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NYU Professor Calls for More Rigorous Class Work Entire US Student Body Responds with Resounding “Whaaa?” By Justin Brenis, The Cauldron Copy/Web Editor read more than 40 pages per week on average, and in terms of homework, 35 percent of them say they do five or fewer hours per week studying alone.” I wouldn’t call that lethargy or ineptitude Mr. Arum—I call that burn out. Now, in all fairness, at Cleveland State, the general expectation is 2 hours of work outside of class for each credit hour in class (as in a 4 credit hour class expects 8 hours of work NYU Professor Richard Arum Fantasizes About This Moment in Your Life after class each week). College isn’t supposed to be easy; we all underHowever, the modern day college student is a very stand that much right? different creature from the college students of past If it were a cakewalk, despite the enormous price generations, and I believe universities need to take this tag (and I mean, we’d be talking a LOT of cake here) into consideration. then everyone and their mother would have a college For example, the average cost per credit hour for degree and that just isn’t the case. In fact it is more in-state tuition at CSU is $325.75 per credit hour. At often lately that fewer and fewer people are going to an average of 12 credit hours for full-time enrollment, college and the ones that do don’t always finish—and you are looking at roughly $3,909.00 before room it isn’t surprising why. and board. Add in the cost of one room in Fenn Tower A recent article in Salon Magazine posed the ques- (double occupancy unit with living area and kitchention, “Are American College Kids Falling Behind?” ette) at $6,985.00 for the year, and $3,300.00 for the The article interviews NYU sociology Professor traditional dining package of 15 meals a week and Richard Arum, about his study that found that, “an $200 dining dollars and you’re already at $14,194— increasing number of undergraduates are moving before books and parking are added in. through college without working particularly hard, Yes, we usually get loans for all of this, but these and without learning key skills like complex reasoning loans (and interest) need to be paid off somehow don’t and critical thinking.” they? Outside of school I have two jobs just to try and In Arum’s opinion, students have found too many keep up, and I have to manage those two jobs with 18 ways around an enriching and intellectually difficult credit hours of classes. I think I am plenty challenged education and are therefore obtaining substance-less enough already, don’t you? degrees. His solution? “Greater academic rigor, facOne other change worth considering is that we ulty coming together and deciding that courses should don’t learn the same way other generations used to. have greater rigor in terms of reading and writing and In a world where all of the knowledge in the world— hours spent studying.” though not always the most truthful or accurate—is Greater rigor, you say? You mean that Cleveland at the touch of our fingertips thanks to Google, we State should ask more of me than the four research seemingly lack the attention span for in-depth lengthy papers I have due in the four Writing Across the Curreading. riculum (or, more appropriately “WAC”) classes I am In Nicholas Carr’s iconic piece from The Atlantaking? Or ask more than the 75-150 pages of reading tic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” he discusses this I have due in a single class, plus other nightly assignchanging trend, and for the most part it is unnervingly ments? true. Why would we sit and read 150+ pages of theoI don’t know about you, but I think they plenty rig- retical framework in one night when we can Google orous as it is. In fact, I would argue that it is because up a summary and still be able to focus on other of how much they are asking of their students, that equally important things? universities across the country feel their student body It is for this reason that students seek out easier is looking for shortcuts or just cruising through. classes on average, because otherwise there aren’t When asked what his study found, Arum had this enough asylums in the country to handle all the to say; “Fifty percent of the kids in a typical semester tweaked-out would-be graduates the higher education say they haven’t taken a single course where they’ve system would spawn. been asked to write 20 pages over the course of the But as they always say, there is a fine line between semester. And 32 percent have not taken a single class genius and insanity. the prior semester for which they’ve been asked to
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Cleveland Seventh in Hot Job Markets? By Alexes Spencer, The Cauldron Managing Editor According to the oft-quoted “Cleveland Tourism Video” series, “our main export is crippling depression.” In fact, the video goes so far as to say that things are so bad that one can “buy a house for the price of a VCR.” However, according to an article Cleveland’s Economy: Still put out by Monster. Based on LeBron James com, Cleveland ranks seventh in the list of hottest job markets right up there with Washington, D.C., Seattle and Boston. Apparently, this list is based on the number of jobs available compared to the work force. Most of you probably stared at your computer screens in shock when you logged onto the CSU Web site and read the article posted about this new ranking. You weren’t alone. I then began a search to find proof that Cleveland has a terrible economy. I looked at Parenting.com’s 2010 list of “5 Worst Cities for Economy.” We weren’t on it. And we went from the most miserable city in the country according to Forbes to number 10 – a clear improvement. Yes, it sucks to be the 10th most miserable city in the nation, but according to Forbes this is all due to the weather, sports teams and corruption, not our economy. In fact, the London School of Economics ranked Cleveland 10th among 50 US cities in economic recovery last November. Part of the ranking was based on annual growth in employment. I find all of this astounding considering that the Cleveland area’s unemployment rate stands at 8.5 percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistic, just slightly below the national average. That doesn’t make us an economic hotspot in my mind. And if you really look at it, we aren’t. Monster. com tells us we’re seventh, but that’s only in available jobs, and the reality is that said job market is mostly due to the healthcare industry. This basically means that you can find jobs if you’re a doctor, nurse, radiographer, medical technician, etc. But what if you’re not? What if you’re a mechanic, teacher, or a writer? What if you’re not in the healthcare field? What if you don’t want to be in the healthcare field? It’s wonderful to look at our city and think that jobs are coming out the wazoo. It’s nice to imagine that they’re readily available and that we’ll probably get a job tomorrow or the next day, because they’re there, and we just have to find them. But in reality, we’re ranked 183rd in the nation in employment. It’s great that we’re improving, and that such improvement is being recognized. But false hope isn’t helping anyone.
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