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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 21, 1998)
CONTACTING OS ; NEWSROOM: I (541)346-5511 | E-MAIL j ode@oregon.uoregon.edu ADDRESS: Oregon Daily Emerald P.O. BOX3159 Eugene. Oregon 97403 ONLINE EDITION: whw uoregon,edu/-ode EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarah Kickler EDITORIAL EDITOR Mike Schmierbach NIGHT EDITOR Carl Yeh CHRIS HUTCHINSON/Emerald Let’s turn college into corporate America IJ we want to prepare students for the real world, we should teach them a lesson about reality For some of us, the future is nearly here. It’s called graduation, and it will force most of us into the real world. Like jumping into a freezing lake in Norway after walking out of the Arizona desert (I’m sure Mike Schmierbach X-M.TllOy Will make it possible one day), gradu ation brings with it a certain shock. Accord ingly, there is an increasing trend in universities to make college more like “reali ty" and less like academia. I, for one, am all for this move. It’s important for students to be educated about the brave new world that awaits them, rather than such useless concepts as lit erature or calculus. Therefore, I propose that we run our classes more like busi nesses. It’s high time professors gained the power of company presidents. Of course, in order to be a suc cessful business, you have to pro duce something. It didn't take me many Internet searches to find the solution — papers. Everyone needs papers. As long as other schools continue to con sider education their mission, there will be college and high school students who need some thing to turn in at the end of the period. Running this operation success fully will require a few changes in the classroom environment. For starters, it's time we end this silly concept of educational breadth. Students who are trained to write papers on many topics are not productive students; we need to make sure each student hones only a few useful skills. Additionally, it’s time to con solidate our classes. Consider, for example, the vast range of classes that deal with feminist topics — we have classes on feminism and politics, feminism and literature, feminism and philosophy, femi nism and the media. Why not just have one class about feminism and assign each student to ex plore a different aspect of the field? Having eliminated that whole breadth thing, we could probably force that student to in crease his or her productivity to one or two papers a week. Extra incentives to boost pro ductivity might be needed. Grades are fine, of course, but I think we should institute downsizing. If it works for corporations, it can work for the classroom. Consider a class of 40 people. Why should a professor have to waste his or her time correcting and educating students earning C's or low B’s? Just cut them out of the system and make the A stu dents work harder. If they don’t, just fire them, too. There are al ways more kids who want to go to college. If, for whatever reason, we run out of hardworking Oregonians, we can always ship some of the routine classes out to foreign countries. I'm sure Latin Ameri can children would be glad to compose Spanish essays, for ex ample. For that matter, there’s no good reason we can’t let Asian la borers work on Writing 121 pa pers— they might not receive the sort of hands-on education Amer ican students are used to, but it would still be an improvement over the kind of schooling they get now. Plus, it would promote democracy. There are certain risks to this plan. Meddling government offi cials might try to impose unfair reg ulations on the education process, requiring unreasonable levels of quality to “protect” paper con sumers or, worse, setting a mini mum education level. As we all know, such minimum education standards would only force the University to eliminate even more students to make up for the cost. On the other hand, government can probably be counted on to continue to subsidize the educa tion process. After all, classrooms provide a vital role in the commu nity by providing a needed prod uct, and if they can’t function without government assistance, then tax breaks and extra funding are clearly called for. What we really need to demand from the government is that it al lows classrooms to merge, there by making paper purchasing easi er for consumers. After all, if a French professor is doing a good job of making his or her students work, why shouldn’t that class be merged with an environmental science class that isn't performing uptosm Who cares if a French professo,. n teach environmen tal scie What matters is if he or she get ore product out. In fact, tl „ whole idea of having carefully trained professors with Ph.D.s in a particular field is proba bly archaic. What we need are pro fessors trained in management who have proven their ability to drive students to write more papers. Maybe this idea seems a little too revolutionary. Well, if you’d told Adam Smith that one day capitalism would mean multina tional corporations with more power than governments and en tire departments dedicated to ex tracting the maximum amount of corporate welfare, he probably wouldn’t have believed you. Just think. The future is now. Let’s educate our students to be corporate drones; the traditional college experience just threatens to produce free thinkers who might join unions, vote for liber als and break down the very fab ric of American society. Mike Schmierbach is the editorial editor for the Emerald. His views do not necessarily represent those of the newspaper. LETTERS TO THE SUITOR OSPIRG aids community I read with interest the letter from Robert Wasson on the faults he finds with OS PIRG. I feel compelled to write because 1 can directly disprove his main criticism. OSPIRG has been very visible and active in Salem. Both student volunteers and staff have worked with legislators and the gov ernor’s office during the 1995 and 1997 sessions in which I have served. Some of the issues they provided information on have direct impact on students’ lives; ex amples include a tuition freeze and stu dents’ rights to decide the use of inciden tal fees. The efforts of OSPIRG and the Oregon Student Association were instru mental in maintaining students’ autonomy to decide how incidental fees should be used on each campus. OSPIRG also has provided me with im portant background research on two issues that impact both students and the larger community: ATM fees and campaign fi nance reform. Because of the efforts of stu dent volunteers, OSPIRG research is the type that is most valuable to state legisla tors, who do not have research staffs. This research was timely and based on data col lected directly from Oregonians who would be most affected by the proposed legislation. Wasson also seems to miss the point that involvement in OSPIRG is an educational experience for students. As a second-term legislator, I can assure you that this state needs all the trained, experienced “citizen activists” it can get. There is a democracy beyond the university campus — it is found in the operations of local, state and national government. OSPIRG is one of the few student organizations that make it their mission to prepare students to get in volved in their community. Floyd Prozanski State Representative Wasson helps students With all the hype and misrepresentation accompanying this year’s ASUO elections, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and apathetic by all the sanctimonious posturing and scare tactics the “Progressive” slate uses in its campaign. Fortunately, thanks to the hearings officers’ reprimand of the Pro gressive elections violations, we have the unexpected opportunity to elect an indi vidual who is more concerned about act ing to protect student rights instead of es pousing empty rhetoric. During her two years on the EMU board, Jenna Wasson has proven herself to be a consistent advocate of student rights, insisting on fairness and fiscal responsibility. She fought for expan sion of the Multicultural Center and worked with the International Students Association to find funding for the EMU el evator. She has endeavored time and again to make sure ASUO programs receive the same consideration for space allocation as EMU programs receive. She has cut over $50,000 from the EMU administrative bud get and advocates utilizing existing profits to pay for any increases next year so that student fees are not raised. Most recently, she forced the cancellation of the coffee contract, largely because no students were involved in making the decision. If that’s not pro-student rights, I don’t know what is. So when voting this week, follow cre dentials, not the crowd. Elect Jenna Was son for EMU board, seat no. 4. Jennifer Noble English
