By Kim Manahan (Whetstone editor)

I understand that academic support classes are there to help, but there’s a side of me who thinks that if a student is accepted to a private, liberal arts college, then they should know how to manage their time, write a sentence, and do research.

Especially since we pay $20,000 a year for said college.

Kim Manahan

Yes, many schools have these programs – so maybe I just find something wrong with higher education. But there should be a line drawn some- where.

Last semester, The Whetstone reported that a record number of students were enrolled in the 099, remedial math and English courses and that Wesley was accepting some students by special circumstance with high school grade point averages below a 2.0.

There was bragging that former dean of enrollment Bill Firman bought in the largest class that Wesley had ever seen.

But they failed to mention that Wesley has a below average reten- tion rate compared to similar colleges?

Or what about the amount of students who require developmental or transitional classes, who aren’t exactly ready for college?

I looked at some of the course work that the students in the EN 099 class do, and, to be blunt, it is stuff I learned to do at a public middle school on Long Island.

So what does this mean for those of us who can compose a sen- tence or do multiplication?

Does it mean that we only needed to put in half the effort that we did in high school to come to Wesley?

I didn’t have a stellar GPA or SAT scores in high school – in fact, I had to go to summer school after failing four quarters of tenth grade math. But I had the scores to get me into MA 108 as a first semester freshman, and somehow the intelligence to get a B.

So what does this mean for those of us who work our asses off for four or five years and put effort towards our degree?

I have heard the term “diploma mill” used for some schools, in- cluding the University of Phoenix (online) and Wilmington University in Delaware. Basically this means, if you can afford the education, you get the diploma.

Is this what Wesley is turning into?

Just because someone can pay to attend, it doesn’t mean that they should be attending.