounting, economics, engineering or

computer science classes. Ask them how frustrating and ambiguous some exam

questions may be. With the fear of having a class with too high of an average GPA,

elite professors would rather see most of their class fail than be scolded for having

too many students succeed.

Codes of CoercionIronically, The �nal inherent vice of our education system is the ethical code of

compliance. This agreement essentially binds each student to not only refrain for

cheating, but also from having any voice or authority to protest unfair testing

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methods. By signing the codes of compliance, you are signing away your right to

disagree with the professor on how they choose to test you, even before getting to

view the exam itself.

So when I hear the University of Maryland plans to raise tuition for the bene�t of

our education, I sco� and reject the idea in its entirety. Campus construction

doesn't build better facilities for learning, it creates more illustrious buildings for

rich elitists to put their names upon, driven by vanity rather than educational

advancement for others. All universities spew propaganda to encourage more

customers and raise pricing on something inherently intangible and priceless.

Christopher Walsh (/author/christopher-walsh)

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