mortiz0010

A colleague of mine who is a faculty member in allied health at a large university said to me that if he had it to do over, he would teach at a community college where they have vocational education. I was surprised. Not that he wanted to leave a university for a community college but that he that he didn’t realize that higher education is vocational education. The difference is that for the most part, universities teach some higher level vocational ed. Universities teach vocational education? Yes, just ask any student attending a university or four-year college why she is there. The answer invariably is to either “get a job” or “become a botanist, teacher, computer analyst, engineer, poet or some other work-related professional. Even a philosophy or art major is taking the courses to become something – a professor or an artist. Our students are not at college to “learn” but to get a job and earn. This is not new. The first university, Harvard, was started to teach young men to get a j...

For the life of me I do not understand the attitudes and rationale of so many faculty toward student attendance. All I need to do at most every retention  study and workshop is review the institution’s attendance policy with the audience and kaboom, the fight is on. Yes, I did say fight. Most faculty and some administrators immediately disagree with me. They yell out “what do mean we should not have an institutional attendance policy? We then insist that students "learn the most they can by attending every class and learning from you. Don’t you realize that required attendance is a major positive factor in keeping students in college leading to their graduation and institutional success. That required attendance will return a significant percentage increase in retention and revenue? What’s more….” Every college and university should have a clear, consistent and emphatic attendance policy that states that being in class is so important that students must attend all classes. Imp...