"...Professors pretend to teach, students pretend to learn..."

[sakky]

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Currently colleges, especially private schools, are free to charge as much as they want (or as Olin did for several years, nothing at all) and require students to pay according whatever schedule suits the school. Again, by what legal mechanism would you force schools to charge only according to your notions of a good schedule? If some private college wants its students to pay as they go, how are you going to stop them?

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<p>I would not force anybody to do anything. Instead, certain colleges could simply implement a policy of not charging tuition unless you graduate, and presumably, many students would then prefer to attend such a school vs. those schools that refuse to provide such a policy. </p>

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The likely result would be that there will be students who complete 97% of a bachelor’s degree (all but one course) and then “drop out” to go work at an employer in on the scheme who is willing to hire them.

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Good point. Another unintended consequence of this daft theory.

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<p>That then just raises the question of why employers don’t do that right now, if my theory is so “daft”. Why can’t people today who have currently completed 97% of the degree approach employers and declare that since they ‘almost’ have a degree, they should be eligible to apply for whatever entry-level job they want? </p>

<p>The undeniable fact is that - right now - most good jobs require that you have a degree. Not 97% of a degree, but an actual degree. You can’t even get an interview for such jobs without a degree. I agree that such a policy is indeed ‘daft’ - but regarding currently daft employers. If employers are daft today, I don’t see why they wouldn’t continue to be daft later if you were to implement my reforms. </p>

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This would only cause them (as you admit) to graduate everyone. This is already the way high school operates which is why you have to be really rebellious or overwhelmed by life to drop out. I do like the idea of having companies fund college for the people they hire.

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Sakky, I also agree that this would actually only cause schools to further limit their academic standards.

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Ah good, you see the huge flaw in your own thinking. You are providing a powerful financial incentive to schools to make absolutely sure everybody gets a degree no matter how dismal their performance.</p>

<p>So how can “we” can make sure they won’t weaken their requirements or simply give everybody at least a C in every class?

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But since schools would then be awarding degrees to people who hadn’t actually completed the requirements, it would further weaken the already-sliding academic worth of the degree. Heck, schools might even be tempted to graduate students who had dropped out with a full year of course work yet to go.

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<p>Come on, you guys don’t think that’s already happening now?. Right now, plenty of colleges offer creampuff majors in which students can and do easily graduate with practically little effort. Leisure Studies, American Studies, Communications Studies, and the like are actual majors that exist today in which - let’s face it - it’s practically impossible to actually flunk out. </p>

<p>The upshot is that colleges today have, frankly, already sundered their academic standards by offering creampuff majors where students can pass courses with little effort. I therefore don’t see how my reforms would make the situation any worse than what is already happening right now. Like I’ve been saying, right now, plenty of students view the college experience as little more than a 4-year social and dating escapade, where they congregate in easy majors that are practically impossible to fail and that provide them with ample amounts of leisure time. You guys seem to be overly concerned with the notion that colleges will simply lower their standards of graduation, yet ask yourself, exactly what standards are currently being enforced in their creampuff majors? </p>

<p>I do find it interesting that my detractors don’t seem to have a solution for that problem, or perhaps don’t even see it as a problem at all. Do you guys seriously want to defend the status quo? The status quo ain’t that great. </p>

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Oh, you already answered my question: we can’t. Within 10 years under that system a college diploma will be worth less academically than a high school diploma is today.

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<p>Which has already happened anyway. Like I said, to even obtain most decent jobs - even one that requires little education on the actual job requirements - you basically need a degree, solely because plenty of your competitors will have degrees as well.</p>

<p>To give you an example, at one of my prior employers, every single receptionist had at least a bachelor’s degree, and many even held master’s degrees. This was a job that required merely mundane secretarial tasks. Nevertheless, if you didn’t have a degree, and preferably a master’s degree, you would not have been competitive for that job. But why? Those degrees, strictly speaking, had little to do with the job at hand. What does having a master’s degree in political science - which one person held - have anything to do with making coffee and answering phones? But as long as the arms race of college degrees goes unchecked, then people will have spend to obtain more degrees to garner even a low-end job, no matter how irrelevant that degree program may be for the job.</p>