Re: The trance on campus

["hoov" <hoov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Most students today, unlike
> a generation ago, have to work at jobs much longer hours during school
> --Nathan Newman

not only do a majority of today's students work more, over 40% attend
part-time and about 40% are enrolled at night...they make up a large
portion of what educrats call 'non-traditional' students - translated,
women, minorities, and older (in non-educratese, over 24 yrs of age)
folks...such students are most likely found in nonresidential, urban,
and community colleges...

so college is a less central part of a larger number of student lives,
adding to the difficulties always present in campus organizing because
the composition of student bodies is always changing...student activists
tend to live near campus and outside their parents' homes, and they are
generally full-time students without the responsibility of parenthood...
the so-called 'non-traditional' student has less time for reflection as
the over-all college experience is impoverished in comparison to the
'traditional' one...

on the other hand, a student in one of my courses (I teach at a community
college wrote an article for a recent issue of the student newspaper
that included opinion data indicating that a fairly small percentage
of 'traditional' age college students work in order to help their
parents pay for their education...if memory serves, car payments were
the most often cited reason...Michael Hoover