Taking Responsibility

There’s a pretty good comment thread running underneath my latest Chronicle column, which describes my less-than-auspicious career as an undergraduate. While many of the criticisms are perfectly fair, a few are worth a longer discussion. 

Several commenters referred to the title: “How I Aced College — And Why I Now Regret It.” One thing I didn’t know until I started writing columns and magazine articles a few years ago is that authors don’t write the titles of their pieces. As a rule, the first time you see them is upon publication. Titling falls to the editorial staff, and it’s not easy — they have to describe the essence of the piece in a small amount of space, in a way that will make people want to read it. Usually, I’m grateful that someone else has been able to sum up my thesis in a smarter, more succinct manner than I could have managed. In this case, “Aced” probably isn’t the word I would have chosen (“regret,” on the other hand, is exactly right.) I didn’t ace college — I graduated with a B-plus average that caused a number of graduate schools to rightly reject my application for admission. 

Several people took the column as a tale of how I scammed or manipulated the system. That assumes way too much forethought and intentionality on my part. I signed up for my first AP class when I was 14 years old, because my high-school guidance counselor told me to, that’s what all my friends were doing, and everyone said it would help me get into a selective college. Which it did! Then the selective college looked at my six high school AP courses and handed me 24 college credits in exchange. Should I have turned them down? Is that even possible? If it is (do you fill out a form?), I suspect it doesn’t happen very often. One commenter noted that I could have retaken the same courses in college. Sure — but how would I have known to do that? By giving me credit, the college was telling me that I had, according to their standards, completed college-level work. At the time, I was inclined to take them at their word. 

Similarly, I didn’t invent Binghamton’s policy of awarding four credits for courses that only meet for three faculty contact hours per week. It never occurred to me that this was non-standard, because I’d never attended any other college. In fairness — and as I noted in the column — when I called the folks at Binghamton to ask about this, they told me that it was their sincere belief that Binghamton courses really do cover 4 credit’s worth of material. And faculty contact hours certainly aren’t a perfect measure of content and rigor.

But here I think AP courses tell the tale. If you compare Binghamton’s AP equivalencies (here) to, for example, Stony Brook’s (here), you’ll see that Binghamton has a default policy of awarding four credits per AP course, even for scores of “3,” whereas Stony Brook usually (although not always) awards three credits — for exactly the same AP tests. While Stony Brook never gives four credits for a “3″ on an AP test, Binghamton does this in dozens of cases. Which makes me think that, over the years, Binghamton has just gotten used to the idea that standard college courses equal four credits. I had no reason to question that when I enrolled — and If I had questioned it, I’m sure I would have been told it was perfectly appropriate. The end result is that Binghamton students simply aren’t asked to learn as much. 

Filling up on gym classes, the late-night poker playing, the general lack of diligence, by contrast — that’s all on me. I was an adult, as I said, and lots of other students in similar circumstances made better choices. 

In the end, students and colleges share responsibility for undergraduate learning. Colleges aren’t mere shopping malls, setting their wares out on a table for consumers to pick over and purchase as they will. Colleges have an obligation to engage their students in a way that balances standards and freedom, structure and choice. Traditional-age college students are adults, but also a particular kind of adult, new to the business of taking responsibility. Structure academic programs and policies one way, and students are likely to make certain kinds of choices. Structure them another, and students will likely choose something else. That’s why concepts like “curriculum” exist. It’s too easy for colleges to hide behind student agency as a means of denying responsibility for the predictable consequences of institutional decision making — or lack thereof.