No Chill at Frostburg

The headline in a recent number of State-to-Date, the student newspaper of Frostburg State College in Maryland, runs: “Academic Standard Lowered to 0.00.” This is literally true: Frostburg State’s president, Nelson Guild, has decreed (overruling the Academic Standards Committee of his institution) that even if a first-semester freshman flunks every course, still he may continue to study at that institution of higher learning. Some 35 freshmen have averages of less than D, but Frostburg will cling to these promising scholars.

Why? For the same reason that certain other colleges and universities have lowered their intellectual requirements to the vanishing-point: they want the students’ fees—and, in the case of Frostburg and many other state institutions, the state appropriations, which are tied to a college’s enrollment. Frostburg’s high-rise dorms have to be paid for, even if some of the inmates of those dormitories can’t or won’t read.

RK

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Russell Kirk

The headline in a recent number of State-to-Date, the student newspaper of Frostburg State College in Maryland, runs: “Academic Standard Lowered to 0.00.” This is literally true: Frostburg State’s president, Nelson Guild, has decreed (overruling the Academic Standards Committee of his institution) that even if a first-semester freshman flunks every course, still he may continue to study at that institution of higher learning. Some 35 freshmen have averages of less than D, but Frostburg will cling to these promising scholars.

Why? For the same reason that certain other colleges and universities have lowered their intellectual requirements to the vanishing-point: they want the students’ fees—and, in the case of Frostburg and many other state institutions, the state appropriations, which are tied to a college’s enrollment. Frostburg’s high-rise dorms have to be paid for, even if some of the inmates of those dormitories can’t or won’t read.