I question the wisdom of having students select their major at the time they enter college. The average student switches majors at least three times in their college career. Many schools do not allow up front selection of the major. They prefer that students spend the first year or so exploring so they can make an informed choice.

Guidance Counselor par Excellence wrote:

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I believe that each student should be required to switch their major at least three times per academic year.  This would eliminate false career starts, and provide the added bonus of boosting USM's enrollment figures, since it would serve to significantly prolong earning an undergrad degree in any field.

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I am sure you must be jesting here. Nonetheless, your assumption that switching majors impedes progress is not accurate. Except for the skills-oriented applied majors, only a relatively few number of credit hours are taken in the major. In that sense, the major is really no big deal. The vast majority of credit hours required for a degree are taken outside the major. Those "outside the major" hours should be creditable toward any major. The time to earn a degree should not be prolonged in the least.

I was struck by the number of first semester freshmen in my two classes this fall who said they were political science majors. Upon questioning I learned that they were aiming towards law school. Not to argue the relative merits of different fields, but it seems to me that history, English, or psych would also be good majors for pre-law. I doubted that most of them knew what political science even is.

Good Sense wrote:

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I question the wisdom of having students select their major at the time they enter college. The average student switches majors at least three times in their college career. Many schools do not allow up front selection of the major. They prefer that students spend the first year or so exploring so they can make an informed choice.

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I'm sure you are right, Good Sense.  I just have to point put how far "education" had fallen in my time.  When I enter university people when to college because of a burning desire to study a particular discipline.  People even made statements like, " If I can't study ----, I wouldn't be in college." 

Now people go to college and don't know why.  It has become a "training school" for all work and is no longer the university I entered.  Classes are full of people who do not want to study the subject, but it is required to get that d*amn diploma to get a job.   Years ago the high schools gave enough education and training to do well in life.

I learned from my pharmacist uncle, that long ago people could become a pharmacists with only a high school education.  Back then a good high school education in English, History and Math was about what USM provides students with now.  

LVN wrote:

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. . . . amazed at how literate they were and how good their math skills were, with so little formal education.

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I don't know about WW1 (I'm not that old!), but I have observed that the graduates of Mississippi high schools fifty years ago had better math and English skills than the average college graduates I have known during the past decade. I am reasonably confident that this is because today's typical high school graduate has not been prepared for college. Exceptions, of course.

Colleges did not previously perform the remediative function they do today. Many high school graduates do not come to college with reasonable math and English skills. I've seen students graduate from USM who I don't think would have made it through a decent high school way back when.

LVN wrote:

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 I'm going out on a big ole long limb here, and a couple of teachers are right behind me with saws in their hands, but . . . fifty years ago, if you were the smartest girl in your class, you were probably headed into teaching. Today your world is a lot bigger. There are still plenty of smart teachers, of course, but I think there is a decline in public education that can be tied to the opening of other opportunities for women. 

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I don't think that's much of a limb.  I could "see" the last of the older women leave my high school in the late 60s and early 70s and also saw what replaced them.  IMHO, there was a sea change in the quality of instruction.  I don't think this was the only factor, just a big one.  Society got used to getting quality instruction for peanuts by ghettoizing talented women into a narrow spectrum of occupations.  Until our current renumeration scheme for teachers changes, . . .

LVN wrote:
History, English, Psychology, Political Science of any of the other liberal arts majors would be good for pre-law as long as the student has good reading and writing skills.

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Good grief. What would be a good major for those pre-law students who lack good reading and writing skills? That's funny. Or were you saying that those majors don't teach students anything about reading and writing so that students better already have those skills coming in? Or were you saying that any of those majors is OK as long as they "impart" good reading writing skills?

question? wrote:

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I don't agree with a 6 class teaching load but am I to believe that a person teaching 6 comp classes ( which at least at Jones are capped lower than at USM) who has no service or research responsibilities is less desirable than a grad student who has little or no teaching experience, is taking 12 hours of classes themselves and is often working a part-time job as well. Not to mention the fact that not everyone is ready to leave home at 18.

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Nobody's going to argue that having a lot of grad teaching assistants (TA's) is the most desirable way to teach freshman comp and math. In fact, overdependence on TA's happens for the same reasons that CC instructors have to teach 6,7, 8 classes aterm: it lowers the cost of instruction. Since basic reasoning and critical thinking are the real subjects being taught in those cut rate classrooms, administrators at all institutions assume that very few of their students are going to be able to figure out they've been ripped off! However, some of your descriptions of those hypothetical TA's and the context of their teaching are a little off.

First, TA's at USM must have 18 hrs. of graduate credit in discipline before they enter a classoom as an instructor. Further, in Math and English, at least three of those eighteen hours are in a class in pedagogy. Second, those TA's with less than 18 hours work as tutors in a learning lab, under the supervision, usually, of resident faculty with credentials in teaching teaching. Junior TA's usually spend a year in the lab. And, in my experience anyhow, relatively few TA's, if any, take more than three grad courses or work part time.

When TA's finally hit their own classrooms, then, they do so only after being taught the latest in discipline-specific teaching techniques, and they are also, I think, supervised by the resident faculty who taught them in the discipline-specific pedagogy class the year before. Further, the classes they teach are not only supervised by resident faculty but also, effectively, designed by those faculty: assignments, syllabuses and textbooks are composed, standardized and selected by experienced faculty. Also, at USM they used to have TA support groups where older TA's helped newer ones acclimate themselves to teaching. (I'm not sure this is still the case) Finally, not all USM basic math and English classes ARE taught by TA's. A good number of tenure track faculty take on those classes from time to time, especially in the Honors College and on the Coast. All of these things need to be taken into account when comparing basic instruction at the CC's to that at a four year.

On the negative side, however, it's fair to point out that USM TA's, in English anyhow, teach FOUR courses a year to earn their assistantships. This really is . . . unethical, for both the TA's and their students, but, again, it's driven by the state's unwillingness/inability to fund basic university instruction.

In the best of all possible worlds, universities and CC's alike would rely almost exclusively on terminal degree faculty to teach basic courses, and these faculty would be treated with respect and have humane teaching loads commensurate to their institutions, positions and credentials.

But then again this isn't that world. Which is part of the point of this board, right? . . .