Peter Greene reports a sad story about a small university in Maryland. The president, recruited from the financial sector, was given a goal: raise retention rates. He realized that the best tactic was to kick out 20-25 of the likeliest not to succeed early in the semester. He called the students “bunnies” and asked a faculty committee to draw up a list so he could “drown the bunnies.”
What really made him and the Board of Trustees mad was that the student newspaper revealed the plan. Then the faculty refused to assemble a list of students to kick out.
This is an illustration of Capbell’s Law at work. The goal (raising the graduation rate) became more important than the mission (educating students).
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Don’t drown the bunnies; shoot, metaphorically speaking, the vultures.
I would encourage the regulars who have been around a while to read the comments and note our dear old friend who defended the president.
A part of me agrees in a certain sense with TE, in that those kicked out will then not be as badly in debt. The 25th would probably be before the withdraw deadline so hopefully they would perhaps only be charged with a registration fee.
You need to keep the Dark Side in check
Use the force, Duane
How many kids really know whether a school is right for them within the first month of school? I’m sure the college didn’t commission a survey that has a track record of identifying students who might not make it. It strikes me as the same bogus process of identifying a student’s “viability” by standardized test scores. More over, the reason for doing the weeding out had absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of the students. Any concern for the students came as an afterthought to obscure the venality of their plan.
The greed factor has taken over education, thanks to the psychopathic master’s of the universe and those they have corrupted. Woe to them that makes our youth stumble.
That really Stinks. I am sure the students he was/would have dismissed would have been African Americans and/or Hispanics. Something like this happened to me when I attended college. The professors were told to fail Black students but they refused. I was so proud of my professors.
I could send my Maine Coon Cat (as little as she is 6-7 lbs) to the president of that school to help with the bunnycide. Ol Izzy loves to eat the heads off of very young bunnies and then leave me the carcass on the front porch.
I never have understood my (now deceased cats) preference for the heads of chipmunks, birds, and bunnies. At least their hunting was instinctive. I’m not sure how to label this president’s plan for “culling the herd.”
“There are so many plans to gather data about post-secondary schools by measuring things like graduation rate and retention rates, but here’s just another example of how trying to Make Your Numbers invariably conflicts with the actual purpose of the institution.”
This is the larger issue. It is being embedded in USDE policies and it has been used for some time in rating the “prestige” of colleges/universities. Protecting the “brand” is more important than having a responsibility to educate the students you admit.
In the case of public schools, they want to data mine to feed the narrative that public education is failing. Why else would they be using inappropriate measurements? It is up to parents to do what is in the best interest of their children.
“Drowning Bunnies”
Bunnies may be drowned
But boneheads will be downed
Cuz email leaves a trail
That bunnies can avail
The situation at the referenced, small Catholic university, reminds me of Catholic University of America, with its “hands out” to the Koch’s”.
The Koch involvement at Creighton University, a Catholic school in Nebraska, was identified by journalist Jane Mayer, in a recent article in the New Yorker. The school’s Institute for Economic Inquiry, splashed the same “well-being” verbiage, that Mayer linked to the new Koch messaging, on its Facebook page.
IMO, social Darwinism, as an overlay to Christ’s teachings, would gag students with hypocrisy.
Yes, an excellent example of Campbell’s Law.
As well as of what rheephorm can’t stand: the light of day. If this were such a fine idea then it wouldn’t have been necessary to try to act in secret.
Instead, an attempt to do it all quick and dirty and behind closed doors. All in the service, first and foremost, of the person proposing to “cull the class.” And then trying to drag others down to his own vile level…
Is there even one rheephormster, of the many that have posted on this blog, that will finally admit that a hard-charging business background ill-prepared this university president to work in the “ed bidness”?
Not holding my breath…
😎
KrazyTA
If I am not mistaken, “Into to Bunny Drowning” and “Advanced Bunny Drowning” are both taught at Harvard Business school — along with such classics as “Fraud 101, 202, 303… and 606” and “How to lie, cheat and steal and get away with it” .
Fits in with the reformsters stated mission of educating the strivers.
Has anyone Read Professor Joel Shatzky’s “Option Three.” It is a satirical novel whichhs its roots in the changes that came about in ‘higher’ education as it became as colleges became businesses.
Simon Newman & Eva Moskovitz would make a two-man ‘Weapons of mass destruction’ team in education. Turn them loose & Gates would quadruple his contributions to Rheeformsters everywhere.
Sickos!
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Shame on Mount St. Mary’s.
And shame on much of the education establishment, from the K-12 charter schools to even, apparently, some of the universities, for being more concerned with how their test results and statistics look, than with what their actual jobs should be, which is educating students.
Even the bunnies with big “bucks?”
They get drowned in praise.
After student’s graduate, Greene discussed the alumni’s role within the university as doing four things — working for the school through recurring and serving on an alumni board, share their wisdom about what the school is doing right and wrong, speak well about UND with their words and give back to the school through their wealth.