Erika Wilhite
Published: April 12, 2006
Ehh. Eeehhh.
That is the sound my brain made when I found out about Senate Bill 246 – also known as Senator Lee Constantine’s “Excess Credit Hours” bill.
I prefer to call it the War on Education. (If George W. Bush is permitted to declare wars on abstract nouns, so am I.)
But maybe “education” is the wrong word to use. Because lately it seems like this state is placing way too much emphasis on earning shiny, gilded pieces of paper. If Constantine and his ilk aren’t careful, their motives will become glaringly apparent and everyone will realize that they want to turn colleges into factories.
Florida, along with the rest of the United States, claims that education is top priority; however, legislative actions like the excess credit hours bill and the tuition increase for state universities seem to be in opposition to this claim.
The bill aims to force community college students who have exceeded 120 percent of their degree requirements to pay out-of-state tuition. That may sound like a lot of leeway, but that’s only 72 credits for most A.A. degrees.
Constantine claims the bill is being proposed in order to give students who need certain classes to graduate a guaranteed seat, as opposed to also offering those seats to students who don’t “need” to be in the class (according to their degree programs).
What I’d like to know is how he has decided that certain students do not need to be in certain classes.
It doesn’t make sense to me that students should be limited in the amount of education they are allowed to receive; the current political administration of America is forever proclaiming to be “all about education” yet they are nearly constantly making it harder and harder for people to get that education.
But then again, apparently our beloved Florida legislatures have forgotten the age old adage “Actions speak louder than words.”
Constantine’s bill does have a several exemptions. They include exemptions for active duty military personnel, for students who have had to withdraw for “personal hardship” reasons and for students who are pursuing a dual-major.
However, it says nothing about students who decide midway through their college careers that they want to pursue a different degree.
Why should students be penalized for changing their minds? In their senior year of high school, students are still studying the same sort of generalized courses they’ve taken since elementary school; once they get into college they are abruptly faced with a pretty daunting and seemingly ultimate decision. They must choose a single field to study and pursue a career in it, ostensibly for the rest of their lives. It’s not reasonable to insist that students do this right out of high school, but that seems to be the expectation in our system.
I think this bill sounds more like “let’s limit what students are allowed to learn” as opposed to “let’s let students learn as much as they want” – and that’s a resounding slap in the face of true scholastic pursuit.
Is any one else seeing the lack of continuity here?