Share a cringe with me, College Boy

WELL, MY RECENT POST concerning the college’s alleged (by me) failure to note the accomplishments of a certain Rebellious instructor and writer has produced a fair number of sour comments, both here and in the hallways.

Evidently, not everyone is happy with college leadership, at least with regard to its routine announcements and the values thereby evinced. Is that really surprising?

Here's a news flash for IVC leadership: a college ought to embrace the values of higher education and to encourage and celebrate “the life of the mind”—and by this I do not mean the life of the mind of a ten-year-old who “invents” Swiss Army sneakers and (therefore) takes a stretch-limo to Burbank to meet Jay Leno and his Jaywalkers.

And so the consistently successful endeavors of, say, a writer, editor, blogger, and writing conference organizer among the faculty really should be noted now and again. Surely, at a college, even one so near Del Taco world headquarters, academic  successes among faculty (and students) should be of particular importance.

—And not only that, but, internally at least, such accomplishments should receive more attention than, say, “Broadway Stars” fundraisers, “astounding” kiddie competitions, and balloonish, junk-foodular PR extravaganzas. It’s a matter of proportions. We’re a college. We educate people. We’re not about greasy carnival come ons or piety-from-Hell ceremonies, important though such things may be. Sure, we'll pull on the clown pants and bake them brownies now and again, but mostly we're about getting these kids educated, which, for many of us, is a bookish thing in a world that has turned its back on books.

Dude, we're shovelin' shit against the tide! Help us out here!

Speaking for myself, I do wish that our college leadership, here at IVC, would make more of an effort to embrace and value academics and academia. I think that would be nice. Quaint even. Definitely refreshing.

It wouldn't hurt if, bullshit-wise, college leaders would go off-script once in a while and actually connect with us. You know, they could remove their plastic smile and sneak up behind us while we gape anew at the throngs of kids hopping idiotically upon those blue and yellow bounce-house monstrosities and queuing up for Double Grilled Factory-Farm Burgers. With all that thumpin' an' throbbin' and caterwauling in the air, we'd never hear 'em as they slowly positioned their mouths next to our ears and then screamed: "Good Lord, they don't pay me enough for this SHIT!"

Just one such tender moment would boost this instructor's morale for months.

Straightening out the transfer knot?

Cutting through the transfer maze (John Fensterwald)

The failure of the community colleges and state four-year universities to agree on common transfer requirements creates tremendous waste and confusion. It has become one more factor discouraging students from pursuing a four-year degree.

To their credit, California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott and California State University Chancellor Charles Reed have worked out an agreement that, should the Legislature approve it, will provide an important fix.

SB 1440, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, which the Senate Education Committee will take up on Wednesday, would guarantee an associate’s degree and admission to a CSU campus to any student who successfully completes a standard number of general education credits and courses in the student’s major.

This is monumental, because the transfer requirements to the 23 California State University campuses differ from school to school. The 110 community colleges have created individual articulation agreements with CSU campuses to which they feed the most students. Beyond that, it’s a maze to negotiate. Unsure where they’ll transfer to, community college students hedge their bets by taking more courses than they need. And once they’re admitted to a CSU school, community college grads learn they often have to take extra courses peculiar to that school’s requirements for a major.

According to the New America Foundation, which favors the bill, community college transfer students are graduating from CSUs with more than a full year of classes beyond what’s required for a BA degree. They’ve been taking half of these 40 extra semester credits at community colleges trying to anticipate different CSU requirements; they’ve been taking the other half at the CSUs, at an average cost of $20,000 to families and $160 million to the CSUs, when they discover some of their credits won’t match requirements for a major…. (Continued)