Angry Voice Becomes Chorus

Dear Ann Landers: Can you stand another response to “Depressed Old Prof in New Orleans”? He said today’s colleges are run like businesses and put the bottom line before education. He was absolutely right. Are college students being taught to think, or are they memorizing facts the night before an exam, regurgitating their new “knowledge” for the test and forgetting it two days later?

Untenured professors are too busy publishing articles in more than 70,000 journals that nobody reads and, for the most part, contribute very little to the understanding of the current scene. If they entertain their students and make exams easy by asking multiple-guess, flip-the-coin questions, they will be armed with the appropriate percentage of high student evaluations, which are essential for tenure.

Meanwhile, bloated administrations spend much of their time and money preparing publicity to dress the windows for unwitting freshman applicants and their parents, which adds up to the great American rip-off.

What worries me most is the pressure on the faculty to dumb down their courses to keep the customers happy. - Angry Old Prof in Boston

Dear Boston: I heard from other Old Profs in Boston, as well as Young Profs in Lansing, Mich., Madison, Wis., and New Haven, Conn. (no jokes from Yalies) and at Northwestern, Fordham, Southern Methodist (Dallas), Connecticut College, Wharton in Philadelphia and Notre Dame.

Some agreed with your assessment. Others said their schools were raising the standards because there is so much competition to get in anyplace these days.

One thing is certain. A college education is essential unless you’re a genius like Bill Gates of Microsoft, who quit Harvard after a short time because he “couldn’t learn anything there.”

Dear Ann Landers: I’ve been dating “Matt” for three months and have never been treated so well. He doesn’t hide anything and even lets me answer his phone. We’ve decided to take things slow for now.

Here’s the problem: Matt has a friend, “Sally,” who is going through some hard times and can’t afford her own place. Matt has agreed to let her stay in his apartment, and they will split the rent.

I’ve told Matt if Sally moves in, it’s over between us. He says I don’t love him if I would break up over this. Also, he is hurt that I don’t trust him. I feel that Sally is not his responsibility and that she should find another solution to her rent problem.

I think there is a line that should be drawn here. If she needed an escort to a party, I would encourage him to go with her. But I can’t tolerate them sharing an apartment. There are two important facts I left out: (1) I’m not sure these two have always been “just friends,” and (2) I have been hurt before by an ex-boyfriend who did the “just friends” number.

I need your help. - Mixed Up in Maspeth, N.Y.

Dear Maspeth: I don’t think you’re mixed up at all. You sound 100 percent on target. Tell Matt he’s pushing the envelope. No female roommate. Period.

xxxx