Feel-good classes don’t make a better school

To the editor:

UNLV biology professor Carl Reiber believes that UNLV's new First Year Experience course on "critical thinking and communications skills, and on global or multicultural awareness," coupled with its new second-year Culminating Experience course, will improve UNLV's retention and graduation rates ("Freshman experience at UNLV changing," Monday Review-Journal.

For decades, UNLV has accepted large numbers of students who are unequipped to attend college. They can barely read and write, the lack critical thinking skills and life skills -- you know, like exercising self-discipline and showing up on time! These kids are victims of poor parenting, a poor K-12 education, poor expectations and many of the social ills that our community usually tops in national surveys. The bar has consistently been set too low for UNLV admission on the theory that every Nevada high school graduate is entitled to, and ready for, a college experience. The UNLV retention and graduation rates have proved this theory wrong year after year.

So where do we begin? First, stop encouraging all kids to attend college. College is not a career path for everyone. If it were, retention and graduation rates would be much higher. Second, raise the bar on freshman admissions by getting rid of the grade-point average standard -- which has been inflated even more than our national currency -- and use either SAT or ACT scores as alternatives. Third, encourage more kids to attend job-oriented trade schools, internships, and two-year community college programs. Fourth, improve K-12 education based on the reforms espoused by Michelle Rhee, formerly of the District of Columbia school system.

This will raise expectations of students. (Unfortunately there is nothing that can be done at an organizational level about poor parenting and the social ills that are epidemic in our city.) Fifth, compact all of the feel-good multicultural courses into the one-week student orientation period prior to the start of classes. If necessary, add another day to the orientation period to accommodate this. Sixth, emphasize academics over athletics. Athletics bring in money and foster community pride but the primary justification for an expensive university system is preparing students for their lives after graduation.

Finally, when someone at UNLV does something noteworthy, bring it to the attention of the public. Let us know when a faculty member is awarded a patent, is invited to participate on a national committee, when a student gets recognized for an academic achievement, when 90 percent of the pre-law students were accepted to the law school of their first choice, etc. Toot your own horn.

But Page One articles about student orientation programs on multiculturalism and global awareness to enhance the college experience make us the laughingstock of the country. Get serious. We're better than that.

Henry Soloway

Las Vegas