Speed Up -- Academic Style

One of the funnier skits of Father Guido Sarducci, the hip, chain-smoking priest who is the creation of comedian Don Novella, was the "five minute university." The premise of the skit was that the average college graduate remembers very little of what they learned in their college years. So Father Sarducci proposed  to teach students, at the cost of the $20 tuition, the essentials. For the Spanish Course he will teach you how to say como esta usted, because that is all you will remember years after graduation. For the Economics course, he will teach you supply and demand. And so on, and if you have a minute left over, he will throw in a law degree.


Well it appears that Father Sarducci's skit has moved closer to reality as a solution to todays high cost of a college education. Our university offered a $50,000 incentive grant for academic departments to come up with a plan to shorten the four-year degree and thereby save students and their families the cost of four years of tuition, room and board, etc. One department has become the winner of that incentive grant by creating a more cost-effective three-year degree.


We like this idea and have thought about how to apply it in our sociology program. We have come up with the idea of "Life Experience Credits" whereby students receive academic credit for their real life experiences before coming to college. Here is how it would work.


1) If you have ever voted in a national election you get 3 credits for the American Government   
        course.


2) If you have ever lied or cheated on an exam in high school, you get 3 credits for the Social
         Deviance course.


3). If you had a friend in high school who was a person of color, you get three credits for the Racial
        and Cultural Minorities course.

You get the idea. Providing academic credit for real-life experiences could take a year, or even two, off the academic calendar for graduation. We can get them in and out in two years!


That Father Sarducci is a genius!