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- Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
- Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!paladin.american.edu!auvm!ASUACAD.BITNET!IACDES
- Message-ID: <MBU-L%92081614363518@TTUVM1.BITNET>
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
- Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 14:36:34 --500
- Sender: "Megabyte University (Computers & Writing)" <MBU-L@TTUVM1.BITNET>
- From: "David E. Schwalm" <IACDES@ASUACAD.BITNET>
- Subject: Behaving like college students
- Lines: 26
-
- Becky, that's a good question. How do college people behave? Since I proposed
- a fantasy world, I'd rather talk about how they ought to behave and we can
- work from there. College students ought to be academically motivated. They
- should read, write, study, question. They should be willing to participate in
- the academic community that exists outside the classroom. They should engage
- in their education (this is the critical element). And faculty should engage
- in the process of educating/being educated. They should party, get stinking
- drunk, and go to football games, if they want to. They can even get a good
- tan. I don't know. What else? The students who waste everyone's time and money
- are the disengaged, people seeking degrees rather than education. A more
- problematic student is the student seeking very specific training--say, a
- teaching certificate or certain qualifications in accounting. These students
- (often but not alway s older. non-traditional students) are willing to work
- very hard in courses whose relevance to their personal goals is obvious, but
- they are extremely impatient with general education requirements, foreign
- language requirements, required composition courses, and the like. They tend
- to put off these requirements, and then they fight them every inch of the way.
- These students are the ones for whom we should begin to provide special
- focused short-term programs as alternatives to traditional liberal-arts-based
- degrees. Their goals and ours are just not the same (maybe that "ours" should
- be "mine").
-
- -- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
- ___Arizona State University West
- ___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
- ___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500
-