Re: son entering high school... possible divergence from the original post

In article
<c8cfc89e-893b-4ef6-b059-37126a056a54@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Beliavsky <beliavsky@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Yes, there is no reason kick out college students who are doing merely
"adequate", rather than "good" work. But they should probably should
not be going to graduate school, right? By analogy, I think college is
for someone who has done good work in high school, and the question is
where one draws the line -- how one defines "good".

Sorry, have I misunderstood your system here? There are two-year colleges and
there is graduate school (where you get your higher degrees, right?). Where
do people get their bachelor's degrees? Surely most people aren't going to
manage a doctorate!

In our university system, as I said, you can start a bachelor's degree at
about age 18 and finish it in 3-5 years, depending on the length of the
course. If you add on an extra year for Honours, and get a good enough
result, you will be invited to do a doctorate (or Master's). A slightly lower
mark and you can apply to do a doctorate -- to some extent, interest (ie, a
good thesis topic) will get you in.

As a parent who
would be paying tuition bills and a taxpayer fundng public
universities, Pell grants, and student loan guarantees, I'd say a
student earning a B-minus average in non-honors courses is in fuzzy
territory and ought to work harder in order to be clearly "over the
line". A study at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007161.pdf found that
the 6-year college graduation rate was 57% . I bet the graduation rate
is higher for students with better grades in high school and higher
SAT/ACT scores. One could construct an index from such measures to
predict the chance of graduating from college, and once the
probability drops below some level, say 50%, other post-high-school
options should be recommended, IMO.

Here, we *know* it isn't quite like that, but of course our education system
is different. It is well known that our Top Private Schools get plenty of
students into prestigious university courses, and that most of their students
end up at universities. The interesting thing is that their dropout rates
from university are higher. The reason is that the students have been
spoon-fed their material, and have not been taught to think for themselves or
study independently. When the crutches are removed, they fall over -- and as
a rule these are intelligent people, not just morons with rich parents. I
think another part of the reason is that the children wake up to themselves
and realise that in fact they are not particularly interested in doing the
course that their parents have pushed them into for a selfish reason like
snobbery.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Robtards favorite college
    ... Widener University ... Charter school ... It was known from 1892 to 1972 as Pennsylvania Military College, ... serves all undergraduate day students as well as University College ...
    (rec.sport.pro-wrestling)
  • Re: Stanford to eliminate tuition for families earning less than $100,000
    ... Stanford drops tuition for some students ... even if they have to start out in a low cost community college. ... Education now is a lifelong enterprise. ... student is ready to graduate from high school, ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: Stanford to eliminate tuition for families earning less than $100,000
    ... Stanford drops tuition for some students ... even if they have to start out in a low cost community college. ... Education now is a lifelong enterprise. ... student is ready to graduate from high school, ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: OT: Can South Central LA Schools be saved?
    ... far more than that go to college here in the USA. ... there are certainly some kids that get to college here without the ... accelerated program, yes, but by the end of high school I was done with ... as were many math-capable students who had never been in the accelarated ...
    (rec.gambling.poker)
  • Re: Right on topic
    ... and astronomy at Moorpark College." ... thing to tell students his personal views on science and religion ... In or out of class, if it is on school time, he's ... still a science teacher. ...
    (talk.origins)