What’s Missing in the College Experience? Part 2 of 4

Writing well is a process learned and re-learned.

Part 2 of “What’s Missing in the College Experience” – Writing competently and of quality is not scrutinized

“Outside of academia, you aren’t guaranteed an audience.  Writing is a crucial communication skill whether you are drafting a book or simply sending emails to anyone in a professional setting. College writing has a tendency to trick students into complacency when writing, because it is someone’s job to read their writing. A salaried college professor is tasked with reading your essay on common pool resources, but would your writing attract any attention without the financial incentive? I have found that writing for college and writing for work are two very different ideas because your writing is not guaranteed an audience in the real world, and piquing the interest of others with your passion for a subject is a skill that requires extensive practice.”  (Eli Lisseck ’13)

In my experience, this is an area where many of the institutions of higher-ed are falling short, but in saying so, many – if not all, will disagree. Much of this disagreement is based on the philosophy or expectation that when students arrive out of high school, their writing skills and basic understanding of grammar are to be in place and of a second nature AND at this stage, it is no longer the job of the curriculum to be teaching the basics.  With that being the case, when entering college, the foundation is, or should be, in place and the expectations that the students can engage and embrace the more advanced, esoteric and abstract requirements of the college-level academics.

While it sounds good in theory, in practice, this is not the reality. Many students coming into college are relatively unprepared for the expectations and demands of what college level output requires of them, or at least used to.  Sadly, the solution seems to be, instead of monitoring, policing and fulfilling the expectations of higher-ed, is to simply lower them. Writing, especially in the abstract, tends to be of less than quality and with that, basic rules of grammar, spelling and structure, all get lost in the process as there is no system in place that reinforces or critiques in a consistent and/or permeating way.

Having worked with many, many students over the years, I have seen the writing skills in decline and there are many factors to this I imagine. But there are two that stand out to me in significance over the years as I have been witness to this decline. The first being the most obvious; technology and its contribution to linguistic regression, as we now speak in fractured spits and spurts as opposed to complete sentences attached to complete thoughts behind such. The second, which has crept in at a slower pace but over a longer period of time is that the schools seem to not want to hold people accountable for the lack of quality or proper writing. I have heard many college faculty and administrators lament the writing skills of their very students, yet said students seem to fly through the ranks ultimately receiving their diploma for their ‘exemplary academic four-year toil…’

I’ve called out people on many occasions for the lack of quality in their writing.  The usual response(s) seem to be something akin to, “well it doesn’t really matter,” or “no one really looks for that.” I’ve even spoken with and questioned faculty about such, and while many have agreed that the writing is less than stellar, they will then go on to say, “I am grading for the message and content, not their grammar.” More than one has said, “It’s not my job to correct their grammar at this stage.” I get what they’re saying but I disagree with it. The common theme is that anyone who IS the audience for such output should be critiquing, as if it is not done so, is ultimately a disservice to the student and will only end up being magnified later in time.

Case in point being a student that I had the pleasure of working with during her undergraduate years and she was, in her mind, a competent and aspiring writer/communicator. Everything she had produced in college had been given praise and her writing was celebrated in her grades by faculty. However, upon graduation, her cover letters, the writings I saw, the very documents that were supposed to ‘brand’ her in the job market, that were supposed to tell her story and convey a positive impression on prospective employers, were woefully inadequate, both in foundation and style. Her writing, while ‘fine’ for the classroom, failed to make an impression on the audience she was hoping for outside of college. Actually, let me restate that; her writing DID make an impression on that audience. It happened to be a poor one in that her ‘new’ readers were indeed scrutinizing her materials and critiquing for grammatical mistakes and structure. They were looking at content and context with the evaluative eye of the red-pen and her materials were being lambasted for their poor quality, such that could never represent an organization she were to be interested in working for.

Our office of Career Services would get frequent calls from alumnae stating, “What is going on? The applicant’s writing is horrible? What can we do about it?” Frankly, at that point, the horse is already out of the barn, as it were. Being more an issue of image management and needing a reaction, we implemented a plan that every resume and cover letter forth that came through our office for recruiting opportunities was to be pre-screened and then ‘approved’ by our staff before being submitted to prospective employers. While this was done mainly as a service to appease the employer’s want of not being ‘embarrassed’ by the applicants of their own Alma Mater.  With the intent of heading off poorly written or ill-conceived letters and resumes, this became a pretty effective, for the most part, method in elevating applicant’s presentations. The fact that for many students, this, to use an over-used term, ‘teachable moment,’ the heightened lens of scrutiny, even labeled “harsh” by many students, was really met in our office for the first time on-campus, is part & parcel to one of the issues void in the academic mission – a willing, permeating, consistent and strong scrutiny for the students at every stage of their academic career.