Potemkin Diplomas
Weissberg, Robert
Potemkin Diplomas by Robert Weissberg Not long ago, A university's graduation rate was interesting only to professional educators. It was rarely discussed. It was a bit of information neither...
...But this handholding in loco parentis hardly builds self-sufficiency and independence...
...Last, there is what might be described as Marshall Plan-level intensive care...
...Government and private organizations also have learned to manipulate data to satisfy sudden, often unrealistic, political demands...
...His "The Joys of Gibberish" appeared in The Weekly Standard last October...
...Another useful tool is the curve adjustment...
...The techniques described above are far from causes c?l?bres...
...Indeed, it is still a bread-and-butter means of ensuring that academically troubled athletes are eligible...
...Special curriculums...
...They have one thing going for them: Unlike learning, graduation rates are easily manipulated...
...To accuse a minority student of cheating is to make oneself vulnerable to charges of racism...
...Administrators will come up with additional "innovations" to produce, or maintain, acceptable rates of graduation...
...The acceptance of transfer credit, even from schools with plebeian standards, is a nicely invisible way of keeping marginal students afloat...
...Fortunately for the pressured university, many poor souls still equate holding a diploma with knowing something...
...It is likely that, over time, dishonest and dubious practices will gain ever wider respectability...
...Some college writing centers come close to functioning as officially sanctioned ghostwriters...
...to graduate them, by comparison, is a snap...
...For just as governments may believe that printing up currency will solve financial strains, universities, too, may imagine that printing up diplomas will make a country educated...
...Highly politicized, pressurized environments virtually require it...
...The quest for equality of opportunity has been transformed into a demand for desirable outcomes, and the graduation rate now serves as a critical measure of an institution's success...
...What can a university do to improve its graduation rate, short of outright transcript falsification...
...Needless to say, the motives underlying this intervention are beyond reproach...
...And, with a breezy "See a dean," professors are relieved of the burden of personally addressing student problems...
...Let us count a few of the ways...
...To educate barely literate, unmotivated students is a difficult, awe-inspiring accomplishment...
...To those engaged in the great political-correctness wars, they are merely a sideshow...
...Likewise, paid tutors may have an incentive to cross the line when assisting their clients...
...Unlike the advisers of old, whose performance was not measured by how well their advisees did, these modern experts have a vested economic interest in getting their charges through...
...A small army exists to prod them towards a diploma...
...At Illinois, one-quarter of the 120 credits necessary to graduate may be obtained at outside institutions...
...After all, if people insist on degrees, what harm is there in granting them...
...Next, there is the phenomenon of "official rescues...
...An "out of sight, out of mind" policy helps to preserve innocence as regards the failure of contemporary social engineering...
...Sadly, tolerance for cheating is rampant on campus...
...At the University of Illinois, where I teach, over a dozen such "transition" courses are offered every semester to a select clientele...
...In principle, rules against cheating remain as severe as ever...
...These programs are usually staffed with faculty committed to dispensing as many degrees as possible...
...As long as (roughly) equivalent courses exist at the home university, and someone is willing to accept that formal course descriptions reflect actual content, grades earned elsewhere count fully toward graduation...
...Today, however, this figure is a public concern, fraught with political significance...
...These are remedial courses, really, whose dumbed-down character is unrevealed in catalogue descriptions...
...Many people, including future employers, are unaware of their existence...
...Most of them, taken separately, are defensible-even commendable...
...More important, bureaucrats, counselors, facilitators, mentors, coordinators, and tutors intensively monitor students' performance, consulting with faculty as problems arise...
...rather, they are available only to "at-risk" students who would otherwise be unable to graduate...
...The modern university takes care to offer "special" courses...
...They are not traditional "gut" courses open to anyone...
...Professors have little incentive to resist perpetual toying with grades and diplomas...
...Along with the ample resources available to all students, Illinois students who are "at-risk" receive special help in everything from computer literacy to study skills...
...Easy transfer credit also lessens the pain...
...There is a new variety of counselor, who deals exclusively with marginal students...
...Usually, this extrication is equally welcomed by the instructor...
...This technique of "social progress" is a carry-over from the days of "athletes-only" classes...
...No sense suggesting a tough math or science class...
...So, an era of political cosmetology is upon the university...
...Many employers, no doubt, viewed this competence as more important than any specialized knowledge...
...Each of the steps described below has the advantage of relative obscurity, consistent with traditional administrative discretion...
...For generations, a college degree was taken to reflect a capacity for perseverance, ingenuity, organization, and other survival skills...
...Hence, an adulterated degree may be issued and received-a Cadillac with Chevy parts...
...One former colleague, a world-famous scholar, routinely dispensed B minuses to undeserving minority students, not quite willing to grant an A or even a level B, but definitely unwilling to go as low as C. Such professors, predictably, become well-known to harried guidance counselors who are charged with meeting the numbers...
...A legacy of irresponsibility-skipped classes, forgotten assignments, missed exams, horrible performances-vanishes completely...
...Unlike the more notorious grade inflation or the policy of dubbing every student an "honors graduate," this corruption remains obscure...
...Every university has its share of this type of professor, typically concentrated in the social sciences...
...Also to consider is a professor's ideological embrace-the shielding of disadvantaged students by professors who fancy themselves humanitarian...
...Few professors like to flunk students or read terrible papers...
...So long as nobody asks what the graduates know, the political fallout from educational failure is minimal...
...Unlike containers of food, college diplomas do not list ingredients...
...In practice, less and less is being done about it...
...An ex-colleague found himself on trial as a result of his pursuit of a cheating case...
...When the supposed rewards of a college degree are not forthcoming, frustration and anger boil up...
...Let the traditionalists smirk at volleyball, art appreciation, leisure studies, and the like: A graduate is a graduate, a booster of the rate...
...but it could become a time bomb for the dirty little secret of preferential admissions...
...Should college presidents worry that the scandal of revolving-door education will be exposed...
...Then there is easy transfer credit...
...Special courses and steering remove from regular classrooms students whose sorry performance would inflict moral anguish on believers in traditional standards...
...Cheating, unsurprisingly, has become a tempting, low-risk option for desperate students...
...A steady diet of this type of prof can do wonders for ailing grade point averages...
...Robert Weissberg is professor of political science at the University of Illinois...
...A student may hold a school's degree, but that does not certify that he completed all of his coursework there...
...A summer "bridge" program offers instruction in math, reading, and writing...
...A teacher sympathetic to the plight of struggling, semi-literate students-or, likelier, one who fears trouble-may easily bend the tail of the curve to convert failures into just-barely passes...
...Professors, not universities or accrediting bodies, freely define letter grades...
...Few are inspired to ask the awkward questions...
...It was a bit of information neither trivial nor profound...
...In their minds, honorific Cs in ersatz courses are as real as Cs in engineering or biology...
...The misrepresentation of facts about job-training, drug rehabilitation, economic assistance, and housing has become an accepted way of life...
...Moreover, a well-meaning dean can rescue a panicked student from an upcoming final by granting an official excuse for some never-described "personal problem...
...A student facing failure can petition a sympathetic dean to drop a course just before the ax falls...
...Technology makes plagiarism easier to execute, more difficult to uncover...
...Universities can create these and even whole departments to provide safe havens for students daunted by traditional academic requirements...
...And disturbing though it may be, the manufacture of diplomas from Potemkin Village State College should not come as a shock...
...An endangered student today receives more than sage advice from an experienced counselor...
...The promise of higher education is not kept...
...Even medical exemptions can be wangled, as current interpretation of privacy law makes it nearly impossible for professors to distinguish between genuine illness and well-timed hypochondria...
...Steering," too, has become a more frequent occurrence on campus: the practice of encouraging young people to follow the path of least resistance...
...But together, they make for a gross fraud, perpetrated in the name of educational progress...
...But "at-risk" students today encounter an environment very different from survival training...
...Not only is the program free, enrollees receive weekly living allowances and a cash bonus at summer's end...
...Complaints are inconceivable...
...Converting five Fs into Cs is no big deal in a class of 60...
...It deserves to be stressed that academic fudging is neither harmless nor purely cosmetic...
...If all else fails, a scheme can be devised to give full academic credit for "life experiences" through internships and independent projects...
...And administrative "due process" has become a tacit conspiracy to make prosecution too costly to consider...
...Deans do not welcome law-and-order crusaders on the faculty...
...it was simply a statistic...
...After all, too many flunk-outs could invite a program's abolition...
...A quick "in and out" pattern-matriculation and withdrawal-may still be the rule for unqualified students, particularly minorities, who are most harmed...
...Many of the "beneficiaries" are oblivious to what has been done for them (or to them...
...Students on the verge of failure can summer at a nearby community college for a fix of As in no-brainer subjects...
Vol. 1 • February 1996 • No. 21
