I stumbled into these two images today and they spoke to me. Not literally but figuratively, and it spoke volumes.
Image A (source )
Jeff Koterba color cartoon for 4/26/2012
“Student Loan”
This one spoke to me because of the ‘business’ that is education in our nation today. Students pay a lot, especially when they go to private ‘education’ institutions. Sometimes the students leave with a certificate, a little knowledge and a lot of debt. We in UTM, in my humble opinion, should play a bigger role in helping the nation’s future get a good education, while not be burdened by a big debt. We will also help the PGrad and research programs with a better pool of interested, knowledgeable students. It’s a WIN-WIN.
Image B (source)
This one scared me to the bone. It is a great unjust to any academia if this happens (in whatever scale). What I mean by “whatever scale” is whether we inflate the grade in :
- our own subjects (for example: high or full marks on assignments we never look at, just by numbers – you submit, you get marks);
- our course (for example: Why is the grade skewed throughout the different sections? Lets up the grades so it will look nicer in meetings.)
- our program (for example: Oh look, the kid needs 0.7 to get first class, lets help him.)
Let us be the place where students come in as an empty vessel, but leave filled with knowledge, polished to shine and armed with ethics, morality and discipline.
