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Abstract:

An anonymous "Professor X," who teaches at a community college and a "college of last resort," describes the frustrations he or she has teaching literary analysis and research paper-writing to students who will struggle with the work no matter what. Fail rates are high and students--many who need a few college credits for their jobs--are resentful. The professor questions the assumption that everyone can and should go to college. S/he comments:

No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces—social optimism on a large scale, the sense of college as both a universal right and a need, financial necessity on the part of the colleges and the students alike, the desire to maintain high academic standards while admitting marginal students—that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty.

Sharing the article on the TLN Forum led to some frank talk about students who excel going straight into work after high school, and dramatically improving the incorpation of literacy, writing and other skills into technical class curriculums. 

"Professor X" (2008). In the basement of the ivory tower. Atlantic Monthly (June 2008). Retrieved from The Atlantic 19 May 2008. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/college

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