Free The Five-Year Party by Craig Brandon Page B

inflated grades that they did not earn. Today’s college students are aware that there is an alternative path to a passing grade. They can study hard, as a minority of them do, or they can show up in the professor’s office the last week of classes and negotiate a deal for a grade. So many students show up during this last week of classes to request grade manipulation that it has come to be known as slacker week . Students know that professors cannot flunk very many students because it is no longer considered acceptable by the administration. They know that colleges consider them valuable customers in the debt-for-diploma exchange. Students want a diploma and they are willing to pay for it, but for most of them, reading, writing, and studying are not part of the deal. Only chumps waste time studying for exams or reading the textbook when they can get a B just for showing up. To Strow and Ransdell, this system of awarding passing grades to students who should have flunked out seems like a genuine win-win situation for everyone involved. The students are awarded their diplomas without doing much work and the college gets to keep the money from tuition and state aid to pay their salaries and keep the process running.
     
    But it’s not a winning situation for everyone. What about the parents who saved all their lives and went deeply into debt to pay for a college education for their children? Do parents think they are purchasing a diploma or do they think they are buying an education? What about taxpayers who are helping to support these new learning-optional college campuses? What about employers looking for educated job applicants who are confronted with degree holders who can’t read?
     
    The problem is that under the new business model adopted by party school administrators, obtaining a diploma is no longer the same as earning one. Anyone who can follow a few simple rules and keep their tuition bills paid can purchase a diploma. Many of America’s colleges, particularly at the third and fourth tiers, are really not in the education business any more but have become diploma marts where students purchase the credentials they want without having to do the work that used to be required to earn them. Most parents I spoke with had no idea that this significant erosion of academic standards had taken place. They still believed, often falsely, that higher education was taking place in colleges. Many of them told me that they simply could not believe the inconvenient truth that colleges were no longer performing the task they were designed to do. Although the price tag soars more and more every year, academic standards have dropped to elementary school levels. Party schools get away with this because parents, the public, and the press aren’t really paying attention.
     
    If we take a closer look at this process, it begins to resemble a massive scam that damages students, the educational system, and even the nation, which depends on colleges to educate our future leaders. Awarding students grades they do not deserve for work they did not perform, which pleases students in the short term, severely shortchanges them in the long run by giving them false feedback about their abilities, skills, and levels of knowledge. It also leaves a very large gap between the body of knowledge that society expects students to acquire in college and the low level of learning that is really taking place.
     
    While a few college students still take their education seriously and choose courses based on what they will need to know after graduation, it’s easy for students to find the slacker tracks through college. Students know which courses are easy and which courses are taught by easy grading professors and share this information with each other on websites like ratemyprofessors.com . Colleges allow students to choose classes based on a kind of Chinese menu system. Students choose a class from column A and another from column B until they obtain