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Prof Sowell on College

Regular readers of the blog are aware that my favorite columnist is Tom Sowell, the Milton Friedman endowed prof at Stanford. today he takes on the notion that graduating 'more' students from college is necessarily a god thing. 

All of you have attended other colleges be they community colleges or upper level schools. Think about how many students really have not interest in being there. Indeed the eventual graduation rate of the best school in Texas is about 60%. Lke the cpa exam pass rates those are UT Austin and College Station, the others are a lot lower, well Okay I have seen the grad rates for public schools I suspect the private schools with their stratospheric tuition are MUCH higher. 

This campus is considerably different with our non traditional students. But I would agree with Dr. Sowell, the last two rows of students at Tx State should have been somewhere else. 
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12 responses to “Prof Sowell on College”

  1. Jamie Avatar
    Jamie

    Since we only have 4 rows at our current location for tamusa – which rows should jsut stay home?

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  2. Dennis Elam Avatar
    Dennis Elam

    the ones with a dog and a pool on a day like today! It’s HOT

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  3. Olivia Tober Avatar
    Olivia Tober

    Usually the ones that shouldn’t be there are the ones with the free ride or mommy and daddy are paying for it. Somehow you appreciate education a little more when it comes out of your own pocket.

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  4. LeAnna M Nesbitt Avatar
    LeAnna M Nesbitt

    Trying to recruit more students is not necessarily a bad thing. Actully we have evolved from a rural undeveloped country. Now, to one with excellent grade schools, secondary, community colleges, and degree institutes locally in every state of the United States. Everyone regardless of the income level of the students families either wealthy, poor, or middle class still have a requirement to attend public school systems in their neighborhoods. Its then up to the teachers and students themselves to take advantage of that opportunity. So we may talk about differences in our education programs but the alternative of not offering that opportunity is much worse. Many of out Presidents, Congressmen, US senators, state legislatures, local and public servents in our county and city agencies have often achieved enormous success as students, business men and women, and as elected reps. In many cases they were as poor as anyone could be at the beginning of their education program. Only as a result of going to school did they achieve their dreams and goals. The fact that we offer this can be frustrating to the instructors but instructors are educators within a free society and every person they try to elevate towards the process with support and accommodations is part of the contract with American people as an educator.
    On the other hand, back to the question…
    I just graduated from Pac in May and as a student in my first semester I’m taking 12 hours this summer. I need to take everything serious and even time is crucial. So when I see a student having their own conversations and talking over the professor in my other classes, its ridicules and immature! So a few students need to go to beauty school and get out so the rest of us can prosper.

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  5. Dennis Elam Avatar
    Dennis Elam

    Every student needs to find the prusuit that rings their bell, period. In addition ‘college’ has morphed into all sorts of unnecessary degrees to achieve this goal of everyone getting a degree. A BA in most social sciences is near useless without a grad degree and a certification. Political sicence is a feeder for the Dem party, ever meet a government teacher that thought we had too much government, I never have. And of course manufacturing political scientists gest us, well more government, not more private sector innovation.
    I agree with the ideas but how is it that I just returned nine papers to be re written in the 15 th grade, clearly the education establishment has terribly failed these students, every comunity college in America has remediation classes and over 70% of their students are in some sort of remediation class. Isn’t that an indictment of what used to be HIGH school.
    The ones that talk over the prof bother me too…

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  6. Tammy Salinas Avatar
    Tammy Salinas

    Education is a never ending source. Once you graduate it doesn’t mean you are done with learning. Unfortunately many students think this way. From my experience I have noticed that even at my previous job the CPA I worked for was very smart but things change which and he would have to learn everyday as well. I used to think the same way, once you graduated with your degree, that was it you knew everything about it. I was wrong…this makes the learning process an infinite process that should never be compromised. I honesty agree that if a student has to take remedial courses for entry college, the previous institution has failed them. It shouldn’t even be a course..that education should have been mastered in high school. Refresher courses are different I don’t see any harm in those since many of college students today are baby boomers trying to get a better education and job for that matter since the stakes have been raised. My mother being one of them, it has taken her 10 years to get to finishing her BA, not because of lack of intelligence but due to the everyday life of raising her children and having to work and help support us as we were in grade school.

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  7. Felix Duque Avatar
    Felix Duque

    I just want to make one comment about this article… What would have happened if we did not have the last two rows in our class? And I don’t mean it like that, since I seat in the last row 🙂 Would our school be Texas A&M San Antonio now?
    I like to see the positive side of things, I see the glass half full, not half empty..

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  8. Felix Duque Avatar
    Felix Duque

    One more thing… I forgot to mention this…
    I believe you are right professor about some of us being cheated in education. I believe that unfortunatelly some of us did not have the opportunity to go to a good school.
    Is there such thing as equal opportunity at education? If so, why is it handled by district? Did I have the choice to go to a school with a better education? The answer is no, at least not to my knowledge. I belonged to that District, so I had to go to that school. Is this fair? Why couldn’t I pick where I wanted to be educated at?
    These are somethings to think about…

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  9. Dennis Elam Avatar
    Dennis Elam

    I certainly hope that the question of school vouchers allowing choice will be put to Wash DC officials all of who in both parties always send their kids to private school…..rather than the Wash DC public system
    A parallel problem we will discuss in class today, a good school is one that prepares you for the next grade….any school that sends you on unprepared is doing you and them an injustice

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  10. Rose Hinojosa Avatar
    Rose Hinojosa

    Ok I have a couple things to say here about this article and all the comments….
    First… My parents and I used to pay for my school with no help from financial aid until this coming fall when I am eligible for it. SO the last two rows do not consist of the people who have “Mommy and Daddy” paying for them because no matter where the money comes from I put school over anything else, That includes work, social life and visits back home to see mommy and daddy! I really don’t think that having a full ride or money easily given to pay for education is what “the last two rows” should be judged by…
    Second… I was one of those persons who had a paper returned to her to have it rewritten. I have never gotten anything less than a B in any paper I’ve written… Don’t you think that just maybe this one was a slip? I mean I did get a near perfect grade on the second paper and it was the same person with the same writting style. Though I do think that somehow educational standards have fallen and some have been cheated but I do not consider my self one of those. I also think that some educators placed in the “bad” schools are kinda like rejects too because I’ll bet that they’d rather be at a better school, therefore they lack dedication to the students they now have.
    And I agree with Felix about not having a choice of educational institution preference … We have no choice and IF you feel like switching schools then you have to endure a long process that includes a lot of paper work and court to determine the reason you want to switch schools and verdict. Not many people have the time for that and as Dr. Elam mentioned not everyone can be sent to private schools!

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  11. Dennis Elam Avatar
    Dennis Elam

    Rose
    I can see how one could miss Dr.Sowell’s metaphor.
    When Dr. Sowell uses the metpahor ‘the lat two rows’ he does not necessarily literlaly mean the last two rows in every class. He is referring to students who are not particularly interested in school but are there anyway. In LARGE schools for example when I taught at Texas State, the students who were less itnerested typically sat as far away as possible to simply avoud being called on. That is certainly not the case for our small classrooms here. INdeed the availability of an electric socket for your laptop may have more to do with where you sti than anything! I certainlhy hope we have multiple sockets in at the new campus thought they did not think of this in Dallas.
    I enjoy teaching our non traditional students here more than as one of our students here put it, the kids with their hats on backwards at the large campuses. Our students bring a determination not usually encountered elsewhere.
    This by the way is particularly evident when we have a guest speaker, yes one is coming to Intermed II. I have found our students really respond to such speakers.

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  12. Rose Hinojosa Avatar
    Rose Hinojosa

    I totally understood Dr. Sowells metaphor and I also understood that the “last rows” was gestured towards the students who really do not care about school because they do typically sit in the back of the class. That part of my comment was simply directed to a previous comment about the last two rows being the people who have their education paid for by their parents or scholarship or financial aid. I was stating that we (being the commentor) should not be quick to judge those that are in that situation because it is not always the case.

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