Marshall Dorms Are Full For The Fall

[The Real SamC]

Marshall is the most important state program in West Virginia. It is West Virginia's last chance. It does the heavy lifting job of educating this state's youth. Most of which went to a dysfunctional and inferior public school system and come, especially in SW WV, from a culture that does not value education. WVU doesn't want the job, preferring to be a de facto private school, historically aimed at W PA and NJ 's children of limited academic achievement but a desire to attend a big college with low tuition, a big party atmosphere, sports, and ultra cupcake level academics, now adding in appeals to the thin-enveloped youth from the Swamp. Our too many state colleges are not capable of doing the job. They are a relic of the past, before WV built the interstates, when you needed a college, at least a "teacher's college" in every third county. The population decline has left most unable to really educate the students. I know of serval that have majors that you actually cannot graduate from in 4 years, because the classes are never offered, making the students take on-line stuff (often from MU) or otherwise. I know of one school that has to use a loophole to even offer one of its degrees, because it has no professors to cover the prerequisites. And then there is the racist relic of the past, WV State, which should have been shuttered 70 years ago. The nation's least black HBCU. A bigger taxwaste than WVU really.

MU, almost alone, is doing the job. It is an important job. It is the most important job.

And anyone who doesn't know that an MU degree already is the most prestigious degree a poor kid from WV can reasonably aspire to, doesn't know enough to comment.

 

[herdftblfan]

Yes, it's almost assured that they would be accepted regardless of this change. That begs the question, how is it watering/dumbing it down . . .



It is a fair statement regardless if they would have been accepted or not. You are dropping basic requirements for acceptance and making the requirements even easier for a track of students who already have shown a lack of effort in one of the worst pubic school educations in the country (which west virginia is).

The intent is to grow enrollment by automatically accepting local students with a 2.5 GPA. In other words, Marshall is going to accept students who wouldn't have otherwise had the initiative to even complete an application. It would be like offering a job to a candidate who felt that it was too much effort to show up to the job interview.

I can understand that perspective. I'm not going to fall on my sword defending it either way because while I see where you are coming from, I also know growing up in WV, sad as it may be, that many of these kids may have never even considered college, have often not had that mentor in life to guide or coach them and could have gone through life never thinking themselves worthy. Maybe this program gives them pause and reconsideration.

I was personally successful, despite direction from my parents. They didn't deter me but they also had no concept of what college even entailed or the need. Heck, I had never even been to a shopping mall until after high school and dropped out of high school sports because my parents couldn't afford to give me money for dinner on the road trips. I was too embarrassed to continue so I quit and found a job. I had a high school English teacher and a guidance counselor who helped me begin to see the possibilities. Otherwise, I may still be in the holler.

Granted, maybe it's not Marshall University's place to take up this cause, and likely it's a money grab through enrollment, but I like to think it could be something more, in spite of the intent.

 

[riflearm2]

Granted, maybe it's not Marshall University's place to take up this cause, and likely it's a money grab through enrollment, but I like to think it could be something more, in spite of the intent.

I wish I felt the latter were the case, but I don't have that optimism.

My mother was an educator for 30+ years teaching between 5th grade all the way through junior college. By far, the most years she taught and her most enjoyable years were with sixth graders. She felt that was the target age where kids had enough independence to start to make their own decisions yet were still moldable. The more advanced in years, the less likely of having any positive impact on kids.

Along the same lines, I think it is very rare to get a 17 or 18 year old who hasn't put in much effort in school (2.5 GPA in high school), feels completing an application is too much effort (possibly cost), yet will then suddenly excel when they have even more responsibility and more challenging courses (not to mention higher cost, commute, etc. compared to what they had in high school) in college. Since they are all local kids, it is most likely that any negative impact their home life had on them will continue. As you said, you were already excelling, so this new situation wouldn't have impacted you, since you had the drive and initiative on your own to complete an application. But that won't be the case for the batch of kids this new initiative is intended to help, and I don't see it being a success (unless the goal is to just increase tuition/enrollment and lower academic requirements so that retention stays decent). I lived through the latter at Cookman - the academic requirements, even in a graduate program, were shockingly bad. But the school had to do that in order to continue increasing the tuition money, so they could expand their graduate programs. And the professors realized that, so they had to play the same game.