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SINGLETON DRONES ON ABOUT MATTERS ACADEMIC
A Retired Old Duffer's Blog Spot

REQUIREMENTS? REQUIREMENTS? WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING REQUIREMENTS!
July 3, 2008

In a recent edition of Inside Higher Education we learn that Virginia Commonwealth University has awarded a degree to someone who did not complete all of the degree requirements.

On the one hand, this is shocking. On the other hand one almost yawns. For almost four decades, one of the most frequently heard bits of professional gossip at national conventions is the routine circumvention of degree requirements, particularly at the undergraduate level. I would long ago have passed these off as Academic Legends (there are so many of them) were it not for the fact that my own university created a dean level position that sought ways to waive graduation requirements. What is done informally at some institutions became legitimized at mine. I honestly don't know which is worse.

Since the 1960s, we have seen either the "erosion" of requirements or the "expansion of access to higher education" depending on one's perspective. Just six years ago even Yale joined the liberalizing trend. (see Time article)

All of this raises the question: What does a B.A. betoken? Are we looking for the marks of a learned person? Do we seek to make good citizens? Are we manufacturers of the well-rounded person? Or, as I often suspect, are we really in the business of helping employers cut down the list of possible candidates by requiring a certain degree of education, even if that degree of education is irrelevant to the job being sought.

The joke may be on the future employers. They may wind up hiring those who best know how to con the system.

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