I'm not sure what "college-as-we-know-it" means. Professors were heeralding the doom of academia when the G.I.Bill was passed; many were doing likewise during the civil rights movement; now some are doing it with special students. Do we go back to the segregated days, to the days when women weren't admitted or respected, to the days when only 15% of high school graduates went on to college, to the days when.....? If students have changed, shouldn't we have to make adjustments? The more we learn about learning would seem to mean that we should be applying that new information which in turn means in developing new attitudes, new techniques, new methods. Change does not automatically mean watering down or dumbing down or reduced rigor. It can just means change: doing things differently. <implicit ad hominem deleted>
If you reread my message you'll see no statement that change is either new or bad; simply that it is happening.
If students are admitted with fewer skills, then we have two alternatives:
1. We can change the material to fit their skills.
2. We can change their skills to fit the material.
There is a cost in either case.
In particular, if we accept students with skills not adequate for material that was suitable for top 10%ers, and we still wish them to perform at that level, then we are accepting an obligation to provide the necessary remedial work.
As a psychologist with a doctorate in learning theory I am quite aware that we have powerful tools available to us.
However, powerful tools still have their costs.
I am sure that given adequate resources and commitment on the part of students and institution 99% of our students could be given an education that would meet our standards.
However, telling students that we can also make it painless no matter what their current skills will not be productive.
And the trend right now is to _reduce_ the resources available (cutting college budgets and student financial aid funding).
The reality is that giving ALL students who wish to attend college a college education is currently impossible -- no panglossian attitude change will change that reality.
> There's a broader issue here.> higher education are being driven by these demographic changes?As the demographics of students attending post-secondary institutions shift we find a wide range of capabilities, of which students who are categorized as having some sort of learning disability are at one end of a continuum. I think that we are continually faced with the question of whether college-as-we-know-it is appropriate for all of our students (and vice versa). Further, what changes in the nature of what we are pleased to call
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