People talk about how universities have almost turned into diploma mills, churning out degrees to almost anyone that breathes. So what do students think about the current situation? According to this student, it doesn't go far enough: "I have come to the conclusion that the University system makes absolutely no sense. Students pay teachers to educate us, yet they are then allowed to tell us how much we're learning...I'll be the one to tell the receiver of my hard-earned money exactly how well they did. Shouldn't it be the same with education?" That's right, students want, nay, demand an A, since they paid for it.
posted by mathowie on Dec 8, 2004 - 77 comments

There are goofy news items every day, but once in a while you have some story that transcends them all. Teacher accused of ordering student thrown from window is quite possibly the silliest story I've seen this year. It's beyond the Onion. Teacher enters class and takes photo of students, one student objects, teacher makes a disparaging remark about the way the student looks and student hits an emergency button, then the teacher orders two boys to throw her out the window (where she suffered injuries). Best line about the boys "they threw the girl out the window because they did not want to be written up for disobeying a teacher."
posted by mathowie on Apr 23, 2004 - 29 comments

From Today's Suck.com, comes the story of plagiaraism.org, a service that checks papers against a huge database of online essays and automatically highlights stolen passages from internet essays, then quantifies the plagiaism by giving every paper an 'originality index.' This looks like a cool application of technology if it really works.
posted by mathowie on Nov 11, 1999 - 0 comments

Oh god. Banning backpacks won't solve anything. The school is sending the message that they assume the worst of their students. Next thing they will outlaw will be clothes because weapons can be hidden in them, then a daily body cavitiy search before class, just as a precaution.
posted by mathowie on Aug 12, 1999 - 0 comments