I just got off the phone with someone who is upset because they were informed today that they cannot graduate college due to not meeting the requisite hours of American History. This person, anticipating graduation in May 2012 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Human Resource Management, has now gone through two years of college (that’s 4 semesters) with at least one (and usually as many as three) meetings with their Academic Adviser in each… so how is it that they never hear this is a problem until it’s too late to actively do anything about it in time for the May graduation?
In fact, their graduation application was ACCEPTED by the office of administration. How the hell does THAT work?
My advice to them was to collect all the emails, transcripts shows appropriate credits toward graduation (not to mention FAILING to denote a lack of credits toward this), the paperwork of being accepted TO graduate, and going to see an attorney. You see, this person not only has a job offer waiting PENDING GRADUATION, they likely will lose that offer should they not graduate as expected. (Not to mention the people I know who are flying in to be there, some of which are going cross-country, and all of which I suspect have non-refundable tickets given the state of air travel these days.)
I told this person to take this to an attorney and see if they have recourse. If not, to let me know and I will help them write a letter that bloody well should shame them into working with them to get graduation completed without mucking up their entire life.
Frankly, if that doesn’t work out, I’m probably going to reach out to my friends in the regional and national media and request their assistance… after all, they’re much better at publicly shaming folk who can’t seem to do the right thing until/unless shamed into it.
But I just don’t get why it should take this much effort to get a person or small group of people to do the right thing.
And to think some still wonder why I have such an abysmal opinion of “formal education”; I have yet to encounter a situation where an academic collective won’t cheerfully gut you to keep up appearances or ensure that any repercussions for poor oversight of THEIR books falls on YOU.
Pathetic, frankly.