THEY WENT THAT 'A WAY!
Edward L. Ayers, who is the ”Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History” at the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville, Virginia also serves Thomas Jefferson's fine establishment as ”Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.” Two such fine titles such as those certainly qualify him as a man who has seen college students come and go in sufficient numbers, varieties, and a wide gamut of potentials to sorted out as types and to some determinations applied as we wonder how they may evolve academically.
In a short preface-editorial in the June 2005 edition of “Arts & Sciences” magazine, concerned with special regard concerning the choices students make of degree programs available, Dean Ayers included this comment:
“Serendipity strikes in other cases when young graduates end up happily doing something they never dreamed of.”
I am thankful that such a superbly qualified educator has spoken out and made this type of graduate problem a possible subject for serious discussion when degree guidelines are being considered. It is more than ever of importance that colleges and universities begin to take flexibility of degree qualifications more seriously. The obvious increasing “diploma mills” and marked tendency to acceptance such a farcical structures as multi-million dollar business in the print media and on the Internet. Just a glance at drop-out figures shows how more-and-more students are giving upon college because it has lost meaning for them as an antiquated amalgam of ideas, ideals and imagines of by-gone eras.
Thomas Jefferson had in mind, it seems, that which he called he called and education which “was broad, and liberal and modern”. Few of today's college and universities can assure those qualities in that which they offer today. The present system uses “broad” to mean “width” or “mass”.The number of courses being offered b y a school grows longer - so much so that, a decade ago,it was being noised about that a student would,have to attend classes eight hours per day for five hundred and four years to “take” all of the courses offered by Harvard. That would seem to have been “broad” enough.
Jefferson's second term “liberal” has been warped and re-woven to allow it to appear to suggest a variety of meanings. The most popular twist, perhaps, is to speak of it as as being “politically correct” which can be said in scorn or praise by patron or foe alike.
The term ”modern” changes as it is being said or written. It fails many a college graduate as he attempts to associate it with today's world in which he has to live and vie with others to attain and hold a worthy place. If it is to be a working system he find he must modify it to suit his preset-day needs. There's a real threat, too, in accepting “modern” and turning to faddish futuristic farce.
Business leaders need more “serendipity” graduates in their working ranks. Educators, too, might find it to be wise to make room for several, as well.
A.L.M. May 27, 2005 [c524wds]
