Colleges and Universities

The Need to Improve College Readiness

Black College Student

Although increasing the number of minority students in higher education is essential, we must ensure they are prepared for college when they enter.  Too many students are entering in colleges and universities across the nation unable to meet the academic challenges they face.  In efforts to ameliorate diversity in higher education, we have to devote more attention to improving the quality of education students receive before they enroll in college.  While it’s certainly vital for more minority students to enroll in college, we don’t want them to enroll without the proper preparation.  Serious efforts to boost the number of minority students in college will be purposeless if we don’t send them to college with the academic preparation essential to empowering them to stay in college.

In our education reform discourse, let us be mindful about how important it is for us to discuss the significance of college readiness for all students.  Take a look at this piece that vividly articulates the impact of college unpreparedness: Unprepared for College.

What needs to be done to help students to be better prepared for college?  What will it take to make college readiness a national priority?

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Make Sure People Earn Their Degrees

Many people find ways to cut corners to obtain their degrees and graduate without the ability to meet the basic expectations of their employers.  Even many students from the nation’s leading colleges and universities find ways to cut corners to obtain their degrees.  What’s going to happen to you when you get hired and don’t have the slightest idea about how to do the job your degree implies you can do?  It’s going to result in you having more than shame—you’re going to have a useless piece of paper that you call a degree.

You cannot get people to complete all or most of your assignments, especially the most difficult ones, and expect to be ready for a job in your degree field.  If you lack the ability to perform beyond basic reading and writing tasks, you will inevitably be exposed.  A time is going to arrive when your weaknesses in reading and writing is going to cause your performance in the workplace to be less than satisfactory.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with seeking assistance with things you don’t understand.  Smart people understand that when they need help to seek it.  This does not mean, however, that you should have to receive assistance with all major assignments.  If you’re a person truly fit to be an undergraduate or graduate student, you should be able to execute the majority of the tasks assigned to you in your degree program.

If people have to complete, edit, and/or revise all of the work you do for school, are you really deserving of receiving a degree?  Is it fair to potential employers for you to waste their time when you know you have not obtained the essential skills they are looking for when they hire someone with the degree you have or are pursuing?  If you have ever submitted work that someone has completed for you, then you have not earned your degree.  If you have ever purchased a paper from an online website and turned in that paper, then you have not earned your degree.

Colleges and universities have academic honesty policies for real reasons.  Academic honesty policies help colleges and universities to ensure that they are awarding degrees that are worth more than the paper they are printed on.  If you submit work that is you not your own, then you have evinced an unwillingness to do the work necessary to learn what your professors desired of you to satisfactorily complete the course requirements.  If you have completed work that is not completely your own, then you have committed academic fraud.  For those who commit academic fraud, your degree is in jeopardy of not being awarded to you or being taken away from you.

The American workplace needs to be populated with individuals who are truly ready for the challenging demands of the 21st century.  If you have to cheat to obtain your degree, then you’re not ready for the 21st century workplace.  The reality is college is not for everyone.

For those of us who worked hard and earned our degrees, we need to report academic fraud when we see it.  People who commit academic fraud and pretend that they are ready to enter the workforce in their degree field do us all a great disservice.  Too many important positions are being filled by people who are not prepared to execute the duties of these positions.  Many of these positions are filled by those lacking the competency to perform even the most basic duties of the positions, thus putting the lives of innocent people in danger.

Many individuals who cheated their way through undergraduate and graduate study are too arrogant to seek and accept help from people who they work with to help them to overcome their lack of understanding of critical aspects of their job.

Why waste a significant amount of time in school by letting people do your work and graduate with no knowledge to perform the duties of jobs in your degree field?

Ensuring academic honesty is a matter of public safety.

We should not allow people who lack the competency to perform jobs, especially in positions where lives are at stake, to be eligible to be hired for those jobs.  For example, we don’t want people who have committed academic fraud going into the healthcare industry where they can endanger the lives of so many people.  Therefore, if you know people who are committing academic fraud and/or have committed academic fraud and they are going into the healthcare industry or another area where they could risk the lives of numerous Americans, you need to report them.  By reporting them, you could not only help to save the lives of many Americans, you may just save your own life.

Let’s take a stand against those who cheat while in college because we will have to pay severely when these people get positions in fields where they can do us all great harm.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

NCORE’s Significance to American Higher Education

The National Conference for Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE) was founded in 1988 in response to increased racist incidents in American higher education. The Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies in Norman, Oklahoma launched NCORE in 1988. Since 1988, NCORE has been one of the leading national conferences on reconnoitering and analyzing issues of race, ethnicity, gender, civil rights, and sexual orientation in higher education in America. The mission of NCORE is to ameliorate racial and ethnic relations, help colleges and universities to engender more inclusive and welcoming milieus, and expand opportunities for historically underrepresented groups in higher education. This year’s conference will be held in San Francisco, California on May 31, 2011 – June 4, 2011. The conference registration fee is $700 and the conference student registration fee is $425. To register for this conference, go here: http://www.ncore.ou.edu/register.html. To learn more about NCORE, go here: www.ncore.ou.edu.

I greatly encourage all students, especially graduate students, to check with your departments and outside of your departments for funding to go to this conference. If you have a research agenda committed to improving issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, diversity, civil rights, and etc., you need to become actively involved in NCORE and participate in the national conference each year. For those who would like to learn more about issues of race and ethnicity in higher education, you should become an active participant in NCORE. Those who are underrepresented in higher education should definitely become actively involved with NCORE. This national conference was founded to enhance the quality of the educational experience and campus climate for underrepresented groups in higher education. NCORE needs your presence, involvement, and support to become an even more powerful force for good in higher education.

Make the decision today to become actively involved in NCORE and to attend this year’s conference in San Francisco. On Facebook, “like” NCORE’s new Facebook page by going here: www.facebook.com/NCOREconference. By clicking the “like” button on NCORE’s Facebook page, you can stay updated on the latest developments and news pertaining to NCORE.

Although significant progress has been made since the great influx of racial and ethnic minorities who enrolled in higher education institutions across the nation during the 1960s (Kaplan & Lee, 2007), racism is still highly prevalent on higher education campuses across the country. You need to be associated with NCORE so that you can learn about and discover subtle issues of race and ethnicity that are not as overt as some of the more popular national issues of race and ethnicity are.

Through your association with NCORE, you can learn about the gaps in the extant peer-reviewed literature, offering you an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the field. For graduate students, finding a gap in the existing research is one of the foremost highlights of one’s educational experience. Just think about how great of an opportunity you will have to discover a gap or gaps in the existing published research by engaging with scholars from across the nation and world who participate in NCORE.

If you are serious about improving the educational experiences and outcomes of underrepresented students in higher education, then you can make a strong step toward achieving this feat by becoming active in NCORE today!

Reference

Kaplin, W.A., & Lee, B.A. (2007). The law of higher education (4th edition). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Got a Ph.D. and No Job? Huh?


I really never thought it would be possible for someone to earn a Ph.D., which is the highest degree one can earn in any field, and not be able to get a job. I have, however, been able to see a recent example of this. What this tells me is people who are in Ph.D. programs are going to have to make strong efforts to obtain positions before they actually graduate. You cannot sit back and wait until you have graduated before you try to get a position. My early thoughts on this issue have me to think that a person like this really did not do good work while he or she was in graduate school. I often hear graduate students talking about what they have done, but the things they are saying are really not substantive achievements that employers will value. Some graduate students have tried to hate on me and criticize me, but what they have to recognize is my numerous authentic accomplishments have enabled me to gain previous and current positions—while I am still in graduate school.

Some people in Ph.D. programs try to act like they are so superior to all other students and try to use the fact that they are a Ph.D. student or Ph.D. candidate as the simple justification for why they are so accomplished. What they are failing to realize is they cannot simply rely on their Ph.D. student status or Ph.D. candidate status to secure them a job. You actually have to have authentic accomplishments while you are in graduate school before employers will really value what you have been able to accomplish. Just obtaining a Ph.D. is not enough. In down economy like the one we are experiencing, just having your Ph.D. is not going to be enough—employers are going to need to see that there is real value attached to the person who has this degree.

I contend that a person who does not obtain a job after obtaining his or her Ph.D. has to be someone who really did not deserve the degree in the first place or who has not done all that he or she can before he or she graduated to make himself or herself an attractive candidate. Don’t be sitting back while you are currently in a Ph.D. program thinking that you are simply the best thing since sliced bread and not doing the work that is necessary to obtain a job after you graduate. You should also be strongly encouraging the faculty members in your department, especially your dissertation director and dissertation committee members, to do all that they can to help you to secure a position. Do not allow them to simply give you empty rhetoric about what they are doing for you. Encourage them to give you genuine and meaningful opportunities while you are in your Ph.D. program that will empower you to be attractive to employers before and after you graduate.

Right now, I have to place the dominant blame on those who are graduating with a Ph.D. and are not able to get a job. At the end of the day, you can come up with all of the excuses you want to, but the dominant blame for your situation you have to place on yourself. I guess being called “Doctor” is not as satisfying as you thought it would be after all, huh?

Finally, don’t try to make what you are currently doing while you have no job seem to be more than it is. You have to remember your harsh social reality—you have a Ph.D. and no job.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison