21ST CENTURY EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES

21^ST CENTURY EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES

In the recent past, governmental institutions of higher learning in developed and developing countries have been experiencing a lot of challenges a good example being the public universities and colleges in the United States. However, the government has tried eradicating the dilapidating state of these institutions but all has been in vain. Majorly, the political effect has been perceived to be the main cause of these challenges. Pursuing this further, the education system lags behind towards technology-based education which is the talk of most of the educational forums in the country. Studies and report have confirmed that a large percentage of the higher institutions of learning lack the required resources to keep up with the technological curve (Belfield & Jenkins, 2014). Besides, an average percentage of 20% of the schools which the government has spent huge sums of money equipping them with internet connections meet their requirements of teaching. In the near future the country will lack designing and computing skills which cannot be provided by the robots. This essay discusses the current state of higher education in the United States, how the community colleges are aimed at meeting the needs of the students, as well as coming up with a recommendation to the CCBC Catonsville campus to help its students to be more successful in their studies.

Consequently, the rate of the students who are not satisfied in their current schools of higher learning is alarming in the United States’ education sector due to the challenges that they face on their daily routines. Despite the fact that the government trying to reduce all forms of discrimination in the entire country, higher institutions of learning are still practicing the same on a very low note so that they can remain unnoticed (Paul, 2015). This discrimination ranges from gender, the level of social class, the level of generation in the school among others. In addition, the lectures through their formats have been proven to be biased because they provide unfair pros to the already privileged population. The format is very complex from the traditional lectures outline because it incorporates a huge study structure and requires the students to interact more often so as to acquire the skills.

Paul (2015) agrees that most of the students who are considered as the minority group and poor must have come from the low performing schools around the country thus they find it complex to understand the format since they used to be conversant with a different style of a format in their secondary schools. Due to this, an academic performance gap always generates itself with the students from the average and high social classes taking the lead while those from the poor social classes performing poorly thus raising the inequality experienced in the education sector. For instance, at the University of Texas, the new students in the class of psychology are given a standardized quiz and thereafter the results of the students are compared. These results clearly show the difference between the affluent and less affluent students whereby the affluent students perform better (Paul, 2015). “Minority, low-income, and first-generation students face another barrier in traditional lecture courses: a high-pressure atmosphere that may discourage them from volunteering to answer questions.” Says Paul in the second paragraph of his third page . The presence of discrimination affects the sense of belonging of the minority, first-generation and low-income students. Moreover, though the female gender comprises more than half of the classes, less than 40% belong to the active students in the class.

In the fifth line of the seventh paragraph of Belfield & Jenkins (2014) article says that, “Community colleges may claim that their outcomes simply reflect student characteristics, aptitudes, and preferences, and that as open-access public institutions they have only limited influence over these factors. Hence, some may question whether efficiency and productivity can be accurately determined in higher education”. So as to meet the needs of majority of students who are very curious and determined in achieving their goals in life, the some of the community schools have adopted the test-optional enrollment because surveys that have been conducted by the educational statisticians affirm that the SATs and ACTs have a very little essence in predicting the performance of a student in college (Sanchez, 2018). “This year, George Washington received about 26,500 undergraduate applications from all over the country. Close to 20 percent did not submit their test scores, which GW says has helped enroll more students from diverse backgrounds,” says Sanchez in paragraph 13 of his article. This initiative has helped many students from diverse backgrounds such as low-income and first-generation students gain a higher self-esteem in joining these colleges. However, this move has attracted a lot of criticism from the community college’s alumni who argue that their former institution has started killing its performance by admitting less qualified students. For example, Ian Haimowiz from the University of George Washington (which is today a test-optional school) scored a straight A in his high school, however, he scored very low in his SAT. Today, he is one of the most successful people since he performed very well in spite of scoring very low mark on his SAT test.

The college administration of CCBC Catonsville campus should come up with a strategized framework of initiating a funding kitty for the less fortunate students who are in the race towards achieving their career-goal in the institution. This is due to the fact that some of the students lack the potential of raising tuition fees at the same time raise money to cater for their basic needs thus huge student debt. This framework should incorporate some clearly defined requirements for a student to get tuition fee funding from the kitty. This will ease the burden of the cost of education, therefore, creating a conducive environment for the students to focus on their education. In the same way, it will significantly help in the journey towards the objective of the ministry of education in the reduction of school drop-outs and raising the rate of courses completed.

In conclusion, the government has a huge role to play in the revival of the United States’ institutions of higher learning. This will be achieved by increased annual funding in these institutions so as to boost their quality of education thus ensuring equal competition with the public institutions. Moreover, it should increase the varsity loan given to undergraduates and postgraduates since it has been considered to be insufficient to cater for all the academic needs. Besides that, the college administration of CCBC Catonsville campus should consider the amendment of the above-discussed recommendation so as to see more students from the poor families succeed in their education. The above discussion has met the thesis aim since it has highlighted that the current state of education in higher institutions of learning is not promising at all due to the presence of discrimination in the development of lecture formats, how the introduction of test-optional enrolments will meet the needs of the student, and a recommendation to CCBC Catonsville campus.

References

Belfield, C., Crosta, P., & Jenkins, D. (2014). Can community colleges afford to improve completion? Measuring the cost and efficiency consequences of reform. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(3), 327-345.  http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0162373713517293

Paul, A. M. (2015). Are college lectures unfair?. The New York Times, 9, 12. https://theavarnagroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Are-College-Lectures-Unfair-The-New-York-Times.pdf

Sanchez, C. (2018). NPR Choice page. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/26/604875394/study-colleges-that-ditch-the-sat-and-act-can-enhance-diversity