May 29, 2006
It is a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland idea. If you do not finish high school, head straight for college.But many colleges — public and private, two-year and four-year — will accept students who have not graduated from high school or earned equivalency degrees.
And in an era of stubbornly elevated high school dropout rates, the chance to enter college through the back door is attracting growing interest among students without high school diplomas.
That growth is fueling a debate over whether the students should be in college at all and whether state financial aid should pay their way. In New York, the issue flared in a budget battle this spring.
They are students like April Pointer, 23, of New City, N.Y., a part-time telemarketer who majors in psychology at Rockland Community College, whose main campus is in Suffern, N.Y. Ms. Pointer failed science her senior year of high school and did not finish summer school.
But to her father's amazement, last year she was accepted at Rockland, part of the State University of New York.
"He asked, 'Don't you have to have a high school diploma to go to college?' " she said. "I was like, 'No, not anymore.' "
As a high school teacher, this worries me. No, not because of job security issues, but because it seems to devalue even further the worth of a high school diploma I realize that there is no stopping private schools from doing what they want to do regarding admission to college, but it seems to me that there should at least be a minimum standard for admission to public colleges and universities. I'm sure that many of these students are part of the group that need significant amounts of remediation when they arrive on campus.
And then there is the question of giving these students financial aid. Should we be offering financial assistance to those who di not even make full use of the "free" (not really, given the taxpayer burden, but free to them) educational opportunities thaty had on the high school level?
Posted by: Greg at
11:01 PM
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Well, it seems you missed the gradual change in admission requirements that colleges and universities have championed. As it turns out, the new, top requirement is "Diversity". This is just a euphemism for "affirmative action", except that it is affirmative action with a vengence, and is based upon traits over which no student has any control, such as skin color, gender, religion (or lack thereof), national origin, etc. As you may have noticed, Deans Lists have disappeared, along with Valedictorian awards as well. In their place have come the great Political Correctness - Self Esteem ciriculum of modern day liberal schools (read Public Schools) that feed the colleges and universities. So it should be no surprise that this is just the next logical step. Maybe this will help some of the "slower" folks understand why home schooling has become so popular with today's parents who really care about their children, and why parents are starting to advocate bypassing college alltogether in favor of self-teaching and careers where career preparation doesn't include formal anti-American brain washing. We are now reaping what we have sowed. Enjoy.
Posted by: Vulgorilla at Wed May 31 02:55:58 2006 (nRTGY)
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