UNDESERVED ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS: why are they multiplying?

Anxious to maintain enrollment, school administrators cleverly use equity "concerns" to covertly press for lower standards. Professors, worried about class numbers and eager to "earn" good "course evaluations" (which everyone knows are really student evaluations of professors) pass way too many dolts. Politicians simultaneously push for increasing high school diplomas and college degrees. But as these things happen, what else occurs? 

The law of supply and demand provides the answer. As the percentage of students receiving diplomas and degrees increases, the value of those credentials decreases. That's because their value depends on their scarcity. If nearly everyone has one, any credential offers little competitive advantage. The only remaining value becomes defensive That is, not having one now becomes a devastating handicap. 

So suppose high schools and colleges really do turn out even more graduates. Who pays the highest price? High school youngsters who do not, perhaps cannot, go to college. That's because they heavily depend on their high school diploma to open doors for them. The same ultimately applies to college degrees. In short these credentials become even less valuable than they are now. 

You might think that if we do graduate more kids, at least they will be better educated. But the easiest way to increase the number of high school graduates is to quietly reduce the requirements for graduation. Many inner city and rural poverty schools already have already done that. Their tacit policy is: "Come to school most of the time, generally behave yourself and we will give you a diploma."  This often degenerates into: "Come to school at least some of the time, don't create major disruptions and we will still give you a diploma even if you can barely read." 

These dynamics of degeneration are not confined to basic education. They also are active in higher ed. Encouraged by political correctnes, by ranking equity over excellence, and by a scarcity of customers, professors and administrators who try to maintain high standards have become unwelcome. Instead, professors are encouraged by the new breed of administrator to cox, cajole, coddle 'students' and "be the student's friend." 

Spurred on by political correctness, fear of negative student evaluations and a paucity of students in their classes, professors, in turn, often decide, "I'm not going to be a policeman"and ignore both their student's subject matter ignorance and their often remarkably egregious plagiarism. Some so-called professors even completely abandon their duty and openly say things like, "I couldn't sleep at night if I prevented someone from graduating." (An actual quote from a Georgia State professor.) Consequently we're getting more and more college graduates who, to put it crudely, can't tell shit from Shinola.

Of course it isn't just political correctness that feeds this cancer. In fact it is often merely a cover for a more basic concern: the need for ever scarcer tuition income. Administrators ultimately have to pay the bills or shut up shop; and college applicants are frighteningly scarce these days. So they subtly pressure professors to not discomfort or discourage students by actually maintaining standards. It's become, "the customer is always right."

Of course college degrees are subject to the very same law of supply and demand that applies to high school diplomas. The more plentiful they are, the less value they have. That's why it is now often necessary to get an advanced degree to gain the same competitive advantage that a bachelor's degree used to confer.

So how can we reverse these trends? Toughen graduation requirements at every level thereby reducing the number of high school and college diploma recipients. This will increase the diploma’s value and offer a boost to those who must depend on them for competitive advantage. It will also reduce the number of "students" who not only have no interest in reducing their own ignorance. 

This is a drastic solution to a drastic problem. It means fewer students, fewer school administrators, fewer professors, and fewer institutions of higher education. Educator jobs will disappear. Unemployment roles will swell with youngsters who are currently engaged in pretending to be students. Will this prove politically and practically unacceptable? Yes. That's why it probably won't happen. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't.  -GKC 

 For a more detailed examination of this and related issues See Dissecting School Benefits" 

#"HIGHLY QUALIFIED TEACHERS?" No, ya get what ya pay for

 

If you enjoy dark humor you might get a laugh out of this. Schools in Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Illinois are importing teachers from the Philippines! Yep, they're staffing their schools with folks who are'nt even Americans! 

Why is this even remotely acceptable? Because the politicos who run those states, and the voters who elected them, don't really care what happens to other people's children. And, because these non-American teachers will only be hired to try to teach in schools serving desolate neighborhoods. 

Will these Filipino teachers speak in intelligible American English? Such a requirement might be too stringent, given the urgent need for cannon fodder. Should they not, their teaching will likely resemble the "assistance" one gets from 'help' desks corporations moved to foreign lands.

Exploiting the people who teach America's children dates way back. But back then we could rely on a steady supply of bright, hard-working women. They had few other opportunities. Secretary, nurse, teacher, housewife, that was it. For years this worked out. Good quality at low cost. But when America's females were finally presented with other opportunities, the future teacher pool shrank dramatically and a shortage ensued that has never been remedied. For a while now we've been scraping the bottom of the collegiate barrel.

There has been a lot of hot air directed at this post-woman teacher quality problem. Some of it of Marx Brothers quality. Remember when former President Obama's Secretary of Education (and basketball buddy) an utterly unqualified guy named Arne Duncan, toured the country wringing his hands about the urgent need to improve teacher preparation? But he himself lacked even rudimentary training, much less experience in education. Perhaps he was distressed to find that teacher aspirants were being almost as poorly selected and prepared for their job as he was for his.

Of course Secretary Duncan didn't complain when Obama classified thousands upon thousands of wanna-be teachers who were still in training as "highly qualified?" Why did he do that? "Highly qualified" teachers were required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. 

Arne expressed zero concern about this palpapoly ridiculous move. His Education Department simply concurred this ridiculously weak standard. When a federal judge finally ruled that Obama's presidential ruling clearly violated the No Child Left Behind Act, Congress quickly passed a bill lowering that NCLB standard to the equivalent of breathing. 

Did "highly qualified"  mean anything before Obama castrated it? Well it didn't look so at first glance. The law clearly stipulated that if you wanted to teach math, science, social studies, the arts, reading and languages you must have obtained a long-term teaching certificate, and demonstrated subject matter knowledge by either obtaining a college major in the subject, by passing a test in the subject taught, OR (and here's the where the politicians proved their slipperiness) "by some other means established by the state." 

That's right, every state was provided with an escape clause. Never mind all the seeming hard-nosed requirements. In the end each state could decide what "highly qualified" meant for them. This shielded every state where teaching had so long been underpaid, under-respected and under-appreciated that the only qualification they could realistically impose was the ability to pee a hole in snow. 

This "by some other means" wording rendered all the preceding requirements meaningless. Only in the lala-land of public school policy could such a feeble requirement be taken as too tough. Later, both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations further weakened this already neutered law.

No Child Left Behind is less influential these days. But the weak-kneed teacher selection standards just described remain very much extant. Worse still, public school teaching has gotten even less desirable because the right is systematically undermining public education, while the left struggles to impose' "woke" indoctrination of its' new religion. 

Teachers are caught in the middle. That's a major reason why the best and brightest, plus a whole lot of others, want no part of teaching. So abandon hope if you favor the tough, high quality teacher preparation standards our children deserve. That ideal has metamorphosed into hiring foreigners to teach America's children on the cheap. 

Those who are very well off and politically influential, need not care about any of this. They are very unlikely to have kids, or grandkids, in public schools. That's one reason why public schools and their teachers have become America's foster children. Those with decisive influence don't have to depend on them to educate their children.

For additional considerations please see: Highly Qualified Teachers: misgivings

-- GKC