The sentence you cited is awful, but what writing teacher can’t offer a horrid example of a student’s work?
I can only talk about my own experience, but I don’t remember my time at the U being as easy as you describe. Part of that is because I did a double major, waited tables and completed a couple of internships.

As you rightly mentioned, many students at the U are badly hindered by their schedules.
I’ve often wished I had put more time into some of my classes.
Instead of doing three things (work, school, internship) OK, I should have been doing one (school) well. It’s a shitty system because I couldn’t.

Still, some classes have better results than others.
J-School classes are hit or miss. Some are challenging and rewarding and others aren’t. Upper division writing classes really didn’t have extensive writing prerequisites, so I’m not sure how far along you expected your students to be.

I’m not a bitter ex-student with a grudge, in fact I liked the class I had with you and I like your mag.
But like the students’ preparation and the writing samples we dissected in class, it could have been better.
Hopefully, none of my work made you cry. You ripped the hell out of some of it and mildly praised it sometimes too, both rightfully so.
I think a little more encouragement, help with editing and a more positive atmosphere would have improved the class a lot.

I wouldn’t want to make $13 an hour grading papers either. But then again, I don’t want to make less than that as a full time reporter, but I do.
So don’t feel too dismayed on behalf of your former students. Like you said, the most meaningful education they get is what they get on their own.

Those that really want to have a solid journalism career will figure out a way to do it.

Have to agree on the cut and paste jobs on NYT stories though. Pretty much why I cancelled my subscription.

Glass houses, stones, etc.

Here’s one of my favorites: “The magazine closed its West Coast office as a result of the terrorist attack that tripped the economy like a model on a runway.”

Contempt is not exactly accurate, though. Dismay is a better description of my feeling on behalf of students who got to be seniors at a major American university without ever having their work critiqued and improved before they got to me teaching a 5-level course. I blame teachers who just move people through the system. That’s the low barrier I was talking about.

I could also go into how the U divvies up its budgets among departments. To some degree it works like this: The more majors, the more students, the more money. So, speaking purely economically, a department has a tremendous disincentive to make its undergraduate courses rigorous–and thereby discourage students from taking them. I’m not saying that goes on in the J-school, but you can draw your own conclusions about which departments draw the most majors. Finally, there’s the whole problem with undergrad and grad students. The faculty is a lot more interested in the grad students than they are in the undergrads. So, the undergrads get shoved into classes that are too big, with faculty who have to teach people who aren’t interested in their topics, with faculty who are required to do research as well as teach, and with faculty who mostly abhor teaching survey level courses. In professors’ defense, they also don’t like to assign too much work, because that makes more work for them. I had classes of 30 students and required up to seven short papers. That adds up to 210 papers I had to read. Would you like to read and critique 210 U of M undergrad papers for the equivalent of about $13/hour?

Undergrads are, in effect, largely cheated out of their tuition, in my opinion. The most meaningful education they get is what they get on their own. It sure isn’t coming from a TA.

On the rare occasion a student gets a demanding teacher, it’s a huge shock–mostly because it hasn’t happened before. I made a point of asking the student who wrote the sentence above what sort of grades he’d got before he got to me. He had a 3.6 average in journalism. I didn’t believe him, so I checked his departmental records. He wasn’t lying.

Ok, one more thing: most U students have to work to pay the outrageous tuition now being charged. They neglect their academic lives because they have to wait tables 40 hours a week to pay tuition and living expenses. It’s a shitty system. And it’s a system that turns out journalists who are trained, often but not always, to just get by. That’s the effect of the system. That’s American education. The degree matters, the education doesn’t.

http://www.msureporter.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/03/09/4410381e5d27c