Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Reaction to Kennedy

I do not really agree that the student performs certain tasks and the institution does everything else. The way the job market is lately, I think students are pretty much on their own and the institution is there to simply hand them a degree. I agree with Kennedy’s idea about the student responses to hierarchy; I do think that students expect to be able to do what they want with their private lives after they put in the time and effort required by their classes. I also think students who leave law school and even college feel like after putting in so much time and money to their degree, the system kind of owes them a job. There is already some sort of hierarchy in the massive amount of students attempting to find jobs that probably worries most students. It was hard for me to evaluate the hierarchy ideas based on my experiences because I am not in law school and I think college is probably extremely different from what is described in the article. I cannot imagine having to go through a professor’s secretary to talk to them. It would not surprise me that the teachers really are obsessed with law school rankings and other types of evaluations of greatness. It is hard to relate to the article without being in law school.

3 comments:

  1. I completely agree with this post. In my blog, I included my thoughts on the professional schools being a business. If the student's work hard, meet the rankings within the school, graduate in the top half of the class, they should be able to do what they wanted to do with their degree.

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  2. I agree, I think the law schools, as with most schools have become more of a business than an institution of higher learning. The reason is the high volume of students applying to their schools and the emphasis on numbers. Schools are so concerned with rankings and numerical assessments of students. Rankings have taken precedent over education because high rankings are what give schools prestige. High rankings give schools money for research and attract higher candidates. Schools have the ambition to be the best and are run by businessmen and corporations not just educators. Schools have become a business and that has compromised the integrity of schools.

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  3. I agree as well. This is true at the undergraduate level as well--look at penn state. Penn State gives students the opportunity to work with great minds in the fields of their interest, but many of these thinkers aren't much in the way of teachers, which means students are on their own to figure out a lot of stuff.

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