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Will Fitzhugh
Cross Purposes
October 19, 2009
A recent
survey of college professors by the Chronicle of Higher Education
found that nearly 90% thought that the students they teach were not very
well prepared in reading, doing research and academic writing by their
high schools.
At the
same time, many college admissions officers ask students for 500-word
"personal statements," which have become known as "college essays," and
many high school English department spend a lot of their writing
instruction on this sort of effort.
History
departments and English departments are assigning fewer and fewer term
papers, so it is not surprising that lots of students are arriving in
college not knowing how to do research or write academic papers.
Why is it
that college admissions officers and college professors seem to be
working at cross purposes when it comes to student writing? College
professors want students to be able to write serious research papers
when they are assigned in their history, economics, political science,
etc., classes, but that is not the message that is going out to high
school applicants from the college admissions offices.
Most of
the attention, if not all, in the college counseling offices at the
secondary level is on what it will take to gain students admission to
colleges, not on whether, for example, they have the academic knowledge
and skills to graduate from college. That is someone else’s concern.
Recently the Gates Foundation has taken up the challenge of trying to
find out why students drop out of community colleges in such large
numbers.
But in
the college admissions world, at the Higher and Lower Education levels,
the attention, when it comes to writing, is on the short personal
statement to accompany the application. There are several reasons for
such a dumbed-down requirement. Admissions officers are too busy, for
the most part, to read academic papers by students, and they like to
have some personal information by the student to give them a more
personal feeling for the applicant. The fact that there is a huge
industry of “personal essay” coaches and tutors doesn’t seem to give
them pause.
With this
requirement in place, it becomes the task of the English Department at
the high school level to teach students even more about how to write
about themselves in 500 words or less. Such writing requires no reading
or research of course, which makes it a lot easier (and more dumbed-down).
Meanwhile, students who receive the International Baccalaureate Diploma
continue to meet the requirement for the Extended Essay of 4,000-5,000
words, and they, like those published in The Concord Review,
arrive in college miles ahead of their “personal statement” peers who
have no idea how to write a college term paper.
Part of
the problem lies with the Higher Education Faculty, which almost never
takes any part in the admissions process, but leaves the 500-word
personal essay in place—but then they complain that the students they
get can’t read, do research, or write very well.
As I have
said many times, college coaches routinely take a personal interest in
the athletic admissions requirements for the high school students they
recruit for their teams, because they need to know if they can play or
not, but college professors pay no attention at all, either general or
personal, to the academic admissions requirements for the high school
students they will see in their classes.
Thus the
admissions department at the college and the college faculty work at
cross purposes, as the admissions department pursues their interest in
the short personal essay, while the college faculty members do nothing
to encourage the sort of serious academic writing (and reading) they say
they wish the students who come to them had done in high school.
Perhaps
college professors might take another look at the reading and writing
requirements put out by the admissions offices at their own colleges and
universities.
They
might even begin to influence the high schools to raise their standards
for academic reading and writing, and, in the process, find that they
have better-prepared students to take advantage of their teaching, and
more students would actually have a chance to complete the work at the
colleges to which they are admitted.
About Will Fitzhugh
Mr. Fitzhugh is Editor and Publisher of
The Concord Review and
Founder of the National History Club and the National Writing
Board. He has an A.B. from Harvard College and an Ed.M. from
Harvard Education School. |
