GRE: An effort to be more positive

In an effort to have more positive blog posts I am including a response I wrote to the diagnostic essay question I chose from my GRE study book. I had 45 minutes to write it, I took 28 ( I am going to hate sitting there for 17 minutes with nothing more to say if that is what happens). Hopefully if anyone still reads this blog they will read this and respond to it to tell me exactly why I should of taken the full 45 minutes and how I can be a better writer. Writing skills are good skills, especially when you have to come up with things like, lab reports.

So the statement that I am supposed to respond to was as follows:

"The university of today is a kind of service industry. In order to operate successfully, the administration and faculty need to be responsive to the desires of the students who are the paying customers."

My response continues like so:

The current American University standards of today have led to the United States to have the most prestigious schools in the world. Changing these standards to be more responsive to the desires of the student would be counterproductive. With the common misconception that, "I am paying for school therefore I deserve a good grade," the university would turn into a degree farm with graduate degrees in science, art, and medicine being handed to the highest bidder.

In the traditional university this change would be effect many of the students who are coming out of public high schools where "outside the box" thinking is kept to a minimum. These students would suffer because they would no longer be taught the critical thinking skills that are necessary to survive in the current college world and the job world. Changing these standards to closer mirror a business like environment would change these Universities into degree farms where professor's would be required to pass a certain number of individuals per semester whether deserving or not. This would cause the University system to begin to mirror the public school system. Do we really need a "No College Student Left Behind" act?

If we were to ask professors to change there grading policies to a mandatory passing plan we would see a large exodus of skilled researchers to the business world and national laboratories who would rather work in an environment based on actual results than forced ones. These researchers would take with them the knowledge that they would be passing on in an academic setting, not to mention their grant money. This would be anathema for science and the arts. With no young mind's being guided by professors there will be very little American developments in the future as universities world wide would push to supersede the American university.

How could we ask our students to perform as past generations have if we are expecting their teachers to pass them because they are paying to be there. We would have a whole generation of students gaming the system so that they could glide through college with little work done. The inflation of unskilled workers on the job market would rise at an unhealthy rate as the quality of work done in American business and industry would decrease. It must be made clear to students that while they may be paying for college they are paying for the right to learn from said university, not the right to receive good grades.