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December 19, 2007
On Our Multi-Tiered College System
Iyov has an interesting post on the history of United States history textbooks and how history our Universities teach history.
Now part of the passing of this textbook [Morison and Commager - des] reflects changes in fashion (social history now plays a much larger role in the teaching of survey history courses). But mostly, it reflects that introductory college textbooks are now really high-school textbooks. . . . At elite colleges and universities, these books [high school like textbooks - des] have simply been abandoned -- they are too full of pabulum and the reading load is too low. Instead, students learn from readers and multiple contemporary books. While this helps keep analytic abilities strong at the best schools, it is unfortunate that our educational system no longer sees a role for widespread use of challenging textbooks.
As in so many other academic disciplines, how they teach history separates the elite colleges and universities from those that are not so elite. This fact is not lost on industry.
During the core of my professional life, I worked for a company that was well aware of this distinction. When screening resumes from potential college graduates the first place we looked was their GPA. The second place was their university or college. If a candidate was about to graduate from any one of about six or seven universities (which ones depended to some extent on discipline), a candidate's application passed the first round of evaluation with a 3.5 GPA or higher. If the candidate was to graduate from any other university or college, he or she needed a 4.0 GPA (PE courses excluded) to get to the next stage. There were exceptions but they were rare. Mitigating evidence needed to be clear and obvious. In the second round, we looked more broadly at the candidate, but at this stage another quantitative factor came into play. How long did it take a candidate to graduate? Again, the reason for it taking more than four years needed to be clear and obvious. Overcoming economic hardship, as reflected by jobs held while in school or the like, was a plus; struggling with indecision was a negative. We also tended to look negatively at students who were indecisive as to major beyond their first year or those who seemed to select elective courses in order to pump up their GPA. We used this same screening procedure for any candidate applying for a job requiring a college degree who had been out of school less than five years.
Yes, we were able to hire college gards. We paid well, had great benefits, and even in the interview we exposed candidates to a challenging technology that they would have a part in developing and bringing to market.
My point is that every recruiting organization does the same thing. They may not do it consciously, but they do it.
Posted by Duane Smith at December 19, 2007 1:38 PM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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