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Ill-prepared



Many students arrive at public colleges in California
unprepared for college-level courses.

I have heard this complaint in Ohio too.
As a high school teacher, my question is why do colleges
accept such students. I remember way back when I had

Good heavens! Isn't it obvious? What we call 'education',
particularly at the collegiate level, is just a business; the students or
their financial supporters are buck paying customers; the product is not
well-educated students but the documentation, a degree; the physical plant
has to be fed a raw material stream and the workers, we faculty and staff,
have to be paid for and kept busy. No cash flow and the whole enterprise
stalls, stymied.
Ergo, in they come, as good quality as can be found, and it's our job to
make up the difference as best we can by whatever means are necessary or
convenient. Since not a quality education but rather four years on the
treadmill and a piece of parchment are the product, it's really not a
concern of the corporation that what we turn out is not what it once was.
Caveat emptor.
Not cynical, just 37 years experienced in the industry.

John N. Cooper, Chemistry
Bucknell University
Lewisburg PA 17837-2005
jcooper@bucknell.edu
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jcooper
VOX 570-577-3673 FAX 570-577-1739