| Unfortunately, this is the tendency, to always blame the student because its their fault not the systems fault. You must be doing something wrong, I've heard it all. It took me two decades to find out these were lies. Sure there are some classes where I had to withdraw because I'm paying for it myself, working a full time job alongside all my classes, with no family support, largely because my parent decided to rob my college fund. Scholarships and grants not an option because my parent makes too much and that's calculated even though they aren't providing any support. Is it my fault that the units for the classes were misrepresented so a 3 unit course requires 22 hours a week to complete instead of the 9 its supposed to? (Can you do 16 weeks straight of 62 hour work weeks perfectly?) Or the fact that questions on tests may have 3/5 correct answers, but only 1 real answer and they don't communicate the necessary context to find the real answer. (i.e. they don't teach what you are tested on). Or the autograder attached to the class marking correct answers wrong, and because each student has randomized questions for the same assignment the teacher doesn't do their job. Or the test material not being covered at all in preparation, and repeat students selling exams inside the class with the tacit approval of the instructor because she doesn't change it year to year, and the chair and dean do nothing about the academic dishonesty because the dean or chair is new in the job and the professor has seniority? Or the class has a general 12% pass rate, and those 12% are people who have made many attempts, with one on those on their 6th attempt? Surely these are all issues with the student having personal issues? /s Mind you, each one of these happened at a different local community college so its not even just one college. Its not the whole coursework ecosystem, its critical coursework that's needed to transfer and complete that degree. Specific bottlenecks that everyone has to go through because its required. In engineering it was physics, the Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, and Light trifecta coursework. In business it was economics. There is nothing personal about structure. What's galling is I can derive Maxwells equations, and yet can't pass the physics courses, and Pearson sucks, they also intentionally embed dark patterns, and 30-40% of their testing material doesn't track with their practice, and they introduce new tools in the tests which are also broken. Worse, Pearson shifts their auditing to the student. I had questions where the test question changed after submission where I recorded it. Not enough evidence for the teacher to do anything. Yeah video evidence isn't enough, what will be?. Its a systemic problem, and it has nothing to do with the student. They have optimized to snowball fail you. It was not just me either, there were hundreds maybe thousands, and there was a group trying to change this but the trustees never listened. Classwork for degrees are supposed to be determinable so long as you know the material and are taught that material. In each of these cases, either it wasn't determinable (which btw is a system's property thing, it has a very specific definition), or they didn't teach the material. Either way you cut it, its fraud. They receive money for something (instruction and testing), and don't provide what they said, and due process doesn't exist because the people you report issues to are not obligated to act on them. They also happen to often be teachers who will receive social retribution if they do act (a common bureacratic issue). I had no problems with Calculus, differentiation, double integration, series, multivariate, ordinary differential equations, no problem. I can prove theorems, systems of equations. I just can't pass the physics they have structured because of how its structured. The point is the vast majority for the failures have nothing to do with me personally. Its simply the person who set up a course structure so once a single unexpected misstep occurs, you fail the class. They are optimizing for repeat customers and least work, and its fraud when a reasonable person knowing the material can't pass the course, and instruction and testing lack crucial integrity. If you cannot provide perfection, you don't pass; and I hope I don't have to tell you how asinine that is. There has never been any accountability in the education system and the student is left with no effective means of controlling basic academic outcomes. That's what it comes down to. Mind you many professional certifications have the exact same issues. Incidentally who do you think handles that? (Pearson). So you are told, you will have no work opportunities if you don't hold a degree, or you don't have a professional certification, and they make it nigh impossible to get either. What's the problem here? This shouldn't be happening, and yet its been allowed to continue for a generation (20 years). I know a few American's who travelled overseas (EU) to get their degrees because its less corrupt and dishonest than what's available locally. When tallying my expenses so far (without a degree), I've spent roughly $280,000* on trying to get a degree and while I'm 2/3 there to a business degree, I still don't have it. If you factor in the value of money if I had invested that over the same time period, that's easily over a million dollars. An investment in a nonexistent future sold as a lie because it took decades instead of the 4 that were advertised. All that additional income that's needed for critical life things like buying your first home, getting married, having kids, all not possible if you don't have the income to support it. Most people just drop out and cut their losses, I just wanted to build things... and I never had the chance because it was stolen through fraud with no accountability. There are many people out there just like me, but there's no visibility on the problem because they don't collect metrics that would show there is a problem. Instead they blame the student and claim they don't have enough resources at the taxpayers expense. Its the same shill argument that we fail because we don't have enough, when they'll never have enough, because its a systemic issue. * Includes living expenses during that time. |