A couple of weeks ago, I wrote briefly about a just-released book entitled Ivory Tower Blues by two Canadian professors, James Cote and Anton Allahar. I received a review copy yesterday and started right in.
Cote and Allahar are telling it like it is. Here are just a few tasty morsels.
“As more and more students with inflated grades, but lower levels of academic interest and ability, have entered Canadian universities year after year, many professors have given in by watering down their courses and inflating grades.”
“In many courses there is little academic substance in which students can engage themselves other than glossy and expensive but dumbed-down textbooks.”
“Canada actually graduated twice as many university students in the 1990s as the number of jobs created during that period that required a university credential. Moreover, four times more community college graduates were produced than could be absorbed in new jobs.”
“Many professors find their jobs difficult when working with undergraduate students who have been implicitly promised a product (degree) in exchange for their tuition.”
Professor Thomas Collins “admitted to some naivety when he returned to the classroom in the mid-1990s, and considerable shock at how standards had slipped in twenty years and how ill-prepared students were for the English courses he taught, especially first-year courses. From his experiences in the trenches during his first year back, he concluded that he could not ‘assume even a moderate level of literacy from [these students] … Presumably because they think, or have been led to believe, that they are at least proficient in English.”
Higher ed has clearly been oversold in Canada, too.
