CliffBrains

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=3361984&src=eDialog/GetContent&section=news

"But more than any other Web site, there is one of such paramount importance that every collegian -- from the smallest of schools to the largest -- should have it bookmarked prominently in their Web browser.

That site is CliffsNotes.com (http://www.cliffsnotes.com), home of abridged, quick-reading versions of the most important classic books."
-Reuters

CliffBrains
By Robert T. Reilly

Great, now they're not just turning a blind eye to the quick and dirty way to read, CliffsNotes, but actually recommending the system of summarized readings. Just splendid. As if American students weren't already paying for an education they're not getting. Now, they're being told to cheat themselves out of even more. The schools are laughing all the way to the bank, and the students, fooled into thinking they're getting away with something, are actually paying a truckload of money to get cheated out of an education. Soon, they'll be too ignorant to know what happened to them.

Here's an idea. Why even have classes? Since students cut them anyway, colleges can save a bundle on canceling them all together. And dorms? No. Wait. We've got to keep them. (How else could you hoodwink parents out of dishing out that 30-40-50 thousand dollar check each year? If kids stayed at home, than parents could see it was a waste of money. With them driving off to school each fall, at least the mirage of an education is there shimmering on the horizon.)

That's right, get your courses online. Take your tests online. Get your diploma online. What a 21st century idea! Not.

It's called correspondence courses. And they've been around a long time. But unlike the correspondence courses of old, these are costing kids and parents upwards of $50,000 a year when all is said and done.

If I were a parent (oh, here we go), and I were paying that kind of money for my kid to get an education, you better believe I would make sure the school actually TEACHES the students, rather than just "guiding" them to which email to send their homework to and which homepage to take their tests on. Not to mention cutting the school calendar down to just over 100 days a year in many cases, And some even less than that. All in the name of cutting costs. Why is it that school is much more expensive now, and yet the school year is shorter and there are more students (so more income for the schools)?

I just don't get it. But then again, I went to school the old fashioned way, with teachers using books in classrooms.