A couple of years ago, I was reading a US News and World Report rating of US colleges.
One of the most significant criteria in the rating system was retention. It counted for 25% of the rating.
What strikes me about using retention, as a criteria, is that when I was at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology (about 35 years ago), the attrition rate in Freshman Physics is about 90%.
It always seemed to me that the higher the attrition rate was the more rigorous the course work was. This does not square with me in regards to rewarding a school a higher rating for graduating a high percentage of students.
I asked someone about this and he responded that some schools fail a large percentage of the freshman class and do not report retention until the sophomore year.
However, the junior and senior mathematics classes, in my day, typically had about 30 people when they started and only about 5 by the time the course was finished.
It seems to me that retention is an odd criteria to use in measuring the quality of a school.
I thought my schools needed my support on the issue so I dropped out . . . . . . . several times.
I cannot seem to remember what the topic was. . . oh, yea.
There was this old guy, who said something about the difference between memory and judgment,
"Ever think about what a thing is, and what it has to do with mental capability? How it is that a thing is composed of some material in some shape. Ever wonder what it had to do with the fact that a set can be constructed only two ways, enumeration and definition? Enumeration is to material, as definition is to shape. Ever wonder what it had to do with the human mind? Enumeration is to memory, as definition is to form.
Now this brings up an issue. Does teaching consist of the ability to memorize material or the ability to abstract form? And if it is the later as some old guy, I think his name was Plato, suggested, and if education is primarily based on memory retention, can one then say that people are becoming educated except those few who the abstraction of form is natural to begin with?
Well, it gets involved.
One means of testing if the student is abstracting form, is linguistically based. Plato used the technique when he constructed his dialogs. The compiler of the Scripture used the technique, and even warned the reader of it–to no avail.
If one is not wise enough to comprehend the distinction, well, then they have to use false standards of quality for what education is. It would harldy be strange to question a blind judge at a beauty contest, especially when all the judges were blind.