Op-Ed: Listen up, college students. You don’t ‘get’ a grade. You have to earn it.
This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
How do you earn a bachelor’s degree these days? On paper, it has to be harder than it used to be.
Just look at the list of institutions that offer a bachelor’s degree: Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. All of them offer at least one program. Only four (University of Michigan, University of North Carolina, University of Colorado, and University of California) have a full-time program in a single city. And, as a result, students have to wait years to earn their degree.
But what does this mean for students? You have to earn an official bachelor’s degree.
How can students make their college life less boring?
The New York Times recently published a guest op-ed from a college student in the City of Columbia. His title was “You and Your College: The Hardest Job in College.” In it, he outlined a plan for earning a bachelor’s degree without the typical three- or four-year wait. Read the whole thing here. And check out his plan that would give students a free online degree:
My name is Matt Smith and I am a senior at Columbia College. The hardest part of my bachelor’s degree is waiting three to four years to receive a diploma that I need to legally work as a full-time professional.
But right now, I know many of my friends aren’t going to be able to get a job or attend graduate school. They can’t earn a degree without an actual diploma.
I believe that the solution for students is to let universities provide the education, not professors. Schools can offer online or part-time degree programs, as well as the traditional on-campus degree programs. And the university will provide student services for all major disciplines and majors. Because of this concept, my degree
