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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Has College Become Too Easy?

You can lead a student to knowledge, according to an old academic saying, but you can't make him or her think.

I recently wrote about the possibility of testing and certification for what I called a "college-level GED." Like the current GED test for high school equivalency, it would award certification to bright, hardworking job applicants who want to show potential employers how much they know, even though they never graduated from college.

I heard from a number of readers who supported the idea. Some were eager to take the test now, if they could. But the most thoughtful question I received went like this: What about the "critical thinking" skills that we traditionally expect campus academic life to teach and encourage?

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

UMES , the college of dummies , I compare their brains when they graduate to a piss ant. That's a compliment.

Anonymous said...

It once was that the smart students went to college and on the grad school. Today, everyone can go to college and get a degree regardless of whether or not they are smart. College degrees are pretty much worthless unless the student has the critical thinking skills that are required to complete an advanced degree.

Anonymous said...

I think the work I did at UMES for my diploma outshadowed most of my classmates and more than left several in their elementary school mentality. College like America in general has been dumbed down so when we are bought by the media and mentally invaded by another world order the current generations won't know anything hit them