It sounds okay at first glance, but how many people are going to get saddled with an extra semester of debt now because they didn't figure out they weren't suite/ready for college yet but were just passed along through the first semester anyways?
Completely agree. My first semester of university was straight up hazing, which at the time felt like crap.
The consequence though, was that every single person who stayed on the course actually cared about being there. Staying motivated for the next three and a half years was made so much easier because the first six months were so difficult.
People called them "weeder" classes in my university.
But it's better earlier rather than later. The consequences aren't severe and you can change majors, lessen your course load, or stop those volunteer opportunities. That's part of learning how to be an adult.
I knew a few people my freshmen year that were put on academic probation. They turned out all right after making some drastic changes. Others simply disappeared during the break.
Apart from the notion of a moral obligation that may now seem quaint and old-fashioned, you’re talking about their customers who are paying for an education. The responsibility rests partly on the school for solving these challenges. Declaring students “weeds” would tell you all you need to know about the place.
If it's simply pay to win then the value of a degree from an institution falls to absolutely zero. If the product a student is buying is a credential that's supposed to say "I know and can do things, pay me money please" then in order for that credential to fulfill its objective then low performing and mediocre students ("weeds") need to be filtered out. Otherwise, employers and the wider world will quickly realize the credential is meaningless.
Failing to teach a student ≠> the student is mediocre.
The student is mediocre ≠ the student is irredeemable and didn’t deserve an education in the first place.
Honestly, it’s wild to me how reluctant people are to accept that teachers have a responsibility to teach their students.
They will charge you $2000 a credit hour to have a teacher teach you — as if the teacher alone is the gatekeeper of an education — and then claim that the teacher is not in any way responsible for the student’s success or failure in being taught.
How is saying some students get weeded out the same thing as saying the teacher has zero responsibility to teach any of their students? Whether or not you pay or get paid to be at an educational institution, you should be weeded out (early, preferably) if you aren't going to put in your part.
A portion of the educator's role is weeding out students who are not wanting/able to engage with the material before they spend a massive amount of time and money towards stepping stone classes to something they won't try/be able to complete. A portion of the student's role is weeding out the teachers and institutions which are more interested in maximizing the money out of the student instead of teaching them well. The two weeding processes actually reinforce the right outcome together - students getting educated instead of wasting their resources.
Why take money from someone you know you can’t teach?
The reality is that prestigious universities routinely take money from incredibly talented people who are fully capable of learning calculus with or without a good teacher, the university gives them a careless or actively harmful teacher, and then the student is deemed a “weed” that was rightfully put in their proper place.
When you look at it this way, it’s clear that people are being scammed. Maybe that’s why universities are so reluctant to accept accountability for their teaching quality, blaming the students first and foremost.
Why assume they always know ahead of time? I was a good student in high school and a shit student right after, it wasn't the professors fault for lacking a crystal ball on that. A decade later I did my part out of genuine interest to learn and it went great.
Again, weeding does and needs to happen on both sides because there is more than one type of reason students fail to learn. That is in no way the same thing as saying it's never the teacher's fault, it's saying there are reasons to weed out for all that need to participate properly who aren't. No amount of money exchange changes that education is a two way street in effort.
I'm sorry but this is straight up a non serious reply. If you want to be in STEM you need to pass calculus, then the specific majors have their own "weed out" courses which is good. There should be some base level of competence and if you can't pass, say, Abstract Algebra then you can't get a degree in mathematics.
There needs to be some sort of academic baseline for university otherwise what is the difference between a youtube playlist and a semester worth of credits?
Can the school teach its students calculus or does it take money from people, fail to teach them calculus, call them “weeds,” and kick them to the curb? The responsibility runs both ways.
I am definitely not saying that students should pass without learning the material. I am emphasizing that schools and instructors also have a responsibility to teach their students, both morally and financially. Just because the norm is to behave amorally and with greed, that doesn’t make it proper.
First, I was a 'provisional' admission. Which meant that I had to maintain at least a C Average for the first year, Had to log a certain number of hours in one of the 'study centers' every week (Although I could technically do whatever, so I wound up reading a lot of books once I had my coursework done,) and there was a 1 hour a week pass/fail that was primarily following up on the study center logs and connecting students with extra help if the needed it.
Second, I remember a -lot- of people pledging a fraternity their first semester, and statistically it seemed to cause a much higher fail rate... In fact, I tried pledging a social fraternity my second year, dropped out in less than a week because I realized the time commitments and requirements would have tanked my grades; sure enough out of the entire group that didn't drop out, less than 10% survived through the full year.
That second point actually got so bad that, for my last year they actually banned Social fraternities from recruiting first semester freshmen... not sure whether it stuck or not after I graduated tho.
I actually made the point to keep going for a semester after they said it wasn't required anymore, because if nothing else, it was a 'quiet area' where I knew I wouldn't get distracted like I would in my dorm room or if I tried studying out in the open.
I think establishing that -habit- was a huge part of helping me be more successful, I saw people who started with a 'full ride' but crashed out in a year or less because the freedom of college life versus HS is a big shift.
The same amount of people maybe that will not have quit and would go on to thrive. Two sides of the same coin. If you want to go to the bottom of it, it's wrong answers only.
