Dumbing Down Higher Ed

"Mr Hoover, president of Delta house. 1.6...four C's and an F. A fine example you set. Daniel Day Simpson...has no grade point average. All courses incomplete. Mr Blutarsky...zero...point...zero."
--Dean Vernon Wormer (Animal House)

Interesting insider view on higher ed written by a humanities prof at a Canadian institution. Several points ring true (e.g., trending disengagement of students, caveats of on-line instruction, gradeflation, rising influence of 'student services' staff). Similar points have been discussed on these pages.

Other points ring less true (e.g., inadvisability of contract or adjunct faculty with less than PhD degrees).

He also fails to discuss the role of cheap credit (i.e., low cost student loans) facilitated by government in creating and/or exacerbating the problem.

However, his article does raise a question worthy of self-reflection: How much am I bowing to institutional pressures when formulating and executing my instructional approach?