What College Really Is

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[pic 1] Jacobs meant by credentialing is providing a degree, and educating means providing quality knowledge that comes from professors taking the time to help students. I agree with everything Jacobs says about colleges and how the quality of education has decreased. As a child I was always excited to learn and my teachers were excited to teach, but as I got older it became about passing tests .Colleges are more interested in credentialing these days more than educating, even though it should be the other way around. As Jacobs says, “The more successful credentialing became as a growth industry, the more it dominated education, from the viewpoints of both teachers and students. Teachers could not help despairing of classes whose members seemed less interested in learning than in doing the minimum work required to get by and get out.” This could possibly be fixed through new teaching strategies to get students involved. Not only are the colleges more interested in credentialing students, students are too. Jacobs states, “Students who are passionate about learning, or could become so, do exist. Faculty members who love their subjects passionately and are eager to teach what they know and to plumb its depths further also exist. But institutions devoted to respecting and fulfilling these needs as their first purposes have become rare, under pressure of different necessities.” I agree with Jacobs on this because I am one of those people. Good students and teachers still exist, but universities cannot afford reducing class sizes. Regrettably I will not be in a university who puts educating before credentialing, according to Jacobs, students like myself do not see the real loss, “Only faculty who have lived through the loss realize what has been lost.”[pic 2]

And other students feel the same way, Keaira Higgins, who had the same math class as me at Tennessee Tech said, “I absolutely hated that math class. I did not learn anything. I am not good at math and our teacher expected us to teach ourselves, and as a result I failed the class.” However, she believes a smaller class size would have been helpful because “Our teacher could have answered all the questions I had, maybe I would have passed with a smaller class.” Finally Higgins believes universities are more interested in credentialing because she believes “They want more people graduating, they don’t care that we actually learn.”

On the other hand, Margret Brunner, 94 year old, former college professor, “I had the best college experience, classes were interesting, and I never missed a day of class! Classes were generally small, my largest class had about 45 people. On the other hand, “The classes I taught were double the size of what I was in as a student, teaching a class so large took some getting used to, education is not what it used to be in my day.” However, she believes the problem today come from students. “Well the last time I taught a class the students did not really care what I was saying, they were more interested in what was going on in their lives. Brunner’s interview clarifies that education has decreased, and it is sad, but my generation will never completely understand what we are losing because we have never been a part of a “good education system”. .

Works Cited

Brunner, Margret. Personal Interview. 7 Feb. 2015.

Jacobs, Jane. “Credentialing vs. Educating.” Reading Culture: Contexts for Critical Reading and Writing. 7th edition. Eds. Diana George and John Trimbur. New York: Longman, 2010. 116-23. Web.

Higgins, Keaira. Personal Interview. 7 Feb. 2015