Ryan Larson - A Better School System

 Professor Redick talked a little today about a paper that describes how Oxford University conducts education: students are given one-to-one advisors, lectures are open to all but not required, and the only tests are at the end of the year. So if there is a system that seems to work better than ours (Oxford's reputation precedes itself, of course) why haven't we implemented it or something similar? In this blog I will give my thoughts as to why we have not made and probably will not make any changes on the organizational level.

The first possible reason is that change is hardly welcomed. CNU behaves how American colleges are expected to behave, because CNU wants to be seen as a good American university. By changing its style, CNU risks losing support of students and other educational entities.

The second possible reason is that we don't have the money to do such a thing. In order to change our system we would undoubtedly need thousands to millions of dollars in administrative work done-- maybe we'd need to hire more professors or build more lecture halls.

The third possible reason that we won't change to a new system is because we CNU students are stupid. Not you in particular, dear reader, just as a general population compared to Oxford. Let's face it: the students going to Oxford are likely going to be a lot more talented, motivated and high-achieving than you or me. For us lowly peasant students, we might not take full advantage of the looser restrictions. We might just use the opportunity to blow off lectures and go party. CNU isn't exactly Harvard, and so it'll attract the students who aren't exactly Harvard-level students. And that isn't really something CNU can change except through years of slowly building up the school's reputation.

 These are just my thoughts, and they have no basis in any research or learned study.

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