Thread regarding DeVry Inc. layoffs

@1bv—- So well stated. It’s the same concept as when a parent tells a child, “I’m your parent, not your friend.” The parent should be there to guide, set boundaries, and provide correction if necessary. Under the parent’s wing, a child should learn how to fail, regroup, and try again. This is how one becomes an adult capable of self-reflection and critical thought. This is how I parent and how I thought I would teach.

Expecting an A on a lemonade stand paper (or Kaltura video cough), being able to “thumbs down” a course, and/or needing “nudges” to complete work that YOU voluntarily signed up for is the exact antithesis of education.

@Zvv, I agree with much of your post, but schools cannot focus on both quality outcomes and “Customer Satisfaction.” These are two mutually exclusive concepts. In order to have quality outcomes you need selective admisssions and the ability to fail students when they don’t deserve to pass. The road to DVU as you know it was partially paved with the customer-is-always-right mentality. You need to create challenges in class that may in fact irritate unmotivated students. Otherwise, you will be grading 60 5th grade papers about a lemonade stand

Colleges across the land have been admitting un- and under-qualified students for decades. Before there were for-profits, traditional schools and colleges opened admissions broadly. But, for students severely remedial, there was no possibility of catch up. Colleges and university curricula were not structured for remediation, though some well-meaning efforts were made. Nevertheless, students struggling with basic literacy/numeracy, who had no idea of how to "do studenting" (Stanley Fish's term), failed out or sc-aped by. Admitting institutions also saw their metrics go down, and the "experiment" flagged, giving rise to the for-profit sector.

The initial driving philosophy was again, well intentioned. For-profit schools promised to succeed, train people for much-needed and well-paying jobs. But, as demand rose, and greed proliferated, education moved way to the back of then out of the bus entirely. Predatory lenders, predatory students, no standards, everyone in a mill. Some excellent faculty and some creditable students caught in the machinery of the business paradigm.

Education and wealth disparity mirror each other. Good capitalism is governed by rules that ensure quality goods and services to consumers. Education should do the same, whether in the public (K-12), for-profit, or the traditional sector. And the measures should be not merely metric, but qualitative. Indeed, the business paradigm needs a big tidy: it needs to focus on quality of product and consumer satisfaction. A business that has the consumer's back rather than out to rob the consumer.

Put another way, not everyone needs a college degree. We are overadmitting poorly qualified students and setting up a false promise of a better future, when vocations are what they need. Almost all the professors at Devry and other for profits know this, and some speak out.