Thursday, March 08, 2012

Cutting education costs by cutting degree requirements is a bad idea

Sloppy mistake from a NY Times blog. The headline of the blog post reads: "State of Indiana Tries to Make Education More Affordable By Limiting Credits." However, the state isn't trying to make education more affordable, just college degrees.

What they're really doing is reducing the number of course credits someone would need in order to receive a degree. That is reducing the amount of education a person needs to graduate. In no way does that make education more affordable.

As for the issue raised in the blog...

I can understand the motivation among the governor and legislators to reduce the state's education costs, but this proposal just strikes me as silly. Cut wages, make the class sizes bigger, reduce the number of options, whatever, but don't just cheapen the degrees offered by Indiana's colleges and universities.