Party Schools Exposed

61% of college students admit cheating on tests

A story in yesterday's New York Times focused on the high-tech services colleges are using to detect cheating on tests -- spy cameras, web sites that detect plagiarism, even ways to locate cheat sheets on baseball cap brims. Check the story out here.

But buried in the story is the crucial question. Why are a majority of students so morally bankrupt that they think cheating is okay?

When I first became a college teacher in 1995 I was pretty naive and didn't think cheating was really a problem. I assumed that college students who wanted to become journalists had an honor code and that they were above cheating on something as unimportant as a classroom test. Boy was I wrong!

In the next few years I found that my students were inventing interviews for their stories, making up whole stories, handing in stories written by someone else, using their cell phones to cheat, using the classroom computers to send out emails asking friends to give them the answers, and the old fashioned copying answers from the guy next to them. I even found students were cheating on the attendance sheet, writing in the names of their friends who were not there.

When I found suspicious looking stories I posted them into Goggle and as likely as not the original story, written by someone else, would pop up. Students had to be dismissed from the student newspaper for this.

So there's no question it is going on, but the crucial question is why. Why do these students think the penalties of flunking the class or losing your job at the student newspaper are worth the risk? Part of it, of course, is the fact that adolescents' brains don't fully mature until age 25 and the last part to develop is the frontal lobe that helps people make these kinds of decisions. Work on my paper or steal one and hope the professor doesn't find out? Most adults would not make that choice, but many college students do.

When I caught a cheater I would always bring her or him into my office and ask why. Often they seemed to have no real excuse. Others said "everyone does it," which is at least 61 percent true. But digging deeper I found a moral bankruptcy that was kind of frightening, especially for journalists, who need to have a well tuned moral compass to have the proper contempt for official malfeasance. But the really scary ones insisted that they had done nothing wrong, that they would not hesitate to do it again. The only crime was getting caught.

These are the leaders of tomorrow and one can only hope that a sense of honor develops inside those frontal lobes at age 25 as well. Or am I sounding old fashioned?

Why send kids to college when most of them drop out?

An article this week in the New York Times spells out what I have been writing in this blog for two years now. We're sending too many unprepared and disengaged students to college for all the wrong reasons.

You can read the article here: Plan B: Skip College.

It wasn't that long ago that only the best and the brightest went to a four-year college, which prepared them to be the leaders of tomorrow. The rest of the high school graduates went to work or signed up for a trade school to learn a profession

Today, however, we send the below average and mediocre students to college as well and the result is that most of them drop out, leaving them with the student loan bills with nothing to show for them. In fact, 69 percent of high school graduates now go to college, up from 5 percent a century ago.

In fact, many college administrators think every student should go to college, a fantasy that defies any kind of logic. These people seem to think that auto repair workers should be discussing Proust in the lunch room or burger flippers should review Einstein's theory of relativity while dolloping mustard on the Big Macs. Completely out of touch with reality.

But these administrators have done an excellent sales job of convincing parents that not sending little Johnny to college is a form of child abuse. At the same time, these administrators have dumbed down their courses, inflated grades and turned their campuses into adolescent playgrounds where binge drinking is not punished and every possible perk from climbing walls to gourmet food courts to luxury condominiums are part of the sales package. Kids go to college not to learn anything but to have the time of their lives at a summer camp that lasts for six years.

If we sent only the bright kids to college, the students who are really interested in learning for learning's sake, we could afford to send them to college for free. It would be a great benefit for our country. But sending mediocre and anti-intellectual slackers to college is a waste of money and resources that reduces the required rigor and cheapens the value of a diploma. Everybody loses except the administrators who continue to add their friends to the payroll and push up their salaries into the quarter to a half million bucks a year range. That's the real reason they want to send everyone to college. More students equal more tuition which means higher salaries. It's a no-brainier!

Sorority "formal" includes vandalism, theft and public urination

When they learn that their daughters are attending a sorority "formal" event, parents probably imagine ball gowns, corsages and escorts in tuxedos. They are not aware that times have changed as newspaper reports from Ohio found last week.

What goes on at a sorority "formal" in the age of party schools? Public urination, public sex, leaving piles of feces on the carpet, tearing sinks off the bathroom walls and jumping over the bar to steal alcohol. One student was stopped as he was attempting to urinate on an exhibit at the National Underground Railroad Museum.

You can read the New York Daily News article here and a longer piece by the local newspaper here. It should be an eye-opener for parents who think their tuition money is being used to educate the youth of tomorrow. This kind of behavior is beyond childish and more like barnyard animals.

And what punishments do the colleges dole out for this behavior? The sororities were suspended for two years. I bet they are all shrinking in fear. The reality is that these suspensions are often reduced to time served once the media attention goes away. Colleges are not about to turn away paying customers just because they act like animals. This kind of behavior is quite common among college students, but colleges are experts at keeping it from the public.

Any other kind of organization would boot these imbeciles out the door. Can you imagine if a group of accountants, public servants or Boy Scouts acted this way? How long would they last? The message that Greeks get from these minimal punishments is quite clear. Go right ahead and have fun!  Just make sure your tuition is paid and we'll cover for you.

The administrators quoted in these articles say they are embarrassed and shocked by the stories and apologize profusely, yet there is nothing new about these reports and what rock have they been hiding under for the past decade while these reports eventually leak out to the public? Are they embarrassed by their students' behavior or embarrassed that the press reported them?

And what of Greeks themselves? Take a look at this quote:

“I don’t think their actions were responsible at all,” said Katey Clark, a 2006 Miami graduate and Alpha Xi Delta member. “But they’re making it sound like they burned the place down ... with the hype it’s getting. This has been going on for years now. I just didn’t appreciate how these two sororities were targeted. They acted like these students were criminals.”

Earth to Katey Clark: vandalism is a crime, defecating in a museum is a crime. People who commit crimes are called..."criminals" even if it has been going on for years now and party school students think they are entitled to this kind of behavior. If you can gone to a real college, Katy, you would have learned that in your classes.

Idiotic students print dirty words in the student newspaper

Okay, the silly season is not quite over yet, at least at the University of Utah, where nine graduating student journalists put their diplomas and future careers in jeopardy for the dubious pleasure of printing the words "penis" and "cunt" in the student newspaper.

 
 WHAT DOES THAT SPELL ACROSS THE COLUMNS?

Read the Huffington Post story here.

Now this kind of idiocy is neither creative nor clever. It's just irresponsible and immature and the result of the kind of logic that students fall victim to over and over again: the inability to consider the consequences of their actions. Psychologists tell us that the part of the brain that enables people to make good decisions is the last part to develop. It often remains undeveloped until the age of 25, which explains a lot of this kind of student behavior.

These students spend tens of thousands of dollars on their educations and study things like ethics and responsible journalism and then they blow it all in an instant with this prank. The college is holding up their diplomas and stories about it ran in at least 133 newspapers throughout the nation.  

So what chance do any of these nine students have of getting a job at any of those papers? Zero. Who wants to hire someone who thinks this kind of abuse is funny and might try it at any time? Sorry, kids, not a chance. After all that money and all those classes you have just written off a journalism career. You blew it. I hope you think it was worth it.

So what are the kids saying to defend themselves? "Hey this is protected by the first amendment." That is correct kids, the first amendment protects idiots like you the same as anyone else. However, it's not going to help clean up your act or help you get a job. You are well on your way to a career in pizza delivery and taxi driving while you reminisce on the high point of your career: printing dirty words in the newspaper, something that elementary school students could do just as well. Great job.

 

Misbehaving college students target women and younger professors

Today's "student-friendly" party school classrooms permit students to misbehave in ways that would have led to expulsion a decade ago. Students sleep, eat their lunches, text on their cell phones, listen to their I-pods, engage in hour-long conversations with their friends and participate in other activities that send a clear message to the professor and their classmates: "I don't give a shit."

But woe to the professor who attempts to correct this behavior. The reaction can be strong and immediate. Professors are told to mind their own business, go to hell, and my favorite, "We pay your salary so we can do what we want."

Perhaps nothing points out party schools' waste of money and everyone's time than a simple peek behind the party school classroom door. Billions of dollars are being wasted in this country attempting to teach immature party animals who have absolutely no intention or desire to learn anything at all. The students are there for the party: free food, free condo, all the sex drugs and rock and roll you want, and plenty of alcohol to wash it all down with.

It's an adolescent resort, a five-year party and no one cares if you learn anything at all. Such a waste! No wonder students love it!

Now a new study has shown that abusive students target women and younger professors more than older ones and suggests that students realize that professors up for tenure are more easily manipulated and vulnerable to abuse than older ones. You can read the report in the Chronicle of Higher Education here.

But what happens if the professor files a complaint? For most of my 12-year teaching career I simply dealt with these misguided adolescents on my own, but once I decided to write my book I tried an experiment. The next time a student called me an asshole, I filed charges with the judicial board just to see how the party school I worked for handled this kind of thing. I was not disappointed.

The student never even showed up for the hearing, so I got to vent about what happened all on my own. At the end, I asked the administrator what would happen to the student. Expulsion? Suspension? Hardly. The student would have some "disciplinary points" added to her record.

How many? I asked.  Sorry that's confidential.

How many points would she have to accumulate before some action was taken? Sorry confidential.

The real back story here is that "student-friendly" party schools  aren't going to make students unhappy just because they call their professors assholes. That might make the customers unhappy and they might transfer to a more student-friendly college. The students know that and correctly interpret it as a license to do whatever they want in the classroom.

At party schools, only brave teachers award low grades

You may have read about the brave biology professor at Louisiana State University who dared to award low test scores for students who failed her tests, but you might not understand the reasons this happened.

In case you missed it, you can read the USA Today story about this here.

In party school culture, "retention" has become the primary mission, replacing the old mission of educating students. Students pay the high costs of tuition and in return they demand  good grades. As one of my students once told me, "I pay a lot of money to come here and I deserve a better grade than this."

Education and honestly evaluating what students  know, which used to be the prime mission of colleges and universities, has generally been forgotten in favor of the new prime directive of  purchasing degrees at the diploma mart.

What happened to Dominique G. Hornberger is that she seemed to have fallen into a time warp and dared to give students the failing grades they deserved for flunking the tests. Students complained and some of them dropped her class. This set off the "retention" alarms in the administrative offices. Danger! Students are unhappy! Take immediate action!

And lo and behold Hornberger was removed from the class and was replaced by a more appropriate party school professor whose first act was to raise student grades across the board. Students now happy. Retention mission accomplished. Problem solved.

Fine, except many professors still consider grading their turf and consider what the LSU administration did to Hornberger a serious breech of etiquette and it set off a national fire storm of protest. Just read some of the comments on the story above.

It's pretty clear that Hornberger was in the right here and the administration was wrong. But all of this just goes to show one more time that education is no longer the top priority and has long been replaced with the prime mission of keeping the customers satisfied so they can continue to pay their high tuition.

Cops to crack down on drug-friendly Oregon college

Reed College in Oregon has long had an unofficial reputation as a stoner's paradise where students are free to enjoy their favorite illegal substances in peace without interference from college officials.

This unofficial "smoke 'em if you got 'em" policy has come under attack this month from Oregon prosecutors after two Reed students died of heroin overdoses over the past two years. Federal prosecutors have threatened to crack down on the college and take away its  federal funds unless the college adopts a "zero-tolerance" policy against drug users, a policy that would piss off a majority of Reed students who chose the campus for its pro-stoner policies. 

The procesutors plan to send undercover drug agents to the campus' annual Renn Fayre festival this weekend, an event at which public drug use has been on display.

You can read the Portland Oregonian story about this here.

Of course there is nothing in Reed's official documents, view books or college policies that allow drug use. This policy is unofficialy promoted in conversations and e-mails from college  students to high school students. Parents interested in finding out if the college they are considering for their children is a drug haven in disguise should take a look at the punishments handed out for drug violations.

Some colleges still expel students for illegal drug use, but judicial boards at drug-friendly colleges dole out sentences that include "mandatory drug education programs" or the writing of 5oo-word essays on "why drugs are bad." Even a high school student can understand that these kinds of punishments are really no punishments at all and do nothing to discourage the abuse of dangerous drugs.

In fact, colleges with "drug-friendly" reputations are really part of an underground marketing strategy to attract student customers willing to pay high tuition rates to enjoy their dangerous lifestyle choices.

It will be interesting to see how this confrontation plays out over the next few weeks.

When college students riot, who picks up the $60,000 bill?

College administrators around the country say they are stumped on how to prevent the apres-game student sports riots that cause significant property damage, injure students and result in police overtime charges in excess of $50,000 each.

If you take the problem back to its source, you can see that once again the duplicity of college administrators is to blame. On one hand, they accept millions of dollars from big alcohol firms for advertisements in gyms, stadiums, programs and the like and on the other hand they tell students that they should not drink if they are under 21. It's a pretty clear double standard.

Colleges encourage students to get a little wild at sports events, often with the aid of massive doses of alcohol, as long as they root for the home team and stir up interest in the teams. But as soon as the final whistle goes off, administrators expect students to pack up their enthusiasm and go home. Instead, they head for the streets for a few hours of assault on themselves and on police, setting fires in the middle of the street and general mayhem.

Squads of police need to be deployed to keep things from getting out of hand, but as the numbers of rioters increase and the riots are planned weeks ahead on Facebook, it gets harder to bring things back under control.

The University of Maryland at College Park, for example, is facing a federal investigation into complaints, caught on video, of police abusing students and students abusing police. Since the city of College Park has no police force of its own, it had to bring in county police. The cost for this at the most recent party was $60,o00, according to this story in the Maryland Gazette.

A debate is raging there over who should pick up the tab. The university? The city? The county?  After some preliminary discussion, officials reached the correct decision. The answer is to prevent the riots in the first place.  So why would university officials hesitate about that? Once again it comes down to the "student-friendly" policies of party school campuses like the University of Maryland.  Students LIKE these riots and college administrators don't want to deny them their fun. 

Or, as University Police spokesman Paul Dillon told the Gazette, "They want to come out into the streets, they want to start fires, they want to confront police. That's what they want to do." And, he might have added, these students are our customers and they get what they want. Or they might go somewhere else where their right to assault police and set fires is better understood by the college administration.

So, once again, immature and dangerous student conduct is protected by the college because these immature and misguided students  pay the tuition that keeps party schools operating.

Welcome to spring, the silly season at America's party schools

There is something about the last month of classes that drives party school students a little batty.

Besides the predictable "spring celebrations" that turn into riots each spring, students suffering from spring fever seem to put in a little extra effort into being outrageous. This week marks the beginning of the onslaught. Here are some examples:

In New Hampshire, students were busted when administrators used Facebook pictures to discover there was a secret room, called Narnia, accessed through a dormitory closet (I swear I am not making this up!) where secret student drinking parties were held.

Read the full story here.

In Michigan, a student was found to have stolen 79 pairs of women's panties in what police were calling "an epic panty raid." Who would have thought that such a 1950s-era prank would still be alive today in the era of hook-ups!

Read the full story here.

In Arkansas, members of a college fraternity were arrested for stealing wooden pallets from the back of a furniture store. They told police they were planning to use them for a bonfire at an upcoming spring party.

Read the full story here.

And it is only the middle of April! I'm willing to bet the best stories are still to come! Stay tuned and I will attempt to collect some more spring antics. Meanwhile, imagine if all this creative energy could be somehow put to a good use. I bet if you could somehow connect college student energy to a dynamo you could light an entire city.

College considers the ultimate student perk: a brewery on campus

Readers of this blog are aware of the outrageous perks on which colleges spend millions to attract students who aren't all that thrilled about education.

There are giant hot tubs, climbing walls, indoor golf ranges, water parks, condo-like  residences, food courts and, at High Point University, a free ice cream truck and concierge services.

But when students are asked what else would make them happy, there is always one thing on the top of the list that colleges dared not even consider for fear that students' real purpose for attending a party school would be exposed. But now, that final barrier, the place where no college has gone before, the ultimate student perk, has arrived.

Louisiana State University if considering building a brewery on campus.

Read the story here.

Now how on earth will any other college compete with that? But you can see the logic. Why allow all that student money to go off campus to the townie bars when we can do it better right here? Let's cut out the middle man and allow the students to get shit faced right on campus! We can schedule classes right in the brew pub!

You can see the advertisements they have ready to go:

LSU where credit hours are happy hours!

LSU We party in our own dive!

L.S.U.  Liquor Served Universally

You can bet that if they get away with this, other colleges will be forced to follow in their footsteps and campus breweries will become as common as libraries. "Give the Students What they Want," a motto adopted by many college administrators eager to increase enrollment,  may soon become their death knell.

Thank you to BP for sending me this gem!