The Fakeness of College

Someone made a public statement today.....over the topic of 'faking your way through college'.  It was a curious topic to ponder upon.

Prior to the 1980s, I think faking had some potential but most classes had enough demands and adult leadership....so that the system worked the way that it was designed.

Part of this faking-talk goes to the 1980s/1990s 'agenda' where high schools more or less....dumbed down the structure.  The system began to escalate the potential for a 'C' average student to start getting B's instead.  Kids began to show up at colleges and they simply didn't have the skill to handle courses, so along the end of the first semester, or second semester.....they quit.  This statistic started to become part of a university's record....the dropout rate.

The University of Charleston for example.....only 18-percent of freshmen will be there at the end of the 4th year....graduating.

Southeastern University in Florida for example.....has only 39-percent of the freshmen finishing a degree in four years.

I worked with a guy in Arlington, VA who had a son who'd been accepted at a prominent Virginia college.  There was one issue.....they (the school) demanded that the kid take a math and English placement test.  The kid did a dismal score.  So they said....go ahead and enter college, but two of the five classes for the first semester would have to be high school remedial math and English courses.  Yes, the father was basically paying around $1,500 for two courses.....which should not have been necessary.  The school even demanded that the kid retake the placement test at the end of that, and if he hadn't advanced to the level expected.....he'd retake them yet again.  This guy went down and had a conversation with the college 'chiefs', and they made it simple.....they were sick and tired of kids arriving who were not prepared for college.

No one is counting up on the kids who drop out, nor is it some type of national emergency.  Colleges playing along and dragging the 'slackers' onto the 2nd, 3rd and 4th year?  Well....if you had 20-percent drop out at the end of the first year....you need to have a mechanism carry the remaining folks on.  So you build up a slacker-approach, and at the conclusion of four years....out a hundred kids graduating....there's probably a quarter of them who really aren't capable of performing at the level required. 

If you went to a university on some sports scholarship?  It's probably a 50-percent chance that you can't handle the level required. 

The sad thing here.....not only were you a slacker in college and collected a fake degree, but you spent $100,000 to get there, and there's a debt situation for the next twenty years for your slacker-degree.