Opinion
College & Workforce Readiness Opinion

This Has ‘Guys’ Written All Over It

By Richard Whitmire — April 14, 2011 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Great New York Times/Chronicle collaboration about the default majors -- undergraduate business -- chosen by so many college students. The lack of rigor is appalling.

The article doesn’t give the gender breakdown of those majors, but I’m pretty sure we’re talking mostly guys. A slice of the story:

One senior accounting major at Radford, who asked not to be named so as not to damage his job prospects, says he goes to class only to take tests or give presentations. "A lot of classes I've been exposed to, you just go to class and they do the PowerPoint from the book," he says. "It just seems kind of pointless to go when (a) you're probably not going to be paying much attention anyway and (b) it would probably be worth more of your time just to sit with your book and read it." How much time does he spend reading textbooks? "Well, this week I don't have any tests, so probably zero," he says. "Next week I'll have a test, so maybe 10 hours then." He adds: "It seems like now, every take-home test you get, you can just go and Google. If the question is from a test bank, you can just type the text in, and somebody out there will have it and you can just use that." This is not senioritis, he says: this is the way all four years have been. In a typical day, "I just play sports, maybe go to the gym. Eat. Probably drink a little bit. Just kind of goof around all day." He says his grade-point average is 3.3.

Related Tags:

The opinions expressed in Why Boys Fail are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.