Why ask Dogbert anything?

Why would you want to ask Dogbert anything about those he hires? Why should anything Dogbert says be considered “valid"? More interesting would be a study of the organizational biases, etc., evident in their responses! Studies like these are worthless precisely because they decontextualize the survey data to such a great extent. Data without context is meaningless.

Glen McGhee, at 9:35 am EDT on October 3, 2006

Why isn’t this obvious?

Although I am generally against community colleges (which is a topic for another time), I don’t find the report that helpful. The questions were really quite vague.

I went through the survey and although the survey prioritized various attributes, none of the questions were falsifiable. So, for example, I have no idea how many community college grads could, for example, write a program in C++ that takes a text file and generates a list of the ten most frequently occurring words. (Even a non-computer science student should be able to do this by the end of their second year of college.) Likewise, “oral communication” defined as “Oral Articulate thoughts, ideas clearly and effectively; have public speaking skills.” doesn’t tell me what a student could or could not do. Perhaps if the students were given five minutes to explain to someone how to, say, diagnose and fix a windshield wiper assembly, or to summarize Proust, I might have a better idea at how bad these kids are.

In general, community college grads begin with a lot of disadvantages. For one, they were unable to go to a real school and therefore they will lack the sophistication of someone who went to a four-year school is endowed with. This usually manifests itself in uniformly problems with reading and writing. So, it is no surprise that after the second year of college, they are still lagging.(And, as a rule, my firm will not hire people with less than an MA for any position.)

Larry, at 11:40 am EDT on October 3, 2006

hring but unknowing

I have to agree with the first few comments, of course I should be a better writer and thinker after two more years of education, unless I’ve become dumb-as-a-post between my sophomore and junior years. I will say that in the state of Washington, while this doesn’t pertain to writing particularly, students who start at a community college graduate at a slightly greater degree than do those who begin in a four-year school.

What this might indicate, at least in general terms, is that for the first two years community college students do as well or better than their four-year counterparts. This could be because they are taught by people who want to teach at that level, people who want to teach rather than research, and they are taught by people with a good bit of teaching experience. Yes, despite not being “real” schools, many people do set their career sites on such work. Because of this, students don’t get stuck in huge sections with grad students who are only teaching for the stipend (not that all grad students are bad teachers mind you (but I was)).

So, while we are cheaper when it comes to ged ed requirements, we are better as well at taking the world’s educational flotsam and jetsom and getting them ready for the world and a life worth living. And maybe they can come away with a “real” job, or an understanding that different schools have different missions and produce, dare I say such a thing, different levels of knowledge and understanding by design. Expecting anything would be tom-foolery.

bradley bleck, instructor at Spokane Falls CC, at 8:50 pm EDT on October 3, 2006