For months we tour guides in the higher ed odyssey have been told that we need to remove "obstacles to completion," which sounded reasonable enough until it became apparent that one of those obstacles is--well, me.
Not me exactly, but the kind of course I design and champion, the kind of curriculum I support, has become Public Enemy Number One for the Obstacle Removal Brigade.
Removing obstacles sounds like a worthy task, and in some cases it's necessary. For instance, the English department needs to confer with the Education department to make sure required courses in the two departments don't conflict; otherwise, an English major pursuing teaching certification won't be able to complete her degree. And if transfer students regularly have trouble getting credit for classes they've taken elsewhere, then we probably need to take a look at transfer equivalencies and smooth out the pathway to completion.
But what the Obstacle Removal Brigade really wants is to make the journey shorter and simpler for everyone. Let's eliminate a bunch of General Education requirements, shrink requirements for most majors, and de-emphasize challenging courses so students can move down the road toward degree completion more quickly and smoothly. So sure, maybe we'll go ahead and offer that upper-level theory-laden course, but we'll no longer require it for the major because it poses to great an obstacle.
Funny, but when I designed and taught that course, I envisioned not an obstacle but a pathway. Sure, it's challenging and some students will struggle with the material, but as long as learning happens in the struggle, it's worth the effort. Further, figuring out how to deal with obstacles with equip students to tackle even bigger challenges in later classes or in their careers. Dealing with obstacles is an essential part of the journey! Or so I have always believed.
But higher education has moved on. The goal, you'll notice, is not education but completion: let's make it easier for students to take home a diploma, even if that means narrowing their opportunities to pursue depth and breadth of education.
So removing obstacles to completion is really the same old story dressed up in new buzzwords. We can scoot students briskly down the pathway toward that precious diploma, but most of them won't even know what adventures they've missed by avoiding every little obstacle.
5 comments:
Bev: You may be fighting insurmountable challenges, but you should not give up. Higher education has to be seen as a challenge and, in a sense, an obstacle for students to achieve. A student who is accepted into MC is essentially given an opportunity to succeed, not a guarantee of easy and almost certain success. The depth and the breadth of a college education has to be seen as the good part and the necessary part. Just churning out easily achieved diplomas does no good for the students, the college, or the society we live in. Please keep trying to prevent the dumbing-down of education and the removing of “obstacles.”
Just be thankful you aren't trying to teach mathematics. These poor students have been pushed through math courses for so long in high school, with absolutely no understanding. Then the problem is the college course that actually wants then to learn to think?
Aarrgghhh!! It is almost funny that they want to eliminate algebra classes and instead require Statistics as a general ED requirement. No, if the students can't think in a low level math class they definitely shouldn't be attempting Statistics.
Welcome to my world, Bev;-)
Thanks for the encouraging words. I know that what we're experiencing is happening all over the place, so at least we're not alone. On the one hand, these changes make me even more eager to retire in a few years; on the other hand, I fear I'll be leaving the institution in worse shape than when I started here, and there's nothing I can do about it.
I'll tell anyone that the classes that stuck with me the best weren't the easy ones, nor were they the ones that I got the best grades from. They were the challenging ones. So, hurrah; let's get rid of all the challenging classes, so we can be taught by jellyfish.
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