Huh?? wrote:

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So 32 of the 98 will go to JCJC or PRCC? That's embarrassing. The "best and brightest" of our local high schools choosing two more years of high school over a real education.

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I think you see so many Jucos in this group because they are waiting on USM to get straightened out. Just remember that in two years (when these kids will finish Juco) that SFT will be G-O-N-E. If things improve, they may still come here. If things don't improve, then those who can go elsewhere will do so.

This figure is interesting but even more telling would be the number of students with high SAT/ACT that are coming to USM. How many Oak Grove/ HHS students with ACT's over 28 have chosen USM? Where else are they going?

Huh?? wrote:

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So 32 of the 98 will go to JCJC or PRCC? That's embarrassing. The "best and brightest" of our local high schools choosing two more years of high school over a real education.

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Let me tell you something Huh, I went to a two year college to get my degree in a specialized field.  I have a real education!  I normally don't get my panties in a bunch over what is said here, I will take exception to this comment.

You can receive a full RN degree at a two year college, you can become an x-ray tech at a two year college, you can become a pharamacutical assistant at a two year college, you can become a phelobotimist at a two year college, or like myself you can become a physical therapist assistant at a two year college. You can even become a computer network person with a two year college.  So don't even tell me that a junior college is two more years of freakin high school.

Maybe these young people want to gain a bit more knowledge on a higher level rather than jumping in with both feet to a full 4 year college.  I don't blame them.  The demands of a 4 year school might just be too much for some of these young people, who want to get their partying out of the way first.  Be thankful they have decided to grow up some before they come to you instead of putting them down and ridiculing them for their decisions.

i knew some recruiters here and at Carey--part of what goes on, even with the bright students, is the cost differential. a jc doesn't cost as much as USM or Carey. parents will also tell their child--go to the jc and we'll buy you a new car. frustrated the recruiters to no end that this reasoning would work, but it did.

Huh?? wrote:

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So 32 of the 98 will go to JCJC or PRCC? That's embarrassing. The "best and brightest" of our local high schools choosing two more years of high school over a real education.

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This is a culture thing in MS. The CC people wield extraordinary political power (where else do CCs have dorms, band scholarships, and football teams). They also got away with quite a bit of arm twisting in the recent articulation negotiations. For many students, this is the path Mama and Daddy took, and there is extraordinary "brand" loyalty in MS, even to CCs. A poster defended the quality of education recieved in CCs. To be frank, the dirty little secret we all now about is the extraordinary level of grade inflation going on at CCs. How many transfer students' SMART sheets have you seen that were straight A's at Jones or Pearl or Hinds, and then the GPA did a nose dive when they hit University. I have even seen a student with significant cognitive and adaptive limitations (I mean testing FSIQ = 70 on the WAIS) with a solid A average at CC. Unbelievable.    

In at least one area (discretion required) the grade inflation is masking a nosedive in the quality of instruction.  The CCs aren't hiring competent people in this area but no one complains if the class GPA is high.  The students don't much notice as the quality of instruction in their high schools was even more abysmal.

Huh?? wrote:

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So 32 of the 98 will go to JCJC or PRCC? That's embarrassing. The "best and brightest" of our local high schools choosing two more years of high school over a real education.

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It's simple math & most of those kids can probably do math a fuzz better than most of the professors on this board. Stacking up the financial aid at USM might actually pay full tuition, fees, room & board. Stacking it up at a community college would pay all of the above -- several of the CC's simply award a "full" to anybody with an ACT over 28 -- and put cash money in the students pocket at refund time.

I know for a stone fact that a 29 ACT will not earn a student full tuition at Ole Miss, much less room'n'board. Dunno about USM, but they probably do a little more... Jones? Heck, they offer a full to every valedictorian in the state. The joke used to be that the deal included a Camaro

The numbers (USM is still getting a bunch) suggest that even high ability students don't want to go "off" to college, as a rule. CC's really play on that.

A kid at my local h.s. with a 29 ACT got a full ride, room & meals to Carey with such perqs as a laptop thrown in to sweeten the deal. I think their "published" total value for 4 years was $52K.

BTW, that lone valedictorial going to South Alabama "only" had a 36 ACT.

No matter what examples you give me, they are just that: examples. Having your "best and brightest" going to JUCOs is ridiculous, no matter what else is going on, and no matter how much it costs. USM should be getting these people, even if it means tuition waivers. I'd rather waive tuition for the top 5% of all graduates (by whatever measure you choose) and get them to USM than take some of the students we have now. Many of our students now have sub-20 ACTs and had low high school GPAs and only want to get a ticket punched. Maybe some of these "best and brightest" would actually have an interest in learning.

My 2004 "high honors graduate with a 28 ACT got a full ride at the community college (tuition & books). In the honors program, he did a internship at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory and had an all expenses paid trip to the Mississippi Academy of Sciences in Oxford to present his work. Anyone on this list want to recruit him for USM?

wait a minute wrote:

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. . . Alot of people went to CC's and you sound elitist when you knock them. There are alot of qualified people teaching at CC's as well. Many of them are not researchers but what they are teaching doesn't require them to be. Don't forget that CC's are picking up former University people. They pay more in many cases and you don't have to put up with alot of the stuff you do at the U's.

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The worst problem with CC faculty is not so much that they are "unqualified" --although you will find relatively few Ph.D.'s among full time MS CC instructors--but rather that their administrators require them to teach way too much.

The standard load at MGCCC, for instance, is five courses a term, which is bad enough, but the AVERAGE in any given department in any given term is usually OVER six. Loads of seven and even eight courses a term are not unusual for CC faculty. They often teach one on-line course and one accelerated format course in addition to five or six traditional term courses, often times willingly taking on the overload because they are paid extra to do so. Even chairs teach almost this much.

The real achilles heel of CC instruction is to be found in basic English and Math courses where very large amounts of graded work are essential to effective teaching/learning. Just because these are basic courses, in other words, doesn't necessarily mean that it's possible to teach 5-8 of them well each term. There's almost always going to be an inverse relation between the number of classes an instructor teaches and the rigor of instruction. The quality of instruction decreases as the quantity goes up, even IF that instructor's not called upon to do research or service.

After a long enough time, this lack of rigor can actually become policy. Back when CC English instructors used to put their syllabuses on the web, for instance, I came across department standard freshman comp syllabuses that specified that 75 percent of graded writing was to be done in class: no revision, no multiple drafts, no instructor suggestions for how to make a specific piece of writing better. Simply a series of rushed, pressured, handwritten papers, probably returned from instructor marked in red ink and graded on a curve. This type of grading cuts down on the amount of work for the instructor, but no student really learns how to write in that situation, especially when the CC administration pressures the instructors to hand out as many passing grades as possible to keep full time enrollments, and state appropriations, high.

The low point of such mandated low quality/high quantity instruction came a couple of years back when MGCCC offered freshman comp courses in an accelerated format over the course of THREE WEEKENDS. To anyone who knows anything about writing pedagogy this was utterly absurd. I think they've since done away with this particular practice, but a source at Perk tells me that individual teaching loads are still in the 6-7 course range in the MGCCC English Departments.

Is it "elitist" to point out that this much teaching is too much, and to condemn the CC administrators who mandate such loads, lower the quality of instruction and encourage grade inflation? Is doing so the same as "knocking" the students who came out this system? Hardly. Yet if you publicly point out that the CC's are failing to teach basic math and writing skills you will almost certainly be lambasted as elitest--as happens in the quoted passage from this board, above--and your criticisms directed away from your intended target--CC administrators--onto their victims: students educated to very low standards of critical literacy, reasoning and math skills because, to CC administrators, this looks good for the fiscal bottom line.

I guess these alumni are right to be sensitive about the possibility that they've been duped, defrauded, cheated. I just wish folks like "Wait a Minute" would stop killing the messenger who points it out and direct their anger where it belongs: with the CC system and campus administrators who did the duping, defrauding and cheating. They're the real culprits, the real "elitists".

Too Close to Willis Lott wrote:

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wait a minute wrote: . . . Alot of people went to CC's and you sound elitist when you knock them. There are alot of qualified people teaching at CC's as well. Many of them are not researchers but what they are teaching doesn't require them to be. Don't forget that CC's are picking up former University people. They pay more in many cases and you don't have to put up with alot of the stuff you do at the U's. The worst problem with CC faculty is not so much that they are "unqualified" --although you will find relatively few Ph.D.'s among full time MS CC instructors--but rather that their administrators require them to teach way too much. The standard load at MGCCC, for instance, is five courses a term, which is bad enough, but the AVERAGE in any given department in any given term is usually OVER six. Loads of seven and even eight courses a term are not unusual for CC faculty. They often teach one on-line course and one accelerated format course in addition to five or six traditional term courses, often times willingly taking on the overload because they are paid extra to do so. Even chairs teach almost this much. The real achilles heel of CC instruction is to be found in basic English and Math courses where very large amounts of graded work are essential to effective teaching/learning. Just because these are basic courses, in other words, doesn't necessarily mean that it's possible to teach 5-8 of them well each term. There's almost always going to be an inverse relation between the number of classes an instructor teaches and the rigor of instruction. The quality of instruction decreases as the quantity goes up, even IF that instructor's not called upon to do research or service. After a long enough time, this lack of rigor can actually become policy. Back when CC English instructors used to put their syllabuses on the web, for instance, I came across department standard freshman comp syllabuses that specified that 75 percent of graded writing was to be done in class: no revision, no multiple drafts, no instructor suggestions for how to make a specific piece of writing better. Simply a series of rushed, pressured, handwritten papers, probably returned from instructor marked in red ink and graded on a curve. This type of grading cuts down on the amount of work for the instructor, but no student really learns how to write in that situation, especially when the CC administration pressures the instructors to hand out as many passing grades as possible to keep full time enrollments, and state appropriations, high. The low point of such mandated low quality/high quantity instruction came a couple of years back when MGCCC offered freshman comp courses in an accelerated format over the course of THREE WEEKENDS. To anyone who knows anything about writing pedagogy this was utterly absurd. I think they've since done away with this particular practice, but a source at Perk tells me that individual teaching loads are still in the 6-7 course range in the MGCCC English Departments. Is it "elitist" to point out that this much teaching is too much, and to condemn the CC administrators who mandate such loads, lower the quality of instruction and encourage grade inflation? Is doing so the same as "knocking" the students who came out this system? Hardly. Yet if you publicly point out that the CC's are failing to teach basic math and writing skills you will almost certainly be lambasted as elitest--as happens in the quoted passage from this board, above--and your criticisms directed away from your intended target--CC administrators--onto their victims: students educated to very low standards of critical literacy, reasoning and math skills because, to CC administrators, this looks good for the fiscal bottom line. I guess these alumni are right to be sensitive about the possibility that they've been duped, defrauded, cheated. I just wish folks like "Wait a Minute" would stop killing the messenger who points it out and direct their anger where it belongs: with the CC system and campus administrators who did the duping, defrauding and cheating. They're the real culprits, the real "elitists".

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Do you think this could be changed by SACS assessment requirements?  If students really were assessed then it could be publicly acknowledge that they were not learning at the college level. I'm just searching for a solution to a terrible problem that is killing the poorest state in the union.

The problems with community colleges may be uneven among the disciplines. In the performing arts, a huge majority of the students who transfer in from a C.C. are not performing at anywhere near the level that the students who began at USM are.

Hootie Tootie wrote:

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The problems with community colleges may be uneven among the disciplines. In the performing arts, a huge majority of the students who transfer in from a C.C. are not performing at anywhere near the level that the students who began at USM are.

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This is true. Although we get some very talented students from the CC's, I try to encourage students who are thinking about doing 2 JC years to come here and do all four years (if I can get to them ahead of time) -- - if they can afford it. The experience of doing two years and then transferring into a four year program as opposed to being in a four year program from day one simply doesn't work well in the performing arts - at least in theatre and also in dance.

In theatre, the JC coursework tends not to interface well with ours and the training at the freshman and sphomore levels simply isn't as in depth because it isn't linked to moving to a specific upper level training. Because most of the performaing arts are pretty ensemble oriented by nature, it can be pretty difficult trying to break in to a department and get enough recognition to get cast or get major production assignments until you are well into the senior year -- and that is really too late.

We have a quite a few students who transfer in, like every program, but few of them really excel unless they stay and extra year . . . the competition is too tough and it takes too long to supplement the training.  If they stay an extra year -- they haven't really saved much in the way of money.

 

stephen judd wrote:

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Hootie Tootie wrote:
The problems with community colleges may be uneven among the disciplines. In the performing arts, a huge majority of the students who transfer in from a C.C. are not performing at anywhere near the level that the students who began at USM are.

This is true. Although we get some very talented students from the CC's, I try to encourage students who are thinking about doing 2 JC years to come here and do all four years (if I can get to them ahead of time) -- - if they can afford it. The experience of doing two years and then transferring into a four year program as opposed to being in a four year program from day one simply doesn't work well in the performing arts - at least in theatre and also in dance.
In theatre, the JC coursework tends not to interface well with ours and the training at the freshman and sphomore levels simply isn't as in depth because it isn't linked to moving to a specific upper level training. Because most of the performaing arts are pretty ensemble oriented by nature, it can be pretty difficult trying to break in to a department and get enough recognition to get cast or get major production assignments until you are well into the senior year -- and that is really too late.
We have a quite a few students who transfer in, like every program, but few of them really excel unless they stay and extra year . . . the competition is too tough and it takes too long to supplement the training.  If they stay an extra year -- they haven't really saved much in the way of money.
 

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This is also true in music. In the past, much more was demanded of the USM music majors than of the students transferring from community colleges. A few could make it but most struggled. To be fair, occasionally there would be a "star", but this was rare. Of course, music at USM has changed drastically during the reign of SFT. It will not be long before the quality drops precipitously unless something is done soon.