State chancellors get blunt & sober; "Education" a "culture of low standards"

Thanks, Don

CSU, community colleges try to cope with cutbacks (San Francisco Chronicle)

     California is witnessing a slow and steady decline of its prized systems of higher education specifically because legislative Republicans have blocked efforts to raise taxes to pay for them, the community college and state university chancellors said Monday in a blunt and sobering back-to-school message.
     Both systems together lost $1.3 billion in state funding this year after Republican lawmakers invoked a pledge not to raise taxes, and the Legislature passed a budget with deep cuts.
     As a result, community colleges are offering 5 percent fewer courses across all 112 campuses this year, with an unprecedented 670,000 students turned away for lack of space, Chancellor Jack Scott said.
     Across CSU's 23 campuses, students will find fewer instructors and more crowded classrooms this year, while library shelves will be left unfilled and roofs allowed to leak, Chancellor Charles Reed said....

"I always got a A."

OTHER NEWS:
Study Critiques Disproportionately High Grades for Education Students (Inside Higher Ed)

     Students in education courses are given consistently higher grades than are students in other college disciplines, according to a study published by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Monday. The study, by Cory Koedel, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Missouri at Columbia, cites that and other evidence to make the case that teachers are trained in "a larger culture of low standards for educators," in line with "the low evaluation standards by which teachers are judged in K-12 schools."