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Academic Questions

Volumn 14, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 21-30

  Reeves, Thomas C ^a  

^a Academic Questions   (United States)

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EID: 84873494510     PISSN: 08954852     EISSN: 19364709     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s12129-001-1021-8     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. The policy had historical roots in the post-Second World War rush to attract the millions of veterans benefiting from the G.I. Bill. Nearly eight million veterans entered some sort of school at a cost to taxpayers of $14.5 billion. The college population grew from 1.4 million in 1940 to 3.2 million in 1960.
2. The contemporary Socialist Equality Party "insists that access to quality higher education should be considered a basic right, not a privilege reserved for the well-to-do. Society's resources should be mobilized to ensure any young person who wants to attend college the ability to do so. " See www.wsws.org/public_html/iwbll-3/aactn.htm.
3. See "Open Admissions and Remedial Education at CUNY" at www.puaf.umd.edu/ippp/winter99/open_admissions_and remedial_edu.htm. See also James Traub, City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994); David E. Flavin and David Hyllegard, Changing the Odds: Open Admissions and the Life Chances of the Disadvantaged (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); and David E. Lavin, Richard D. Alba, and Richard A. Silberstein, Right Versus Privilege: The Open-Admissions Experiment at the City University of New York (New York: The Free Press, 1981).
4. See http://collegian.ksu.edu/issues/vlOO/sp/n125/campus-qualified-ad.-Simmo.html.
5. See www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/hclas_u.htm.
6. The 95 percent figure came from the U.S. News & World Report study, and the additional data came from an interview with CynthiaJensen, Parkside's acting director of admissions, on 12January 2001.
7. Interview with Parkside internal auditor Dennis Irwin, 18January 2001. There appear to be no more recent figures.
8. In the U.S. News & World Report evaluation, the even smaller campus at Superior is on Tier 3, while Green Bay and five others in the System are on Tier 2.
9. From 1966 to 1970, I taught history at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, which at that time admitted almost anyone. In contrast, I have also taught classes at Colorado College, Carthage College, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (graduate and undergraduate). I also served as a teaching assistant at the University of Washington and the University of California-Santa Barbara for a total of four years.
10. Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes to College: An Eye-Opening Account of Teaching in Postmodern America (New York: Open Court, 1996).
11. This is in large part a manifestation of the low socio-economic level of the students. See Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (NewYork: Summit Books, 1983), 128-50.
12. Cf. Paul Trout, "Student Anti-Intellectualism and the Dumbing Down of the University, " http://mtprof.msun.edu/Spr 1997/TROUT-ST.html.
13. Thomas C. Reeves, Twentieth-Century America: A Brief History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
14. The close relationship in academia between high student popularity and high grades is well established, although often hotly denied by award-winning professors. For especially interesting commentary on this and related topics, see The Chronicle of Higher Education Colloquy at http://chronicle.com/coUoquy/97/inflation/background.htm
15. Since Parkside's creation, only a single history major has gone on to acquire a Ph.D. in history.
16. For an excellent guide to campus indoctrination efforts and the often tyrannical institutional demands for student and faculty conformity to leftist ideology, see Alan Charles Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses (New York: HarperCollins, 1999). Political Correctness in the University of Wisconsin System is discussed on pages 86, 90, 167-8, 170-1.
17. Paul Trout, cited earlier, observes, "As long as larger enrollments mean larger budgets, and larger budgets mean administrative success, enrolling and retaining as many students as possible, regardless of their attitudes or aptitudes, is more important than making sure students achieve, learn, and produce. "