Sorry you didn’t enjoy your stay at PCC. I and many others have. I’m fairly confident that I’ll do just fine at university when I transfer next year. I think PCC is a real college. The [private] university seems to think so too; they’ve accepted 99% of my classes as transfer units.

And for the record I had to take a remedial math class. I also took mostly afternoon and night classes, because 1. I hate waking up early 2. I preferred the company of adult returning students.

“adult education, nontraditional education, education for returning students—whatever you want to call it—is a substantial profit center for many colleges”

That hit the nail at the head of exactly what PCC is doing.

“To oppose such a scheme of inclusion would be positively churlish.”

He knew such criticism was coming.

“But what’s missing in this piece is the sense that even the woefully unprepared can learn to delight in a new idea, a story, a vision of a world unlike the one they’ve lived in all their lives”

I would suggest a visit to the bookstore or library would be in accord. What this doesn’t account for are some standards or the level at which one should enter college. Professor X’s argument is that many aren’t there and he isn’t the only one to think so.

“Grading ought to take account of the reality of the background from which a student has emerged.”

To me this sounds like grade inflation and lowering standards. Classes taught at college level don’t require college level proficiency in writing and math as prerequisites. I see a majority of students in many of my courses struggling with the basics. I have noticed that courses over time have dramatically adjusted to accommodate these issues. So I have to wonder, is my A really an A, am I really doing college level work, and finally is this want college is about?

i’m at a lost for your clarification on latinos and asians.

FYI, most of the enrollment in PCC’s ESL courses is by foreign nationals from Asia, not Latin America. Our Latino population is dropping every year, our Asian population skyrocketing, as more Latinos move East towards the Inland Empire and PCC actively recruits foreign East Asian students, who pay international tuition rates. We recruit from Hong Kong, the PRC, Taiwan, South Korea, and so forth — and these students are paying hundreds of dollars per unit, which is why we are happy to offer them ESL slots. Sounds exactly like what you say about Stanford and Cal Tech!

Here’s one of the agencies we use, for more info: http://icef.com/

They both offer ESL. Perhaps they aren’t “colleges” either.

Well if you want the opinion of one who has set through some of the same courses over time it is poorer students, easier curriculum, and poorer instructors. Not difficult to discern just seeing.

I always thought of English as a foreign language being taught in another country. ESL has no place in a college, and just because folks like yourself might think so…

Remember the trickle up effect.

Secondly, the demographics of PCC have changed dramatically; of COURSE we’re going to offer more ESL classes — because the percentage of students for whom English isn’t their first language has doubled since I came in 1993. And while I honor your experience, I resent the notion that PCC isn’t college — if that’s true, neither was my alma mater, because the students I have taught at PCC are often as good and as bright, and the quality of the papers as impressive, as those I encountered as a teaching assistant at UCLA and an undergrad at Cal.