Dr. Fertig, you are absolutely correct. But it can be *extremely* difficult to get sufficient faculty to support a writing across the curriculum initiative of any sort, formal or informal. I've been privileged to be part of two successful such programs, quite different in nature, but have also seen the reluctance and even hostility of other faculties to the least suggestion that anyone but the English department should bear *any* responsibility for quality writing. I've also seen faculties willing to try it out combined with administrators who think it's a great idea but won't lift a finger to fund it . . . and you can't just say, "everybody must make their students write more." You have to have someone who can give the training and encouragement necessary to help those who don't know even where to start -- and someone teaching a full load simply can't do it.

I remember in the web boom years writing was declared dead and we were told we'd all be communicating in universally accepted graphical symbols.

Of course these were the same people who predicted race, class, and religion would become irrelevent and we'd all be equal and one with the universe behind our online entities and email addresses.

"...they need writing skills to have a more prominent role in the qualitative courses that they already take."

That's just the beginning. Students in the sciences desperately need help in explaining the results of QUANTITATIVE reasoning. Somewhere in their education, too many of them picked up the bad habit of plug-and-chugging some numbers through an equation or program, putting a box around the answer, and tossing the hastily scribbled result over the transom for a grade. It's a Sisyphean task teaching them that on the job, their answer might come back like a hot line drive, with a pink slip attached.

Writing Across the Curriculum is the dental flossing of university education--a great idea but nobody does it. Every professor in my department complains about the shoddy reports their student submit, but none of them offer writing assignments in their freshman classes. After all, who's going to read and edit 150 analysis reports? The African/Asian/Eastern European teaching assistant who's struggling with English writing in his own classes?

The secret to writing better? READ.

It starts with diagramming sentences when young, so students realize there IS a structure to our language, with multiple parts, each of which has a distinct purpose. It continues with practicing writing composition, with errors and poor choices pointed out, and alternate possibilities suggested. It further continues with regular reading out loud of examples of good writing, so students learn to hear the difference between good and poor writing.

Currently, students are for the most part left to teach themselves with a minimum of grammar instruction that is almost never related to their own output. Instead, a student must discern his error or poor judgment for himself using his grade and the grading rubric. (If he couldn't do it right in the first place, he's not going to teach himself with the mere "grade as hint" that he got it wrong).

Then, lots and lots of quality reading.

At present, teachers are not teaching; they are merely facilitating. Many will proudly state so: "I am not the sage on the stage. I am the guide on the side". Well, if we want kids to learn, rather than merely be given a time, place, and resources to learn, than teachers should teach as though it matters whether the learning actually happens, rather than merely provide opportunities for students to teach themselves.

This is emblematic of the dilution of education as a whole. We have slowly allowed education to be replaced with 'socialization' and lets not hurt anyone's feelingism. We must et back to focusing on education.

Is it me, does it seem the decline began with the creation of the Department of education?

I think there are two key reasons for this. The first is the emphasis on the GMAT and quantitative skills in the application phase. The other is that most of your grade (at least where I went for my MBA) was group work, presentations and quantitative assignments. The only classes that required writing on an individual level were marketing, organizational behavior and international business. This is a little more than half of a semester's course load.

So, you want graduate-level students to be able to write? Instruct your students daily that writing -- and every other discipline worth doing well -- has rules and techniques that must be mastered in order for one to excel in it, and begin teaching this foundation in elementary school, where constant repetition will form it into habit. Students who can write cogent sentences, logical paragraphs, and well-reasoned essays by the end of high school can be taught to adapt their writing to the differing requirements of academia and the varying demands of business. A student who lacks these rudimentary skills doesn't belong in a remedial writing class in college: he doesn't belong in college at all -- let alone graduate school.

And if you have to blame someone for this rotten state of affairs, skip the Department of Education and start at the university writing education departments that too often instruct would-be elementary and secondary teachers that substance and content always trump structure and "rules." A student who doesn't know the conventions of writing has no more chance of producing quality work than a pianist who never learned his scales has of playing "Rhapsody in Blue."