Graduate School Acceptance Standards

Graduate School Acceptance Standards

I have been struggling to help a particular student understand the nature of my course and its requirements all semester.  I have helped her numerous times and probably spent as much time with her over-all as I have with all the other students combined.  Today, we have been back and forth about her current assignment and how to proceed. I feel as if I am doing all the thinking for her and wish I could just show her the door and suggest she does not belong in the course at all. In my anger and frustration, I have been reminded today of the discussions I have had with colleagues about acceptance standards and requirements for both Teacher Education and Graduate Studies programs. It seems to me that, at some point, the degrees become meaningless if we have to practically feed the students in order to get them to survive the programs.  To be a graduate student, one ought to possess a certain minimum level of understanding of what a graduate program is all about.  Now, when we argue that an M. A. or an M. Ed. or an M. Sc. is required for entry into other programs, we ought to be able to filter out those students who cannot meet the standards. But then, as I reflected further, it occurred to me that this is only the continuation of a pattern of the lowering of standards across the educational system. We don't fail students any more and that make sense to me. But if we are to keep them in school, we ought to make changes to programs so that the students continue to learn rather than just passing them forward, from year to year. We also have to make it much harder to earn a high mark in any course. I think too many students now believe it is EASY to get an advanced degree because we have made it easy for them, rather than challenging them to measure up.  I don't know how my struggle with this particular student will end but it won't be the last time I believe that a student does not deserve to even be given a credit for a course.