Author Topic: So are universities just not getting the job done any more?  (Read 582 times)

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Offline Rue

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... but I'm also convinced foreign money does talk in our system.

Well yes. That is hard to dispute. Take a look at the breakdown of students in not just community and private colleges, but universities AND high schools.

The average foreign student pays $28,000 a year to attend any of these in Ontario.

I teach at one Community College and two private colleges at the moment  and have taught over a period of 20 years at about 20 colleges and universities.

I can tell you this directly. My class is 99% from India. Most of my classes are. No one from the administration ever tells me anything directly  but here is how it works. One a semester I am audited by some administrator. They then right up either a "glowing" or "nasty" report-and its directly based on marks nothing else. They draft it after looking at the marks and tests you gave right before the audit. I can be the worst instructor in the world but if all my students are happy, i.e., I do not fail anyone, I get a great audit, if I fail anyone, bad audit.

Students write evaluations of their teachers. I then have this audit nd also a  meeting with the Faculty Chair who looks at the evaluation and if the students say they do not like you-sorry we have no courses next semester.

All these institutions (except public  high schools) base their hiring on what the students want, i.e., teachers that give high marks.

Its a student's market. Believe me marks mean nothing. They are inflated bullshit these days because of that.

The average student in college or university I have personally taught:

1-refuse to read books, refuse to read;
2-will not do footnotes
3-plagiarize
4-are NOT at grade 9 level English, i.e., they can not write a complete sentence with proper verb tenses matching plural to plural
5-do not know how to spell
6-do not know the proper use of  colon, semi-colon, comma, preposition, conjunction
7-engage in dangling participles, run on sentence, and syntax that is incoherent.

Written English is a problem NOT JUST with new Canadians but born in Canada students raised in schools that have not
taught proper English and from growing lazy using the cell phone.

Students today walk into class, no pen, no paper, try to sleep, and after about 15 minutes ask for a break. They play on their
cell phones or computers. They won't read any lecture notes you send them.

My favourite is that most students skip. They will skip as many classes as possible then complain when they fail saying the
answers were never given to them in class. With Indian students about 60% of them come to you and say they are going back to India because of a wedding, they have an illness or their mother is sick. They are not exactly original with their stories. Half the students like to walk in late or towards the end of the class.

My biggest pet peeve is certain students have others carry their bags and books especially the young men having women do that or have other
young men in lower castes (religious and financial) carry their books.

Then to add to it, students argue you are racist  if you call them out on bad behaviour.

That is the reality,

The reality is there are very strong foreign students, so they stick to themselves in cliques and head to Waterloo or specific faculties at McGill o r
U of T to avoid being bullied by their fellow ethnic group students for homework.

Sorry I wish I could paint a prettier picture but I can't. At the grad level it changes of course and some faculties due to the nature of the subject will not attract bad students.

Now there are illiterate  students, foreign and domestic, but I would say they share the same over-dependence and illiteracy rates flowing from the cell phone and refusal to read anything and having attention spans of a gnat. That may have a lot to do with over-use and dependence of computers and cell phones.

Yes there is a phenomena and its real with young men from China, India, Pakistan, Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia. brought up as little Princes and so when they come to Canada they think their **** does not stink. The first thing you notice is they drive to school in Mercedes, BMW's, Audis, top end luxury cars, and they have unlimited credit cards, condos, and an attitude to match belittling their own fellow ethnic members. Money and class standing is a big deal with foreign students.

I can also tell you there are many scams where lots of foreign students  pay fake people by internet money thinking they are dealing with a university recruiter when its someone who is fake pocketing the money.

I can tell you sadly that foreign female students pay back their immigration consultants who got them to Canada by ****.

In one college I worked at a young women pimped out the other female students. Its a very real problem and it causes outbreaks of unreported std's including aids.

Drug addiction is also not unusual. We have seen the increased use of opium with Indian and Chinese students coping with assimilation issues, stress, anxiety, loneliness.

Next are the students who use the student visa to get into Canada to work. They have been told by their immigration consultant back home the easiest way to get into Canada and work is enroll in any school and get a student visa. Then once in Canada, even though a student can work only 20 hours a week, work unlimited hours and pay back the consultant a high interest loan for your plane ticket and set up in Toronto. These kinds of students work 3 jobs, drive trucks with fake truck licenses, and so on.

I know students who do the Toronto-Montreal truck runs and are supposedly full time students. Hey they never come to class.

Let me be clear. There are also  good students, foreign and domestic.

Also some students are immature and whether they are foreign or domestic they have the same immaturity and unrealistic expectations.

I love the foreign students coming to contribute. They are wonderful to encourage and help. Also there are some damn good young people I respect and admire.

So I am being blunt, but someone has to be.


« Last Edit: January 16, 2019, 09:47:49 am by Rue »
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