I Wish I Could Go Back To College...oh, wait...

Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve been a great audience. Oh, no—you’re worried that I’m officially leaving the blogosphere, after the semiretirement I’ve been in for the past several months? (Or thrilled that it’s finally happening?) Well, don’t be. I’m not leaving the blog; I’m resigning my attachment to education and academia, altogether. I’m done. Someone get a big damned fork.

Why, you may ask? Because of a foul little surprise I got when I came home yesterday. And no, it wasn’t something Jake had done in my absence or my shoes. It was my weekly edition of U.S. News & World Report.

This magazine is irritating on several levels, not the least of which is that I didn’t want it to begin with. I was simply sucked into one of those stupid Publisher’s Clearinghouse things and now can’t get out of it; they siphon $29.90 a month out of my checking account and ship out my “heavily discounted” installments of U.S. News, Redbook, Fitness, and Glamour. I didn’t choose these magazines, but they keep ignoring my requests for different selections (like Vogue, a magazine for adults interested in fashion rather than Glamour, which is for the woman wants “50 ways to (really) orgasm!” and doesn’t recognize a Gucci purse without the monogram). I’m also not 50 (Redbook), convinced that I can find washboard abs in ten minutes a day (Fitness). And I’ll be getting these things (read: being leeched of 30 bucks a month) for the next two years.

No, what really got me today is what’s inside the U.S. News: the federal government wants a college exit exam and higher “accountability” protocols for colleges. Apparently, the government (and its overly-whiney, overly blameless Baby Boomer sugardaddys) feel that, if college tuitions are going to keep rising, and tax dollars are going to be funneled into colleges and universities, then it needs some data to make sure that the colleges are doing their part to ensure success. Apparently, only 63% of entering freshman graduate in 6 or fewer years, and we must find someone to blame. Parents are paying for this education, the average student leaves college with $19000 in loan debt, and we have nothing that says they’ve learned anything.

First: Diploma = school’s reputation in your hands. If you’re an idiot and they give you one anyway, they’re bigger idiots. Turning out smart people means more smart people will come, which means more money, in tuition, grants and alumni donations. It’s economics, people, that even I can understand. The consumer’s not going to buy a rotten banana, and if she gets one in her bunch, she’s going to switch grocers, tell all of her friends, and said grocer is SOL.

Second—huh? $19000 average debt? There must be a ton of people out there with a lot less debt than that, because with 88k on my own, I’m pretty sure I’ve skewed the average, as, probably, do most of the upper/middle class students at ND and other institutions. Only 7%, might I add, of that was federally funded—does that mean the Dept. of Ed. gets to use my whole educational experience to justify its investment? If I’m responsible for 93% of the debt, do I get to do worse and still pass? And oh, by the way, I still get friggin’ taxed on the money I’ll use to pay it back, so they’re getting interest and taxes, and the principle back. Yes, I know this is ridiculous—but I’m relatively livid, and sick, neither of which is helping my logic skills.

Third: I was under the impression that we were adults. And yes, I mean past tense, because it looks like achieving the age of 18 and leaving hearth and home for 8 months of the year no longer make us adults, or accountable for our own performance in college. More and more I hear professors, TAs and advisors talking about the parents who call to ask about their children’s grades, and how the instructor should be doing more/grading easier/grading more equitably/grading according to the student’s potential rather than his performance. WTF? I’m sorry, but the last time I checked we lived in a meritocracy, where personal performance was everything; if college is supposed to be preparing your child for that, why are you making excuses? Are you going to call the kid’s boss when he gets a poor evaluation at work? No, and he’ll have no idea how to deal with it—the fact that his actions determine his path and rewards. Why? Not because college didn’t prepare him for it, but because you as parent never let him fall on his ass, realizing in the process that the rest of the world does not exist to kiss it.

Essentially, this “government oversight” is just an extension of the bitchy parent, wanting to blame someone else for the fact that Straight-A, 1600 SAT Suzy (or is it 2400 now? bigger numbers make people feel better about themselves, you know) dropped out of college because she decided that drinking every night was cooler than studying, or that she really does want to be a hairstylist and doesn’t need a degree to do it, or that if her parents will let her couch surf for the rest of her life while blaming other people, why shouldn’t she? It may be fiction, but at least Mr. Wilder accepted that it was Van—not the school—that was proving to be a bad investment, an error in his own judgment. The “Me” generation is doing what it does best: holding others accountable for its own poor judgment. The Baby Boomers wanted warning labels on music because they couldn’t be bothered to listen to their children’s tunes, rating systems because they won’t watch movies before showing them to their children, parental locks on computers and TV because they’ve never told their children “no” and meant it. In other words, they want someone else to be the heavy, someone else to make sure that there’s no way their kid can screw up.

Thing is, I thought that, through loans—from parents, from the government—we weren’t investing in the institution, but rather in the student. So why would a student’s poor performance—or great performance—have a bearing on the school? Let's face it--college is where we get to see the "voucher system" in action, precisely because the money follows the student to his choice of schools. Bet the Bush Administration never thought of that comparison, because if it had, it would seed the interior conflict to its desired educational policies.

Regardless, the quality of my instruction, as a teacher, doesn’t change if the student fails to show up, but that won’t matter to the feds. The quality of the books in the Hesburgh won’t diminish because the student prefers The Library to the library. The math department can be amazing, but can’t be held responsible for the fact that my hatred of algebra keeps me from opening up to it. And it is not a reflection on the school if it takes me 4 years or 27 to graduate—it’s a reflection on me, my priorities and my life challenges. The education isn’t worth less if it happens at night after work or more if it happens all day every day. What matters is ultimately—and only—what I do with it, and that can’t be measured in anything but my lifetime of successes and failures; certainly not by a test in three hours at the end of senior year.

In other words: after making it through public education just before NCLB fekked it up, I really want the feds to keep their hands off the colleges. College students are as successful as we choose to be, and the last things we need are more tests, designed by people who have no idea who we are, what they want us to learn, or how we’d use that information once we had it. Shut up, sign the check (guys—it’s a loan, not a gift; you’re getting interest, so get your nose out of my classroom) and please—let us at last learn how to take care of ourselves.