Well being in college currently myself i think the main issue is not motivation but the fact they make you take roughly 100/120 credit hours of classes you just dont care about.
With some personal experience in this matter, I would say that this remark is quite correct. Not only that, if those pushing to do away with tenure in higher education succeed, this problem noted by Arum will get worse.
Indeed, you're paying for your education (or at least someone is) so why should you have to take any courses you don't care about. Just take what you like. And tell your professors what you want to learn and what you don't. Let them know when a subject is worthless and tell them to stop teaching it, because it annoys you. Why should you have to put up with this bullshit education business? I'm sure the result will be, shall we say, "eye opening."
Great response to that moronic post. No wonder we are in a downward spiral with assclowns making those kind of claims.
Where are you going to college? I don't remember having to do that in college in America. I had to do whatever classes I was told to take in secondary school. I went to HS in some funk place in Asia.
I thought about this further and I am sure many schools must offer hard tracks and easier tracks. Back in the 80s at least some of the ivys had gentlemen's tracks. my school had plenty of easy courses, but if you wished you could get a very rigorous education. Only a few schools were really very hard in every class. they were the ones trying to move up the rankings.
1. I don't have a list of "those" colleges... just recalling what some muckety-muck of some college association was lamenting about the poor academic quality of freshmen. 2. Unlikely that top schools would have that problem, as they wouldn't admit those with such low skills. 3. "Biggest classes" could be large freshmen classes... likely not a large percentage of the student body.
Seems a waste to pay for college, especially if you incur a large debt, and take mostly easy courses. I remember a freshman orientation where the faculty member said, "Don't just take all the easy classes. Challenge yourself. You are here to exercise your brain." (Of course with today's Libtard leanings, "exercise your brain" is probably more accurately "exorcise your brain"..)
by the way, i re read what I wrote. to be clear I did not mean to imply I went to an ivy. I got in to one, but my father told me to take a full scholarship to an average school. probably not the best decision for me, but it saved him a lot of money.